[POST Universe] Post
Jul. 2nd, 2008 12:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vernajast[[[ x-posted from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
yonkaka ]]]
Time Period: AU, post-apocalyptic, militaristic world??
Pairing: YonKaka, of course
Warning: implied character death, angst, bleak imagery, still basically PG
Thanks very much to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lolita_nova for her story "Here Are Your Answers".
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Close your eyes.
I need you tonight.
We dream away from fearful fights.
Feel your way ahead.
I'm love in disguise.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"Post"
Flat blue eyes travel around the room, a circuitous path that he follows every hour on the hour. And still she does not appear, and still he does not really expect her to. It has been two months since her death. He has given up hope of seeing her again, finds he never thought he would, and suspects it was simply a distraction fabricated by his mind, clinging to whatever sanity remained after hours and hours upon hours of silent contemplation and diaper changing and strained vegetables and late nights with coffee and cigarettes and the stars and his memories.
A noise, and he is up and moving though his joints protest loudly and his muscles ache. "Shhh, Naruto, shhh. Love you, Naruto, love you..." Rocking the baby is his one joy, he supposes, holding him, though he looks too much like himself and not enough like her. Nothing like her, truth be told, but he has hope that her personality will surface as he grows. Something, anything to preserve her memory.
When Naruto is asleep again, rocking quietly in his tumbledown bassinet, Minato sits at the table, carving a small piece of wood, not paying much attention. The room is dark and cold; he vaguely hopes Naruto has enough blankets. Shadows in the corners mock him. Dust and dirt and a general lack of care seem to have taken over the small cottage on the outskirts of town, and the mess has begun to gain a life of its own along with the rats and insects that inhabit it.
A different night, and Minato is still sitting at the table. The baby sleeps beside him in the bassinet.
Shuffling in one of the more remote rooms--her sewing room--brings him back to the present, away from thoughts of red hair and smiling green eyes and I love yous shared in the dark. Standing slowly, he considers and eventually takes up Naruto in the crook of one arm, the knife he has been carving with in the opposite hand. The sewing room is darker than the kitchen, and still littered with various pieces of Kushina. Sewing scraps, books, trinkets, photos.
Her scent and warmth seem centered there along with spots of her blood still sticking in the carpet, and Minato rarely comes in.
Now he does, knife raised and Naruto held protectively against his chest. "Who's in here?!"
When there is no answer, he advances another step. He isn't at a disadvantage yet. His military training included knives, he reassures himself. It was the skill in which he specialized, for what good it did him.
He winces at the accusing blackness of her room. "Who the fuck is here!?"
The window is open and it isn't normally. The desk below it bears the tell-tale boot print of an enemy soldier. After everything, they have found him, anyway. He pulls Naruto against his chest, mumbling, "I have a baby, please don't shoot. I have a baby. Let me put him away, first. There is a couple three houses down. Please. Take him there? Please. Just...just let me put him into bed first and then..." He will not go back to their prison, but Naruto must be safe. protect defend protect
More shuffling. They are still in the house. He closes his eyes for just a second, listening, searching, and the sounds are coming from the left. From the closet. "Who is it? Come out."
He remembers a soldier who wouldn't come out of his hole, burrowed beneath rubble after an allied bomb obliterated the enemy capital. The C.O. took on a stern voice and said, "This is an order." Soldiers would follow orders; it was what they did.
Minato turns dead eyes on the closet and tries to find the stomach for it. "This is an order. Come out, now!" There is more strength behind it than he can usually muster, but they are in his house, dammit. Slowly, the closet doors accordion open. In the wan moonlight through the open window, he is only able to manage the beginnings of a gasp. It is the most he has felt, reacted in three months.
A boy, only sixteen, seventeen at most, steps out. His skin is a pale scar across the darkness of the room in the way that it glows. His hair sways. It is unkempt and too long and too...free.
"Who are you?" It is an inane question, but he asks.
Surprisingly, when the boy answers, "Kakashi," his voice is neither deep nor high, thin nor heavy. Only rife with fear-hunger-pain. If he is an enemy, he is well chosen.
When reality breaks in again, they are sitting at the table. The boy is eating a can of expired ravioli with a plastic fork. Devouring it, as if he is a starving predator, occasionally cutting a glare across the table. A warning. Mine.
Minato is carving on the little piece of wood. It is slowly becoming a tiny fox with pointed ears and mischievous eyes. A gift for his son.
More time passes, more shifts between reality. It is four months after her death. The boy is living in the rundown cottage, along with the man and the baby. Minato is...not happy, but not unhappy. It is an improvement.
Kakashi is eighteen. He only looks younger. Sometimes the boy is fully lucid, and Minato wonders if he is a spy sent by his own government. Most times, he understands that he is a casualty of war, the same as his own son. A strange twilight child, left behind. But no longer a child. A man.
Minato wonders when he became a homosexual. He has always preferred women, but he doesn't ponder it much after the first time he touches Kakashi's shoulder and the boy responds with a gasp that has nothing to do with fear. They make love while Naruto sleeps in his bassinet. Neither knows what they are doing, but it does not matter much, and they fumble through with hungry mouths and soft noises.
It is five months after Kakashi arrived that he disappears. Less than twenty-four hours after telling Minato that he loves him. ...and I'm sorry. I love you...I love you...I love you...Minato, forgive me... Each time he says it, he kisses Minato's body, and leaves no space for him to ask, "Why are you sorry? Forgive you for what?"
When Minato finds Kakashi missing from his bed, he doesn't call out to him, though he wants to. He doesn't search for him in the house. He knows that he is gone.
What he is not prepared for is the empty bassinet.
Neighbors report the sounds of a dying animal trapped in the house. The police fail to investigate.
