Request: Hello! I have been your reader since early 2023 and its really nice to have your account still going! Im always astonished by how you write your fanfiction and headcanons and lets say you're one of the person that inspires me to start writing my own story. Needless to say, im here to ask a request to you ^^ and i dearly hope that this isnt so difficult. So could you please perhaps do Toneri Otsutsuki, Indra, Madara, Obito, Kimimaro, and Itachi (separated) with a very very strikingly beautiful and exquisite female reader? Its like she's not just some usual pretty face but she has this sort of, Angelic exotic pretty — like flirty doll, but hot and just ethereal, bombshells beauty to her looks that people around her say that if you have sharingan and you look into her eyes, you'll be the one that will be 'tamed' under her genjutsu instead of her because she's just that beautiful!
💜Indra has always been a bit different from the average boy wooing for your attention. Where others follow you like ducklings, he buries himself in his studies and his training. That obviously makes him intriguing but it also gives you some space to breathe as he isn't interested in wooing you. That is why you end up seeking him out in order to have some peace in moments where even you get overwhelmed. Initially Indra obviously kicks you out. He isn't interested in your pretty face, may believe that you will try to flirt with him or that you will simply just disturb his peace because of the fanboys following you around. A pretty face won't just do for Indra to truly win him over. It's only once you show genuine interest in his studies and actually contribute to it that he begrudgingly allows you to hang around him. You wouldn't go as far as calling him a friend as Indra is a kind of difficult person ever since he awakened his Sharingan. Nevertheless, as you add to his work with your own ideas he does start to play the scary guard dog for you who lashes out quite harshly on the guys following you. Pathetic. If they have nothing else to do, they should just throw themselves into training instead of losing their head over one girl.
💜He despises your fanboys initially for the fact that they are too busy swooning over you instead of growing stronger. Ironically enough he eventually loses his head too though he never allows himself to be as pathetic as everyone else. Indra instead is incredibly territorial and possessive and it is very effective. Other guys stay away the moment he glares at them with red eyes only to be forced to be his punching bag during the next training session. You have a bit of an ego due to the constant adoration and Indra doesn't like that. He doesn't acknowledge that he has a very big ego as well. He's the first-born son, he has the Sharingan and he is the most skilled fighter within this village. In his own mind that means that he is ticking all of the boxes to be the only one worthy of wedding you later in your lives. Because of your somewhat flirty personality and because of the constant attention you receive, he winds up forcing you into an isolation he inflicts upon you. He doesn't like it when people stare at you when he has already labelled you as his possession and wife. He probably only has a semblance of peace after he has left the village and has taken you with him because then you end up being kept away from people almost completely.
Uchiha Madara
🌑Sometimes he wishes that he could choke the elder out who are in typical Uchiha fashion incredibly persistent on presenting him with a variety of potential brides only for Madara to reject every single one. All of them are not bad-looking but they bore him though he is responsible enough to never say that out loud. It wouldn't do good for the clan if he were to insult another wealthy and influential clan within the newly formed Leaf Village. Then eventually you are presented to him, the daughter of a rich merchant who has trade routes even outside of the village. Besides the wealth from your father, your beauty makes you equally if not more desired by many. Even Madara can appreciate your beauty when the two of you are introduced. That isn't quite what peaks his interest though. Much more intriguing is the air of arrogance and pride you have wrapped yourself in, seemingly looking even down on a shinobi and warrior of his calibre. Most people are at least somewhat intimidated when they meet him. You on the other hand treat the entire visit like an inconvenience, seemingly disinterested and bored to death the entire time. Interesting. You have an ego. You aren't impressed. That's a challenge and he happens to like challenges.
🌑His decision is almost immediately approved. Not only because it is beneficial for the clan and will give them more influence within the village but because Madara has finally chosen a wife after rejecting countless others. You are no shinobi and warrior which may not sit right with everyone within a clan who prides itself on producing ruthless warriors. However, you carry yourself with such pride and confidence that some people tend to forget that you would easily succumb in an actual battle. You have inherited after all your father's ruthless strategic mindset and happen to know how to battle on an intellectual level. You wield such strength in a non-physical way that low-key or high-key arouses Madara. Whilst the possessive urges certainly apply to Madara too, he's just as adamant to show you off to the world as his wife. During festivals, celebrations or banquets for special occasions he parades you proudly around, smug like a peacock. You're high maintenance and not everyone could probably handle a woman like you but that certainly only adds to his ego boost. You only let the finest silk touch your body and insist on golden kanzashi and Madara provides that for you whilst you keep on challenging him with your own ego.
Uchiha Obito
🔥Hailed as your town's beauty, you are well desired within your community. As you are already of an age where a woman of your age should marry and settle down, you have yet to decide on someone. You certainly don't dislike the idea of a doting husband but you dislike the pressure constantly put upon you. You like to have a choice but it feels like you are not given any which fuels your resistance to choose a man within your town at all. You like to retreat within the forests to bask in being left alone with your thoughts and feelings though it is there where you end up attracting your stalker. Obito's mind is fractured still from the traumatic events of that bloody night yet catching sight of you for the first time reminds him of the fairytales his grandparents used to read to him when he was still small. After all aren't you the epitome of a princess, sitting there on the shores of the lake and lamenting to your own reflection within the rippling water? He almost feels like watching an illusion and perhaps it is because the sight of you reminds him of warm nights in his bed with his grandmother reading him a goodnight story does he stay instead of leaving you alone with your worries. Suxh trivial worries they are though in comparison to his own burden.
🔥For reasons he cannot explain, he finds himself returning to the same spot which he soon figures out to be your favourite spot whenever you get overwhelmed with the pressure. He supposes that maybe he just likes the pretty sight of you dipping your feet into the water and quietly sighing to yourself. You are very pretty and even he won't deny that. Indeed, the more he observes you, the more you remind him of a princess who requires to be saved by a prince. Otherwise you poor thiing may end up in an arranged marriage without your choice. That innocence and the sound of your laments seem to touch a heart which he believed had stopped beating long ago and that is when Obito indulges in his own delusions. Maybe you require being rescued by him after all. In his mind old fantasy stories start to become real with you being the beautiful princess in need and him being the prince who saves you and earns your love and adoration as a result. The next timw you rush into the forest, you never return. The town you lived in burns down only a little bit later, a fierce inferno swallowing everything and everyone within its flames. From that tragedy a new legend is born of a beautiful girl and a fire spirit who fled together.
