hey! i just wanted to say i haven't followed naruto in a while but finding your fics on ao3 (especially the shikasakuneji and sakura/mito ones oh my god) has been an absolute joy this quarantine. i'm really reliving those days and i just love your writing style! hope youre staying safe; and when i finally find my old ao3 password i'm definitely going back and stalking my faves. thank you !!
aww this is so sweet! i’m spending a lot of my quarantine time reading too. glad i hit ya right in the nostalgia /j
let's see... Sakumo and Yahiko (or Mito), "The sky is on fire and the trees are screaming. What can possibly be scarier?"
AO3
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“Are we sure this isn’t hell?” Sakumo narrowed his eyes alittle to squint at the vision in front of him while the woman at his sidescoffed very gently.
“Of course not. We would all spend eternity terrified and inpain if this were hell.”
“The sky is on fire and the trees are screaming,” Sakumopointed out. “What could possibly be scarier?”
Mito gave him a fond smile. “The afterlife is large, my dear,and we are free to leave this particular area if you wish. Who are we to judgesomeone else’s version of paradise? Let us go find our own.”
She turned with a graceful sweep of her formal kimono andheaded off in a direction towards warm. That was something Sakumo had taken awhile to get used to, the idea that there were no cardinal directions in theafterlife but rather one headed towards whichever sort of weather one desired.Both of them wanted to be warm and so they turned to where the air was just alittle toastier compared to other directions.
“Have I told you yet that I’m glad you were the first personI saw when I came here?” Sakumo murmured, catching up to the gorgeous womanleading him.
“Only a few dozen times,” Mito answered. From the smilehovering at the corners of her lips he could read the invitation to do so againwhenever he pleased and it only made him smile too. In her first life thiswoman had been married to the founding Hokage of Konohagakure and wanted fornothing, neither material nor emotional, yet still in this life she seemed toprefer his company. Nothing had ever boosted his ego quite like that. Mito wasa queen in his eyes and to know that she had chosen him from the moment theymet was a feeling unlike any other.
They travelled together in silence until the landscape beganto change around them. Beaches passed them by and deserts also, warm patches ofsunlight through forest leaves, but they stopped only when they came to a smallhunting cabin with white smoke drifting lazily up through the chimney. Aperfect replica of the first home Sakumo had ever known on earth, he was stillamazed that Mito enjoyed the cozy interior as much as he did.
“Well that’s a lot better,” he announced as they shutthemselves away.
“Indeed, I much prefer silence to the trees screaming,” hispartner agreed. “Now, come join me on the bed and let’s fill the air with othersorts of noise.”
Sakumo choked at her bluntness while Mito laughed at him buthe couldn’t deny the yearning in his chest. Though sometimes it was still hardto believe how content he was with this new life he’d made, he certainly wasn’tgoing to question good fortune. It the universe wanted to apologize for thesins he had suffered through the first time, well, that was perfect fine withhim. Gifting him Mito was a pretty good apology.
MitoSaku, "My clothes look better on you than they do on me."
“You can’t just leave like that.”
She can hear Sakura stop. The rustling of fabric lets Mito know she’s getting dressed. Mito rises up on her elbows. It’s still dark outside, but she knows that dawn will be along soon.
“If my dearest cousin is dragging you out of my bed again because he is physically incapable of looking at a Kumo shinobi without puffing up like an overgrown housecat - ,”
Sakura’s laugh breaks through the quiet of the pre-dawn darkness. Mito hears her shuffle forward, and then there is a calloused hand on her cheek.
“Mito,” Sakura says, rubbing her finger over the high crest of Mito’s cheekbone. “Be nice.”
Mito turns her face so she can press a kiss to Sakura’s wrist. Sakura dips further down and drops a kiss of her own against the orange diamond on Mito’s forehead.
“There’s a squad coming in,” Sakura explains. “They need a healing consultation. I’m pretty sure my squad can handle it, but they want another pair of eyes.”
Mito nods, begrudgingly at that.
“So you won’t be gone long?”
Sakura shakes her head.
“An hour and a half tops,” she says. “I’ll be back before the sun is up.”
Mito leans further up and casts an appraising eye over the other woman. She smirks at the stark white fabric of her own kimono folded over Sakura’s shoulders, the teal collar pretty against her neck. If there were enough light, Mito’s sure the color would compliment Sakura’s green eye well.”