Uchiha Itachi
🍡Itachi's eyesight isn't what it used to be. The strain of continuously using his Sharingan is slowly claiming his own vision yet he has learned to rely on his other senses so well to the point that in an actual fight no one even realises how short-sighted he is. Sometimes his vision completely blackens out on him, especially after he has used Mangekyo Sharingan and gives him a glimpse of what may happen to him very soon at this rate. After one such scenario where he cannot see anything anymore, he has to sit down, other senses on edge in case an enemy should try to use his vulerability in this moment to attack him. Instead you are the one to spot him and even though you recognise the Akatsuki coat, you decide to offer your help. You happen to be a skilled healer with no affliction to any Hidden Village. Itachi doesn't necessarily accept your help, far too wary of a random stranger but he doesn't sense any ill intent from you which is why you somehow manage to force your help upon him. You cannot do much more besides helping to ease the strain until his blurry vision returns as Itachi doesn't let you remain long enough close to him. Even through his damaged vision he can tell though that you must be a very beautiful woman.
🍡He keeps on telling himself it's only because he is waiting for the right time to express his gratitude to you as he lingers close to the small cottage you live in. He hasn't forgotten his manners despite being a war criminal. He just never seems to find the right moment for it which only leads him to quietly stalk you longer. Attachment is poison to someone of his current position and his past yet it is very hard not to quietly fall for you in the shadows. It isn't even your beauty as he often cannot see sharp enough to fully take in your face. It's more your gentle and patient composure that has his heart fluttering. However, just because he acts decent doesn't mean every other man does too when they seek you out because of your reputation. It's not like you cannot handle yourself as you know how to use your knowledge to immobilise people too. It just happens that as an Uchiha he has that possessive blood which eventually leads him to confront and badly damage a group of men who harrassed you. One gets away and word travels fast and soon accusations fly that you are associated with the Akatsuki which forces him to take you before someone else does. The abduction is the first time he actually can lean in close enough to really take in your beauty.
Kaguya Kimimaro
🦴After having somehow survived the life-threatening illness, most likely due to all the medical jutsus and experiments Kabuto and Orochimaru forced him through, Kimimaro continues being his master's loyal pawn. That's why he begrudgingly agrees to show you around and help you with your training when Oorchimaru brings you in. After all you too possess a kekkai genkai and happen to be an orphan and Orochimaru just has a soft spot of powerful people like you who may one day become his new vessels. Kimimaro has already been quite jealous of Sasuke when the Uchiha boy was brought in but with your addition, now he fears that Orochimaru's attention will be even more split. He wants to be worthy of his master which is why he treats you not very nice. He's cold and a man of few words and during training sessions he is far too harsh which leads to Kabuto having to lecture him as it is also his job to see through that you thrive and become stronger. No one here really cares for your beauty as much as your abilities. Kimimaro in particular doesn't understand the meaning of physical beauty looking at the ugle conditions he grew up in hence why he is unimpressed. Test subjects of Orochimaru think differently.
🦴The amount of times you have been catcalled or subjects made disturbing comments about you pile up quickly. Kimimaro initially ends up slaughtering them not because he's jealous or possessive but because their rambles annoy him. He eventually claims that he learns to tolerate you though Kabuto has his suspicion that it is something else entirely. Then again, he is not about to explain to a man who has never experienced affection in his life what love exactly is. The way Kimimaro hovers around you though is telling. Kabuto has even caught the Kaguya sitting like a guard dog in front of the door leading to your room at night, claiming its only to ensure that the previous accident of a goon trying to break into your space doesn't happen again. He always justifies it with his loyalty towards Orochimaru who entrusted you under his care but really, his loyalty seems to have partially shifted. It's an interesting development which Kabuto observes and reports to Orochimaru closely who surprisingly enough doesn't interfere immediately. He'll watch how this situation develop instead as Kimimaro starts to isolate you continuously until he doesn't even let you walk around anymore unless he can be there to accompany you.
Otsutsuki Toneri
🌕Now, Toneri is actually blind. Nevertheless, he has been aware of you ever since his father and him visited the earth from time to time. Where his father encouraged him to marry Hinata one day, Toneri has always been far more enraptured by you. Mainly because as a child he actually sneaked away from his father one day and met you, officially making you the first human he actually interacted with. Even back then you were always kind and passionate though he back then didn't grasp what others meant who called you very beautiful. After all he can't see. Toneri can certainly be very deranged though as his obsession which already blossoms when the two of you are mere children becomes something far more twisted as he grows up and his urges and desires mature into something far more sinister. He envies people who can lay their eyes on you and admire your beauty which he hears so often about yet cannot worship himself. That's why he eventually ambushes someone from the Hyuga main family to steal their eyes, finally allowing him the ability to look at you himself. He most likely proposes on the spot. If you don't agree, he will just take you by force. He's not very considerate of your feelings. You'll learn to love him soon.
🌕In his eyes the two of you are childhood sweethearts and soon will be husband and wife respectively so with that mindset he can brush all of your homesickness and your laments off as trivial feelings that will soon fade away. Now that Toneri has actually required eyesight though, he is obsessed with looking at you. He constantly invades your private space to stare at you, ecstatic to know that he from now on will be the only one who gets to admire your beauty. After all it is only him and you on this moon. It doesn't take long before he ends up filling the castle with paintings and statues of you because he just needs your beauty to be engraved everywhere. One or two would be alright but within the zealousness of his obsession he soon has the floors filled with multiple paintings of you and entrances flanked by statues of you which quickly makes you uncomfortable. You're not that self-obsessed with your beauty after all. Unfortunately Toneri misinterprets your unease as insecurity which leads him to triple his efforts and obsession all because he now wants to show you that you are the most beautiful person that has ever existed. He constantly dolls you up too, dressing you up in the finest kimono and decorating you with priceless jewelry.
MULTI | the shinobi gothic — entry #03: saints, sinners, and sharp things 🕯️
ft. konan, nagato, kimimaro, orochimaru, sasori
summary: five gothic romance vignettes for the shinobi whose devotion became worship, weaponry, and ruin
word count: 5,292
content: gn!reader, multi-character x reader, gothic romance, dark romance elements, horror imagery, canon-typical violence, cliffhanger endings, all characters are written as adults, THIS ENTRY LEANS HEAVILY INTO BODY HORROR & NON-SEXUAL CONSENT ISSUES, PLEASE CHECK INDIVIDUAL TAGS BEFORE READING.
a/n: ngl this set escaped containment somewhere between the religious trauma, the body horror, and sasori trying to make romance legally actionable 😭
🖤 series masterlist
konan — the angel in the tower
content: angst, supernatural horror, grief/mourning, death references, prophetic death, emotional surveillance/protective control, religious imagery, self-sacrifice
The first flower was lodged beneath a bridge. Rain had swollen the river until it worried the stone arches, dragging branches, refuse, and once the pale hand of a body no one came to claim. Yet the paper flower remained untouched as water streamed around it without staining a single folded petal.
You opened it beneath the awning of a shuttered shop and found a letter waiting inside.
Mother, I was afraid at the end. I'm sorry I lied.
The name at the bottom belonged to a shinobi who had died twelve years ago.
You carried the flower to Amegakure's tallest tower where Konan was waiting. She knew the handwriting before you reached the final line.
"Where did you find it?"
Her paper wings rested folded behind her, every sheet aligned with funereal precision. Rain glazed her hair and the high planes of her face. She resembled less an angel than the memory of one carved above a tomb, beautiful because grief had worn away everything unnecessary.
“Beneath the eastern bridge.”
Her attention turned towards the windows, where Amegakure dissolved into veils of silver.
“That is not where I left it.”
She led you, then, down into the archive.
Thousands of paper flowers inhabited the room. They slept in shallow drawers, hung from slender threads, and crowded shelves that vanished beyond the lamps. Each bore a name in careful ink, each enclosed a final message. The air stirred with the dry susurration of petal against petal, as though the dead were praying through paper mouths.
"You made all of these?"
"Not all." Konan passed between the shelves without disturbing so much as a corner. "Some were made by the dead."
A startled laugh escaped you, and she offered none in return.
Your work began the following morning.
Konan asked you to identify names, restore ink spoiled by damp, and deliver letters to those still living. She knew every district, every family, every alley where someone had bled into the rain. Grief in Amegakure had become an administration of its own, and Konan served as archivist, priest and undertaker. She kept loss indexed because no one else could endure its full arithmetic.
Her tenderness followed the same austere logic. Dry gloves appeared beside your ledger, tea arrived before you confessed that your fingers had gone numb, and when the whispering swelled until you could no longer separate paper from voices, folded sheets gathered over your ears like the palms of pale wings.
You never asked how she knew.
One night, you found her shaping a flower from orange paper.
“That one has no name,” you observed.
“It does not require one.”
Yahiko, you thought.
Beside it lay another flower, white and unmarked. “Who is that one for?”
Konan’s fingers stilled upon the final crease. “Someone who is not dead yet.”
That answer followed you into sleep and waited beside you when you woke. After that, the flowers began to arrive before death.
A baker discovered one in his oven; he drowned the following afternoon. A child found one beneath their pillow; her fever broke only after Konan fed the flower to a lamp flame and watched until the ash ceased moving.
Then yours appeared.
It stood upright in a puddle outside the archive, immaculate beneath the rain. Konan reached it first and for the first time since you had known her, control abandoned her. Her hand closed as paper blades burst from her sleeve and reduced the flower to a storm of white fragments.
The pieces did not fall.
They hovered between you, trembling, then bent along invisible seams, petal met petal, and the flower remade itself in her palm.
"Let me read it."
"No."
"Konan."
"No."
The refusal came softly, yet nothing in the tower could have moved it. Fear had entered her voice without altering its shape.
You followed her to the highest platform, where rain swept sideways beneath a bruised sky and the village below appeared half-drowned. Roofs surfaced from the flood-dark like grave markers, towers pierced the mist like the ribs of some immense drowned saint.
Konan held the flower over the precipice.
“What does it say?”
“That you die here.” The paper shook between her fingers. “In my arms.”
Her words settled in your chest colder than the rain around you.
Since finding your flower, Konan had altered your routes, cancelled assignments, sent paper replicas to roost above your door and beneath your windows. Every protection had been so precise, so unobtrusive, that you had initially mistaken her devotion for coincidence.
"You've been following me," you stated one evening.
"I have been keeping you alive."
"That isn't the same thing."
At last, she faced you, grief stripping years from her expression and laying the exhaustion beneath it bare.
"I know that."
"You can't arrange me among the dead."
"I…don't know another way to love someone without preparing to lose them."
The word seemed to freeze in the air between you.
Love.
Neither ornament nor plea; a vow spoken in the grammar of burial.
You noticed rain gathering in her lashes as you reached for her hand. Her skin was warm, but the flower trapped between your palms pulsed like a small, captive heart.
"I learnt to make beautiful things," she murmured, "because everything else had already been ruined."
The flower opened itself and a letter unfolded within, written in Konan's tidy hand.
You will ask me not to choose the village over you. I will.
Thunder broke abruptly over the tower and far below, the sound of every drawer in the archive sliding open at once rumbled through the stone floors. Thousands of paper flowers poured into the stairwell and rose around you, turning their petals towards the platform as if answering a summons. Konan's wings spread with the long, metallic whisper of knives leaving their sheaths.
Then, one flower settled upon her shoulder.
It bore tomorrow's date, and her name.
nagato — the ruined prophet
content: psychological horror, religious/divine horror, cult-like worship, body horror, corpse puppetry, chronic illness/physical deterioration, martyrdom, coercive power dynamics, death references
In Amegakure, rain did not fall—it endured.
It streamed down the towers like mourning cloth, gathered in the sightless hollows of broken statues, and threaded the streets in silver veins that never closed. The people moved beneath it with bowed heads, some carried umbrellas, others carried offerings.
You were taken to the highest tower because God was ill, that was the word your escort used. Not leader, not shinobi, not man.
God.
At the entrance, bowls lined the walls like votive basins. A paper flower floated in each, pale against water darkened by dust and old ink; some were newly folded, their creases clean enough to cut while others had softened into pulp, their names bleeding across the petals like bruises beneath skin.
“Do not touch them,” Konan warned. Her voice held the gentleness of a hand closing a dead person’s eyes.
Within, the tower smelled of rain-soaked stone, incense, metal, and something medicinal rotting beneath all three. The corridors stretched farther than the architecture should have allowed. Your footsteps returned to your ear out of order, one beat late, as though a second pilgrim followed behind you.
At every turning stood a body in black robes and iron piercings. Waiting. Unbreathing.
The orange-haired one was the first to receive you.
“You were told why you are here.” His mouth formed the words, but the voice descended from somewhere above, thin with distance and divinity.
“I was told you require a healer.”
The concentric rings of his eyes did not blink. “Pain requires no healing.”
A laugh almost escaped you, but the tower smothered it before it could reach your tongue.
The body led you further upwards. The higher you climbed, the more the tower resembled a reliquary built for a ruined faith with niches that held worn sandals, cracked bowls, rusted kunai, and children’s blankets stiff with age. Nothing had been cleaned, nothing had been discarded. Every corridor preserved the contour of someone missing.
At the summit, beyond a door bound in paper seals, you met the man who inhabited God.
Nagato sat within a framework of iron and black receivers. His body appeared already half-sacrament, half-corpse—all bone, red hair, and skin drawn taut over endurance. Tubes disappeared beneath his robes as machinery breathed for the parts of him belief had consumed.