“Well,” Mito says, dropping her chin in her hand. “My clothes look better on you than they do on me.“
Sakura laughs, brushing her hands out over the white kimono.
“I’ll wear my haori so no one thinks I’m you,” she replies. “Ward off any assassination attempts.”
Mito cocks a brow.
“I think you’ll probably get more dressed like yourself.”
Sakura snorts. Mito sits up, hair pooling around her shoulders. Sakura looks at her in that way she does, really looks at her, and Mito feels like she is sitting precisely at the center of the universe.
“Will you kiss me?” she asks.
Sakura smiles and ducks her head close. Against Mito’s mouth she says, “Of course.”
Mito smiles into it, the familiar feel of Sakura’s mouth against hers. When Sakura parts from her, she presses their foreheads together, purple to orange diamond.
“Will you kiss me here?” Mito asks, lifting a finger and pointing at the seal on her clavicle.
Sakura lifts an eyebrow.
“Do you want to make me late?” she asks. “I’m pretty sure there are lives on the line.”
Mito lifts and shrugs a shoulder.
“You train your students like there’s a war on,” Mito says. “I’m sure one of them won’t crack under the pressure. it is only a consultation after all.”
Sakura chuckles.
“You’ll make me give poor Kagami-kun an ulcer.”
“I’m sure if it came to that, he could heal it himself. You’re an excellent teacher.”
Sakura tilts her head, stray pieces of pink hair falling over her face. it’s much longer now, and the tama kanzashi Minako gave her so long ago keep the rest of her hair back in a high ponytail.
“Oh?”
Mito nods sagely, smiling as she does.
“I would know,” she says, tapping the seal between her collarbones.
Sakura acquiesces the way Mito hoped she would. She presses her mouth the front of Mito’s throat, a hand coming up to cradle the back of Mito’s head as she does.
“I’ve taught you a fair share,” Sakura replies, lips brushing against Mito’s collarbones as she says it.
Mito shrugs a shoulder out of her sleeping robe, and taps the bare skin there with her fingertip.
“Will you kiss me there?”
Sakura obliges, and the kiss she drops there is a sweet press of lips.
“Here?” Mito asks, shrugging more fully out of her yukata and pointing at the slim space between her breasts.
Sakura looks at her, but there’s humor in her eyes.
“You’re incorrigible,” she says. But she kisses there anyway, gives the skin there a kitten lick that makes Mito think causing a slight incident by making Sakura late wouldn’t be the worst thing she’s done since the Founding.
“And here?”
She points at her nipple, and Sakura kisses there, curves her mouth around it and gives it a graze of her teeth.
“Here?” Mito asks, pressing at the muscled skin of her abdomen, then around her bellybutton where her stretch marks still have not faded.
Sakura presses her mouth over and over where Mito tells her to; on Mito’s hip, her knee, her thigh. She spreads her legs and Sakura crouches between them. Mito points at the soft red hair on her pubic mound, tapping a finger there.
Sakura kisses there, too. Mito dips the finger lower, just barely tapping her clit. Sakura kisses there, too. And there is something about seeing Sakura in her clothes, looking pristine and sharp in Uzushio’s colors that makes Mito want to cause an incident.
“Here?” she asks, pointing to where she’s starting to get warm.
Sakura looks up at her, crouched between her legs, and reaches out a hand to cup the back of Mito’s head. She smiles at her, and gives her a peck on the mouth, nipping at her lower lip.
“Nope.”
Sakura stands as if Mito isn’t an unwrapped present on their bed, adjusting any unwelcome creases on Mito’s kimono.
“But I’ll see you in an hour,” she says, winking her green eye.
She disappears in a puff of white smoke, and Mito huffs.
“Typical,” she mutters. She sets her clothes to rights, and stands, walks over to the window.
She opens it, and when Mito sticks her head outside, she can just barely see a flash of pink darting out of the Uzushio quarter before even the oldest of aunties and uncles are up yet to start the cooking. She leans her elbows out on the windowsill, and watches that little flash of pink flicker in and out of sight, until finally, she can see it no more.
When it finally disappears from view, Mito leans off the windowsill and stretches her arms. She isn’t worried. Sakura would be back home soon enough.