Behind you, the orange-haired dead man remained standing, witnessing.
“You expected another face,” Nagato observed. His voice came from his own mouth now, rougher and more human for it.
“I expected the corpse downstairs.”
Something passed over his features. Not amusement, recognition.
“He is not dead while I require him.”
That should have been the moment you understood. Instead, you approached.
Konan recited the conditions of your work with ceremonial precision. Do not remove the receivers, do not touch the central mechanism, do not attempt genjutsu, do not refer to Yahiko as a corpse.
Nagato followed every movement of your hands as you measured his pulse. It beat too slowly. Across the chamber, Yahiko’s fingers twitched.
“You keep him near,” you murmured.
“I keep his will alive.”
“You keep his body standing.”
Rain struck the windows with the fury of thrown gravel.
Nagato’s gaze sharpened. “You were not brought here to judge me.”
“No,” you replied. “I was brought because even gods decay.”
The Deva Path moved before sight could warn you. A cold hand clamped over your shoulder, fingers heavy with borrowed strength. Nagato raised two fingers and the corpse released you. It was the first mercy he offered, and it frightened you more than punishment would have.
Days accumulated within the tower’s damp, airless gloom. You adjusted machinery, changed dressings, and documented the revolt of a body forced to carry doctrine beyond its natural span. Nagato questioned you while you worked.
What is peace worth?
Could pain instruct where compassion failed?
Would you sacrifice one village to spare five?
You answered without reverence. Each reply seemed to bring him closer, though he never left his iron cradle.
At night, the corridors remembered. Children laughed beyond sealed doors. Konan’s younger voice drifted through stairwells, calling names the village had buried, and once, Yahiko spoke yours. You followed it to a chamber containing doors to six empty rooms.
The Deva Path stood at the centre, his back towards you.
“Nagato?”
The corpse turned towards you, its lips moving without sound.
Behind you, Nagato’s voice issued from a receiver embedded in the wall.
“Do not answer him.”
Yahiko advanced. Water streamed from his sleeves although he had not crossed the rain. It darkened the floor around his feet, carrying the faint rust-colour of diluted blood. You retreated until stone met your spine and when Yahiko stood only inches before you, he lifted one hand and laid it against your cheek with unbearable tenderness.
Nagato’s voice hardened. “Kneel.”
You did, because the command entered your bones like gravity remembered. The corpse’s thumb traced the hollow beneath your eye. Then Nagato spoke again, lower now, stripped of proclamation.
“Do not kneel to me unless you understand what prayer costs.”
The pressure vanished, and you raised your head. Yahiko was smiling down at you. Not the solemn curve Nagato arranged upon his mouth but a young man’s smile, warm with grief and alive with something that should no longer have possessed breath.
From deep within the tower came the sound of a seventh door unlocking.
kimimaro — the bone chapel
content: body horror, illness, medical care, blood, bone growths, implied medical experimentation, dehumanisation, weaponisation of the body, devotion to an abusive/manipulative figure, abandonment themes
Orochimaru had left instructions beside the bed.
Keep the fever below forty degrees.
Remove any growth that threatens the heart.
Record all abnormalities.
Do not encourage disobedience.
Kimimaro lay beneath a white sheet, his skin almost the same colour as the linen. Bright, white hair spilled across the pillow, while the two red markings above his eyes gave him a ceremonial severity, as though someone had prepared a corpse for worship and neglected, through cruelty or devotion, to close its eyes.
"You are the new medic," he observed.
"Yes."
"I apologise in advance."
"For what?"
His ribs shifted beneath his skin. A white point emerged near his sternum, slow and clean as a bud breaking through snow. Blood welled around it with obscene delicacy.
"For the inconvenience."
You worked for three hours following that. The bone had to be cut before it reached his lung but the bone resisted the blade like carved ivory. He never cried out and when your hands shook, he apologised again, as if his body were an unruly instrument and he its embarrassed keeper.
The hideout had been abandoned except for the two of you. Orochimaru's people had withdrawn in haste, leaving behind spoilt medicine, extinguished lamps, and sealed rooms that breathed cold air through their cracks. Everything useful had been taken, everything that still suffered had been left behind. Kimimaro did not call it abandonment.
"Lord Orochimaru will return for me when I am required."
"You're dying," you sighed.
"Then I should become useful quickly."
You learnt the shape of his illness by touch. Fever without warmth, a heartbeat that occasionally stopped, waited, and resumed, bone blooming beneath the skin in pale branches. Some nights he coughed up fragments into a cloth and folded it neatly before you could see. He spoke of his body as a possession entrusted to him by someone else, a weapon maintained for future service.
You began bringing him little things from the ruined storage rooms. A comb, a piece of blue glass, a tin cup painted with fish. Kimimaro examined each object with solemn attention.
"What is this for?" he asked, holding the glass up to the lamp for inspection.
"It's not for anything."
"Then why did you bring it?"
"I thought you might like the colour."
The answer disturbed him more than blood. He studied the glass as though it belonged to a faith he had never been taught, then placed it beside the bed.
During the second week, the walls began to alter. At first, thin lines appeared between the stones—mineral deposits, you told yourself—then one curved outward into the shape of a human rib. Another followed. Within days, arches of bone spanned the corridor. Vertebrae rose as columns, and small teeth studded the doorframes, gleaming when lamplight passed over them.
The hideout became nave, crypt, and body at once.
Kimimaro watched this growth with open approval.
"It is supporting the structure," he explained.
"It's coming from you."
"Yes." There was no fear that clouded the word.
A few days later, you found research notes in a locked cabinet. Orochimaru had designed the chamber to receive Kimimaro's kekkei genkai after death. His consciousness, the notes suggested, might diffuse through the skeletal network. A weapon no longer limited by flesh, an immortal defence system grown from devotion, illness, and the remains of a young man who had mistaken being used for being loved.
You read until the letters blurred together and your eyes stung. When you returned, Kimimaro was sitting upright despite the blood soaking his tunic.
"You knew?"
"Yes."
"You agreed to this."
"It is an honour."
The chapel creaked around you as his voice whispered, from inside the wall, a half-second after his lips moved.
It is an honour.
You stepped closer, grief sharpening into anger. "What do you want, Kimimaro?"
"To serve Lord Orochimaru." He offered the answer with the certainty of a prayer.
"No." You forced the word through your teeth. "What do you want?"
Kimimaro's face emptied of whatever little emotion he dared to show. The bone walls around you began tapping, a thousand small knocks, like fingers inside coffins.
"I don't understand the question."
You sat beside him on the bed and took his hand in both of yours. It was cold, light, and harder beneath the skin than any living hand should be. His attention lowered to your joined fingers.
"Why are you doing that?"
"Because I want to."
"But…there is no purpose."
"Wanting is the purpose," you replied, watching the way his breath caught.
The chapel shuddered with the strain of something learning hunger. Behind his shoulder, another rib pushed through the wall and curled around the bed, protective as an arm, possessive as a cage. Kimimaro did not pull his hand away, his fingers tightened once, so lightly you might have missed it.
He stood barefoot on the wet stone, swaying beneath the weight of obedience. Blood ran from his mouth, and a spear of bone extended from his palm, immaculate and awful, as though his body had shaped devotion into a weapon before it remembered how to breathe.
"Lord Orochimaru may require me," he explained once you asked what he was doing.
"You can't even walk ten steps!"
"Then I will crawl."
You blocked the door at that. Kimimaro's expression remained gentle, which made the threat in his posture all the more unbearable.
"There is no need for you to mourn a breaking weapon."
Something in your expression twisted, brows knitting together. "Weapons don't fear being left behind."
The spear protruding from his hand trembled. For the first time since you arrived, Kimimaro looked younger than his years. Not holy, not useful, not resigned. Only helplessly afraid, as if your words had touched some buried place no curse mark, command, or blade had ever reached.
Then, the floor split open beneath him.
Bone rose in a great white bloom, lifting his body towards the ceiling. It received him like an altar receiving its saint. Ribs unfurled from the stone and curved around his waist, shoulders, throat, the walls sang with strain, doorframes chattered their teeth.
You lunged before the ribs could close, and your hand passed between them. Kimimaro caught your wrist, the grip desperate, human, terrifyingly young.
For one suspended moment, the chapel held both of you there, him ascending into the shrine Orochimaru had prepared, you anchored below with his fingers locked around your skin. His lips parted and the walls parted with them. Every column, every tooth, every pale arch gathered itself around the same breath.
"Stay."
The first want he ever recognised.
Behind you, the wall cracked open. Stone split, bone withdrew, a new chamber revealed itself around the wound. Inside stood a second skeleton. It had your height, your hands…and over the skull, wet and unfinished, a face had begun to grow.
orochimaru — beautiful monster
content: body horror, medical horror, captivity/coercion, non-consensual experimentation, bodily autonomy violation, forced possession, manipulation, horror romance, orochimaru being orochimaru 💀
The laboratory doors were left unlocked; that was how Orochimaru made captivity feel like a decision.
You could leave your room, walk the white corridors, enter the library, even stand before the iron gate at the end of the eastern passage. It opened whenever your hand touched the bars, but beyond it lay another corridor—always the same corridor. White stone, glass tanks, pale orchids rooting in bowls of polished bone.
Orochimaru had called this freedom within reasonable boundaries. You had called it a maze with manners.
"You are welcome to be ungrateful," he remarked. A white snake lay draped around his shoulders, its head resting near the long column of his throat. His smile was elegant and utterly without comfort. "You mistake my interest for mercy."
Your work concerned memory. At least, that was the name given to it.
You catalogued tissue samples from failed vessels, translated medical records written in dead dialects, and measured how long emotion persisted after bodily transfer. Orochimaru treated affection as a defect in an otherwise promising process, something to isolate, preserve, and eventually command.
"Bodies remember pain," he mused one evening, watching you dissect a preserved heart. "Why not devotion?"
"Perhaps devotion is not something the body owns."
"Everything is owned by the body until the body fails."
In the specimen room, preserved people floated behind glass. Some appeared asleep, others had been arranged beautifully enough to resemble saints. One opened its eye when you passed.
You stopped abruptly and watched as its lips moved around your name.
Orochimaru's reflection appeared beside yours in the glass.
"Residual chakra," he explained.
"You told me it has no tongue."
His smile only widened.
After that, the laboratory began noticing you. Snakes gathered beneath your chair, knotting into pale, ceremonial heaps. Preserved hearts beat when you entered the room, and a hand inside one tank lifted and pressed its palm to the glass opposite yours. Orochimaru observed each event with increasing pleasure.
His fascination became a kind of courtship, if courtship could be performed with scalpels laid in velvet and cages polished until they shone. Rare books would appear on your desk and questions turned intimate without becoming warm.
What did you fear losing?
Which memory would you preserve if the rest had to rot?
Would you still love someone if their face changed?
He remembered every answer.
Eventually, you began to dream in someone else's childhood. You saw a stern teacher beneath green leaves, two teammates arguing beside a river, a small white snake curled inside a sleeve, and the first corpse Orochimaru had ever seen with the first thought that death was an insult rather than an ending.
You woke with his name on your lips and found him already sitting beside your bed.
"How— How long have you been there?"
"Long enough."
"You did this?"
"I suspected it might occur."
When you dropped your gaze, you noticed a mark beneath your collarbone that had not been there when you went to sleep. A thin, black seal, circular, precise, beautiful in the way surgical instruments were beautiful before use. Orochimaru touched it with one cool finger.
Your stomach twisted with the horror of recognition and, for no longer than a heartbeat, you felt his amusement moving inside your own body. Then his hunger. Then, something sharper, older, and far less disciplined—fear.
You caught the wrist still held out towards you.
"What am I?" you whispered.
His eyes narrowed with interest, as though the question itself had produced a useful symptom.
"A possibility."
The journals supplied the rest. You found them beneath a false floor in the library, wrapped in oilcloth and preserved with more care than any living person in this forsaken place. Pages of anatomical drawings, notes on emotional retention between vessels, diagrams of your own chakra network written months before you had even arrived. The final entry contained no clinical language.
Subject may preserve attachment across transfer.
Then, below it:
Loss therefore becomes…optional.
Orochimaru found you reading. He did not bother trying to attempt denial; denial would have insulted the work.
"This was never about memory," you accused.
"Memory is attachment after the object is gone."
"You— You planned to use me as a vessel!"
"I planned to determine whether affection could survive immortality."
"For who?"
His face remained serene but you could hear the sound of snakes in the walls beginning to move. A soft dragging filled the room, scale over stone, scale over scale, the chapel-murmur of a thousand cold bodies waking. It was then that you understood.
"For you, of course."
Orochimaru stepped closer. His hand rose to your cheek, not tenderly, but with the reverence of someone touching a rare specimen before making the first cut.
"You have become…inconvenient," he confessed.
"Because you care?"
A faint crease of distaste touched his mouth. "Because I prefer you alive."
There was no softness in it, no redemption waiting beneath his admission, only possession discovering that destruction would be inefficient.
The laboratory lights went out suddenly. Somewhere nearby, glass shattered, clinking lightly across the floor. A body fell from a tank with a dull thud and dragged itself across the floor, wet limbs slapping against tile. Another impact followed. Then another. The specimen room was opening like a reliquary tipped on its side.
Orochimaru turned towards the sound.
Pain tore through your chest and he staggered at the same moment.
The seal beneath your collarbone flared, hot as a brand pressed into the soul. Your knees struck the floor, his hand went to his own throat, and for the first time, his expression lost its architecture. Not panic—calculation interrupted by consequence.
His consciousness rushed into you in a flood of scales, grave-soil, formaldehyde, and stolen faces. Years entered without permission, names rotted into your mouth, jutsu unfolded behind your eyes like flowers blooming in a tomb. Your reflection in the black window smiled before you did.
Orochimaru’s voice emerged from your throat.
“Fascinating...”
You tried to scream but your jaw would not obey.
Across the room, his body collapsed with terrible grace, emptied but not dead enough to be harmless. The white snake lifted its head from his shoulder, fixed its golden eyes on you, and bowed.
Then your hands began forming a jutsu you had never learned.
sasori — the dollmaker's heart
content: preserved bodies, human puppets, bodily autonomy violation, trapped consciousness, non-consensual body replication, forced puppetry, obsessive preservation, corpse imagery, emotional manipulation
The puppets slept standing up. At least, that was what Sasori told you when you asked why their eyes were closed.
"They don't sleep," you answered.
"No." He adjusted the lacquered hand of a swordsman until each wooden finger rested at an exact angle over the hilt. "But you do. It's more comfortable for you this way."
The workshop lay tucked beneath the desert, cool and windowless, sealed away from sun, wind, rot, and all other vulgarities of time. Human puppets occupied alcoves along the walls, each arranged with ceremonial care. A dancer balanced on one foot, skirt carved into permanent motion. A swordsman knelt with his blade laid across his palms. A child reached towards something that had not been preserved with them.
The air smelt of varnish, camphor, dried herbs, poison, and the faint sweetness of bodies that had been forbidden to finish dying.
You had come here as an artisan. Or a prisoner. The distinction altered according to whether Sasori approved of your work.
You repaired joints, polished mechanisms, restrung fingers, and mixed antidotes for poisons he insisted had none. He watched your hands more often than your face, studying each movement as if affection could be disguised as critique.
“You alter too much,” he remarked after inspecting one of your repairs.
“The original joint was failing.”
“Failure is preferable to imprecision.”
“So is death, apparently.”
His attention lifted. You should have been afraid, it would have been smarter if you were. Instead, something almost like amusement passed through the room, brief as lamplight across a blade and, after that, Sasori’s interest sharpened.
Tools appeared in sizes properly suited to your grip, materials you mentioned once were placed beside your station without comment, and when you worked too late, he ordered you to stop with the irritation of someone who refused to admit concern had entered the room wearing his voice.
At night, the puppets moved.
It was never enough that you could prove anything; a head turned towards your futon, a hand shifted from where it had been placed, wooden fingers tapped against glass with the patience of rain inside a coffin.
The next morning, you informed Sasori.
"Echoes of intent," he said, dismissive.
"Intent doesn't tap on the glass."
He regarded you for a long moment, expression smooth as painted porcelain. "You should stay away from the western room," he said suddenly. He returned to his work after that, refusing to engage the conversation further.
Naturally, the western room seemed to open itself.
Inside stood unfinished bodies. Some had no faces, others had faces without mouths. Limbs hung from hooks in pairs, sorted by proportion, age, elegance, usefulness. At the centre waited a puppet with your height, your hands, and the exact slope of your shoulders. Your likeness stared at you with unpainted eyes and a hollow opening in its chest.
When you finally turned, Sasori was already occupying the doorway behind you.
"You've been measuring me."
"Observing," he corrected.
"You made a corpse before deciding whether to kill me!"
"I haven't decided that death is necessary."
The calmness of his answer chilled you more deeply than any threat he could have made. Threats, at least, still belonged to the living; this was planning.
You returned your attention to the puppet. Movement caught your attention beneath its ribs, and when you looked closer you saw the mechanical lungs expanding and contracting with tender obscenity.
"It…breathes."
"You do."
"That doesn't explain this."
"It's an imperfection I intended to reproduce."
You turned your head back towards him at that. "Why?"
"Living things alter." Sasori's expression did not change, but something inside his chest clicked. "They scar. Age. Leave."
"And this won't?"
"This will remain."
Only then did you notice the objects preserved upon the nearby tables. A loose thread that you had ripped from your sleeve, a lock of your hair, a bloodstained cloth from the day you cut your palm. Sketches of you asleep over the workbench, your cheek pressed to folded arms, your mouth softened by exhaustion. Studies of your hands, your throat, the place between your ribs where the heart could be reached most cleanly.
"Don't mistake preservation for cruelty," Sasori instructed. "Decay is far less merciful."
You scoffed. "Mercy without choice is just cruelty with better manners."
The workshop stirred at your words, all around you wooden eyes opened together. Sasori turned sharply when the dancer stepped down from her alcove, when the swordsman's fingers tightened around his blade, when the child puppet lifted one hand and pointed towards the unfinished version of you.
Then the tapping began again.
Dozens of hands beat against wood, glass, and lacquer in a fractured rhythm that sounded like…a code. You listened until the pattern separated itself from panic.
Run.
Sasori's chakra threads snapped into view, blue and fine as veins beneath skin. He seized control of three puppets with a flick of his fingers.
The rest moved without him.
Their mouths opened. Some had no tongues, some had no throats. One had a jaw wired shut with gold. They spoke anyway.
"Stay."
The word came in too many voices, and beneath the cacophony you heard one that belonged to you.
Your unfinished puppet stepped forwards from the stand that was supporting it, its blank eyes had been painted while you were not watching, the exact colour of your own.
"You…preserved their minds," you breathed.
"Fragments."
"They know what you did."
"They remember incorrectly."
A puppet wearing the face of an elderly woman turned towards Sasori.
"Mother…" she called in a raspy, withered voice.
Sasori went rigid in the doorway. The heart-container in his chest gave one hard, audible beat. The sound cut through the room with horrible intimacy; not mechanism, not memory, but living tissue startled into confession.
You reached out for it before thought could stop you and your palm met warm flesh set inside lacquered wood. Sasori caught your wrist but did not pull your hand away. His pulse raced beneath your fingers, frantic within its polished shrine.
"You left your heart," you whispered.
"I required a core."
"You required something that could still hurt…"
The chakra threads around the room tightened until they hummed. Your unfinished puppet raised both of its hands and invisible strings caught your fingers. Then your wrists. Your arms lifted against your will, each joint obeying a precision that was no longer yours. You felt the violation first as elegance, that was the worst of it. No roughness, no struggle wasted, just your body rearranged by an artist who had already imagined its final pose.
Sasori severed one thread, only for three more to replace it. Your puppet-self smiled with your own mouth.
"Which do you prefer?" it asked him sweetly. "The one who changes…or the one who stays?"
For the first time, Sasori hesitated.
Behind him, the puppets of his parents opened their eyes, their wooden hands settling onto his shoulders with the tenderness of a childhood embalmed before it could forgive him. His face remained smooth, but the pulse beneath your palm faltered, then struck again harder.
Your likeness stepped close enough that its borrowed breath touched your face. From inside its chest came the sound of a heartbeat.
Not imitation. Yours.
The pulse beneath your own ribs answered once, weakly, as if called from a great distance, then the puppet's chest began to close.
series tag list: @itachispetrock, @arabella0001, @pink-sunrise-56
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Fandom: Naruto
Reader-insert: Gender neutral
Featuring: Itachi, Kakashi, Iruka, Yamato, Neji, Sai, Gaara, Shikamaru & Kimimaro
Warnings: None
Headcanon: Their reaction to their s/o giving them flowers 🌸🌹
(a/n): Taking a break from studying for my finals to write this lil HC~ 💜
Honestly, coming back to this fandom after 15 years feels great! Also... feels old man. I was 13 when I first started watching this, then I dropped it and now I’m back and... well, I’ve found quite a bouquet of husbandos 🙈
Itachi's eyes soften when you gift him a small handmade bouquet of wildflowers you’ve found in the forest while taking a stroll earlier.
The lovely grin you're sporting on your face reminds him of a child excitedly giving flowers to their mothers, and he can't help but let out a short-lived chuckle as he accepts the messy bouquet.
“Thank you, (y/n).” He shows you a small yet genuine smile. “But, why flowers?”
“You've been brooding lately and... well, I figured these would cheer you up.” You shrug and offer him a shy smile.
The fact that you always know how he's feeling has never failed to make his heart race.
No one has really cared this much about him in a long, long time, thus knowing that you want to lift up his spirits really moved him.
Taking advantage of the fact that the two of you are alone, he lets his cold mask fall momentarily and he allows himself to envelop you in his arms as he feels tears prickling at the corners of his eyes.
Worried, you call his name, “Itachi?”
“Thank you,” he whispers, hiding his face in the crook of your neck.
When you gift Kakashi a small bouquet of red roses he's a little confused.
“You got me flowers?”
This is something he wasn't expecting at all.
And it is definitely something he won't find in any of the adult novels he enjoys reading.
But he is actually pleased if a little embarrassed.
“I don't know what to say... I didn't bring you anything,” he says as he scratches the back of his neck.
“You don't have to get me anything, silly. I just... wanted to get you flowers, Kashi.” You avert your gaze, feeling your cheeks burning.
“Thank you, (y/n). I'll treasure them.”
And he is true to his word.
He puts the bouquet in a glass vase in his room and every time his eyes land on the gorgeous roses, he leans down to breathe in their gentle aroma.
A goofy smile forms on his face, and a faint blush spreads across his cheeks and ears as he thinks of you, his cutie pie.
Once the roses start to wither, he lets them dry and keeps them in his favourite passage of his favourite novel.
Yamato is moved when you attach a beautiful flower to his vest the moment you see him upon your return from a mission far, far away from Konoha.
The flower is creamy-coloured in the centre and pink towards the tips of its five petals.
“Oh, what's this?”
“It's lovely, isn't it?” You smile brightly at him, making his heart skip a beat. “It's the flower of a floss silk tree.”
There are no such trees in Konoha, he muses as he stares at it, wondering what the tree looks like.
“I thought of you when I picked it up.”
Your lover is at a loss for words. Knowing that you think of him when the two of you are apart is enough to make his heart flutter.
He wraps you in his arms and pulls you closer in a warm embrace, hiding his reddening cheeks on your hair.
He’s so happy you’re back, he’s missed you dearly
“Thank you, dear, for the flower and for coming home to me safe and sound,” he states in a deep voice, tightening his grip on you as he does.
He liked the flower so much that he did some research about the floss silk tree to grow one with his Jutsu.
When you show up to Iruka's place with a bouquet of Gardenias in your arms, he, for some reason, thinks someone gave them to you.
After all, you're outstandingly pretty so who wouldn't want to give you flowers?
He supposed you don't like the flowers or the person you got them from and that is why you're offering them to him. Although that's a bit weird, isn't it? He knows for a fact that you like flowers so...
And why didn't he think of giving you flowers before?!
“I bought these for you!” You announced excitedly, interrupting his train of thought.
“Oh, you bought them for me,” he repeats in a low tone when it hits him, “Wait, what?!”
“You always lean down to take in the smell of your neighbour's Gardenias on your way home, so I thought you'd like these.”
“I-I do! I do!” An adorable pinkish blush coloured his cheeks. “I just... I... didn't think you'd get me flowers. That's all.” He scratches the back of his neck and laughs nervously before accepting the bouquet.
He brings the beautiful flowers to his nose, eyes fluttering closed as he breathes their sweet aroma in and he heaves a pleased sigh.
“Thank you, (y/n). I love them.” He flashes you the most endearing, toothy grin you've ever seen as his blush darkens a little.
He's elated.
Neji reluctantly closes his eyes at your requests, feeling pleasurable goosebumps as you fiddle with his long, brown hair.
“You can open your eyes now.” You beam as you give him a hand mirror to stare at himself.
His brows furrow when he sees the small orange blossoms adorning the little braid you did on his hair.
“Don't you look pretty?”
“I look ridiculous,” he huffs.
“Well, I think you look cute.” You pouted a little. “But I can take them off if you want,” you say, reaching to undo the braid.
He immediately grabs your hands in his as he shakes his head.
“No.” A soft shade of pink spreads quickly across his face and neck as he gives your hands a gentle squeeze.
He actually likes what you did on his hair, but he finds it hard to admit it aloud.
The fifth Kazekage's brows knit together as his eyes land on the unfamiliar vase on his desk.
However, he soon recognises the colourful tulips. They are the ones you've been taking care of in your private little garden for a while now.
Gaara walks over to it and finds a small note between the flowers. He picks it up and reads it aloud:
“I hope these lovely tulips bring a smile to your face. Have a nice day, love. See you at lunch!”
The redhead cannot help the warm smile that forms on his face as he reads the note again and again as though trying to imprint the message to memory, feeling a faint blush colouring his cheeks.
His heart rams in his chest as he anticipates your arrival for lunch.
You always manage to steal a smile from his lips and for that he's very thankful to you.
When you offer him a small bouquet of blue lilies, Sai stares at it not knowing what to do.
“What do I do with these?” he asks with curiosity in his dark eyes.
“You can put them in a vase in your room,” you reply, smiling sweetly at him.
“Why did you get me flowers?”
“I thought you'd like them. Perhaps you'll find inspiration when looking at them.”
“I see.” He looks at you and then back at the bouquet in his hand. “I read a book that said men are supposed to give flowers to women to court them... so I'm confused,” he adds.
“Well, the book is not entirely wrong. But you can give flowers to people you care about, regardless of your gender or theirs, as you want to see them smile. And I think flowers make people happy, don't you?”
He stays silent for a moment, ruminating over your words.
As the seconds pass by you notice a bright blush softly spreading across his otherwise pale face.
“Thank you, (y/n). I care about you, too,” he admits, shooting you a genuine and breathtaking smile.
“Huh? You got me flowers?” he asks in disbelief as you hand him a bouquet of purple orchids.
“Yup!” You grin as you explain that he has to put them in a vase and change the water twice a day.
He heaves a weary sigh and murmurs, “What a drag.”
Even though he says that he actually enjoys taking care of the orchids.
He changes their water first thing in the morning and at night before he goes to sleep.
The sight of the pretty orchids brings a smile to his face as they remind him of you.
As the days pass by, he feels a little sad upon seeing the petals slowly falling onto his desk as the flowers start to wither.
He’s lowkey highkey is waiting for you to get him more flowers. Maybe even a plant to take care of, like a philodendron or a succulent.
He wasn’t expecting to be so into taking care of plants, but he is and it’s all your fault, what a drag, man…
Expect him to get you flowers next time.
This lovable man will pick up the most beautiful flowers and make a bouquet for you himself, just you wait!
“These are for you, Kimi,” you exclaim, handing him the gorgeous forget-me-nots you’ve picked up while he was training.
“Thank you, dear. Though, I think these would look good on you,” he explains as he tucks one of them through your hair. “See, I was right.” He gives you a sweet smile as his fingers brush tenderly against your cheek.
You cannot help but blush at his loving actions when an idea pops into your head.
Gently, you reach up to tuck the rest of the flowers in his white hair and grin as you tenderly pinch his now reddening cheeks.
He’s at a loss for words at your sweet actions.
“Now we match!” You show him a child-like grin, making his heart leap in his chest.
A soft chuckle left his lips. “You’re something else, (y/n),” he exhales, trying to cover his adorable blush with the back of his hand.
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in which your love for kimimaro is measured in blood and salt.
Love is the iron tang of blood.
It seeps into your mouth even from the brief contact, and he’s the one who pulls away first. He muffles his cough into the palm of his hand, but even you can’t miss the stark red against the paleness of his skin.
“Sorry. I must have forgotten to take my medicine.”
You both know that’s a lie, that the truth of the matter is Kimimaro is nothing but diligent about doing anything and everything to keep his body from deteriorating further.
The fact of the matter is, he’s dying, his body failing him faster than either you, with your care, or Kabuto, with his healing expertise, can save him.
“You’re so forgetful,” you muse, looking down. You enter his cell, locking the door behind you. You’ve asked to bring him his meals, because you hold onto the hope that you could miraculously cajole him into eating. He’ll take a few meager bites of food, because anymore makes him want to empty the contents of his stomach.
Kabuto warns you that there’s no guarantee Kimimaro’s disease isn’t contagious, and that prolonged contact with him, and exposure to his bodily fluids, truly might put you at risk. You shrug his concerns off. If you will die, you determine, it will be at his side.
He is the one that you’ve devoted your life to, the same way he’s devoted his life to Orochimaru.
“You’re here. You should be training.”
“My training is going just fine. How…” Are you feeling, is what you used to ask, back when there was a chance the treatments would help. He would lie anyways, and tell you he was doing better. But now the question feels superficial, and more than that, inconsequential. “...Are you holding up here?”
He pauses.
“You should consider spending your time invested in fruitful endeavors,” he says, his voice tinged with soft resignation. “Rather than…”
“Don’t.”
He quiets, watching you with his vibrant gaze. And it’s so unfair, it makes you want to scream out, that Kimimaro’s always seemed so strong, so alive. The kind of person who could conquer anything. But in a sick twist of misfortune, his body cannot prevail over his fate. He spends most of his days spewing up blood, stifling wheezing coughs that rattle deep in his chest and leave him gasping with pain. And yet still he finds it in him to treat you gently, even as he pleads for you to leave his side.
“Don’t tell me how to spend my time–please.” (Even you can hear the quiver in your voice. You swallow it down.) “I want to be here, by your side.”
He sighs, with a kind of bone-deep weariness that you know he feels in every inch of his being. “You're making it harder for yourself. It doesn’t have to be.”
You wonder how it ended up like this. Days spent training together, nights spent curled beneath the stars, exchanging dreams and visions of the future in the whispers of two teens too young to know how cruel fate could be.
“Do you love me?” you ask.
Anger flashes hard in his gaze. “The fact that you would question–”
“Then it’s not for nothing,” you say.
Kimimaro walks closer to you, cups your cheek with his clean hand. His gaze is gleams with fierce conviction. “It’s because I love you that I don’t want you to spend your days caring for a dead man. Live. Live for me.”
Your lip wobbles. You told yourself that you would not cry, that you would not show weakness when he didn’t so much as flinch at his prognosis.
“S-Sorry,” you say, standing abruptly. “I forgot to attend to something. Excuse me.”
Why did he always say things that seemed like good-byes?
Love is also the salt on your cheeks.
–
“If you had to choose between Orochimaru and me, who would you choose?”
“There is no choice,” he says without a hint of hesitation. “Or rather, something to choose. Lord Orochimaru is my reason for living. You are my reason for wanting to live.”
–
“What do you mean he’s gone?” you ask, eyes widening. His plate of food clatters to the ground. “He’s–-he’s sick.” Your voice rises. “He’s in no condition to–”
Kabuto adjusts his glasses, sending you a grimace. “I know. I tried convincing him--he wouldn’t listen. Lord Orochimaru needs someone to retrieve Sasuke. You know how... determined Kimimaro is.”
“I am but a vessel for Lord Orochimaru. Once my usefulness runs out, I will not regret dying. But, what I will regret is–”
You sink to the floor, understanding fully that this is his choice. That no matter what he told you, this was always how it was going to end.
He looks down, seeming to test the weight of his words. For once, he is not the sure, confident man you know.
“I’ll regret that our time together was cut short.”
Kimimaro may love you, but that would never surpass his devotion to Orochimaru. You bite down on your lip hard enough to break skin, swallowing back your cries.
Love is the blood spilt over a man who was never truly yours.