Time lapses again. It takes longer than he expects. Two weeks. He wishes Kakashi would have done it himself, but the enemy is smart enough to send someone objective. On his knees before his executioner, Minato smiles when they call him "General." Kakashi loves him, otherwise he would be here.
Kakashi saved Naruto. Kakashi loves him.
Minato regrets not finishing the fox sculpture.
He is silent when the bullet makes contact. The last image in his head: Kakashi's government-issued boots tossed haphazardly onto the floor before falling into bed together. His last thought: that it is a fitting punishment for treason, for fraternization, for loving an enemy.
yonkaka ]]]Time Period: AU, post-apocalyptic, militaristic world??
Pairing: YonKaka, of course
Warning: implied character death, angst, bleak imagery, still basically PG
Thanks very much to
lolita_nova for her story "Here Are Your Answers".Close your eyes.
I need you tonight.
We dream away from fearful fights.
Feel your way ahead.
I'm love in disguise.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~
"Post"
Flat blue eyes travel around the room, a circuitous path that he follows every hour on the hour. And still she does not appear, and still he does not really expect her to. It has been two months since her death. He has given up hope of seeing her again, finds he never thought he would, and suspects it was simply a distraction fabricated by his mind, clinging to whatever sanity remained after hours and hours upon hours of silent contemplation and diaper changing and strained vegetables and late nights with coffee and cigarettes and the stars and his memories.
A noise, and he is up and moving though his joints protest loudly and his muscles ache. "Shhh, Naruto, shhh. Love you, Naruto, love you..." Rocking the baby is his one joy, he supposes, holding him, though he looks too much like himself and not enough like her. Nothing like her, truth be told, but he has hope that her personality will surface as he grows. Something, anything to preserve her memory.
When Naruto is asleep again, rocking quietly in his tumbledown bassinet, Minato sits at the table, carving a small piece of wood, not paying much attention. The room is dark and cold; he vaguely hopes Naruto has enough blankets. Shadows in the corners mock him. Dust and dirt and a general lack of care seem to have taken over the small cottage on the outskirts of town, and the mess has begun to gain a life of its own along with the rats and insects that inhabit it.
A different night, and Minato is still sitting at the table. The baby sleeps beside him in the bassinet.
Shuffling in one of the more remote rooms--her sewing room--brings him back to the present, away from thoughts of red hair and smiling green eyes and I love yous shared in the dark. Standing slowly, he considers and eventually takes up Naruto in the crook of one arm, the knife he has been carving with in the opposite hand. The sewing room is darker than the kitchen, and still littered with various pieces of Kushina. Sewing scraps, books, trinkets, photos.
Her scent and warmth seem centered there along with spots of her blood still sticking in the carpet, and Minato rarely comes in.
Now he does, knife raised and Naruto held protectively against his chest. "Who's in here?!"
When there is no answer, he advances another step. He isn't at a disadvantage yet. His military training included knives, he reassures himself. It was the skill in which he specialized, for what good it did him.
He winces at the accusing blackness of her room. "Who the fuck is here!?"
The window is open and it isn't normally. The desk below it bears the tell-tale boot print of an enemy soldier. After everything, they have found him, anyway. He pulls Naruto against his chest, mumbling, "I have a baby, please don't shoot. I have a baby. Let me put him away, first. There is a couple three houses down. Please. Take him there? Please. Just...just let me put him into bed first and then..." He will not go back to their prison, but Naruto must be safe. protect defend protect
More shuffling. They are still in the house. He closes his eyes for just a second, listening, searching, and the sounds are coming from the left. From the closet. "Who is it? Come out."
He remembers a soldier who wouldn't come out of his hole, burrowed beneath rubble after an allied bomb obliterated the enemy capital. The C.O. took on a stern voice and said, "This is an order." Soldiers would follow orders; it was what they did.
Minato turns dead eyes on the closet and tries to find the stomach for it. "This is an order. Come out, now!" There is more strength behind it than he can usually muster, but they are in his house, dammit. Slowly, the closet doors accordion open. In the wan moonlight through the open window, he is only able to manage the beginnings of a gasp. It is the most he has felt, reacted in three months.
A boy, only sixteen, seventeen at most, steps out. His skin is a pale scar across the darkness of the room in the way that it glows. His hair sways. It is unkempt and too long and too...free.
"Who are you?" It is an inane question, but he asks.
Surprisingly, when the boy answers, "Kakashi," his voice is neither deep nor high, thin nor heavy. Only rife with fear-hunger-pain. If he is an enemy, he is well chosen.
When reality breaks in again, they are sitting at the table. The boy is eating a can of expired ravioli with a plastic fork. Devouring it, as if he is a starving predator, occasionally cutting a glare across the table. A warning. Mine.
Minato is carving on the little piece of wood. It is slowly becoming a tiny fox with pointed ears and mischievous eyes. A gift for his son.
More time passes, more shifts between reality. It is four months after her death. The boy is living in the rundown cottage, along with the man and the baby. Minato is...not happy, but not unhappy. It is an improvement.
Kakashi is eighteen. He only looks younger. Sometimes the boy is fully lucid, and Minato wonders if he is a spy sent by his own government. Most times, he understands that he is a casualty of war, the same as his own son. A strange twilight child, left behind. But no longer a child. A man.
Minato wonders when he became a homosexual. He has always preferred women, but he doesn't ponder it much after the first time he touches Kakashi's shoulder and the boy responds with a gasp that has nothing to do with fear. They make love while Naruto sleeps in his bassinet. Neither knows what they are doing, but it does not matter much, and they fumble through with hungry mouths and soft noises.
It is five months after Kakashi arrived that he disappears. Less than twenty-four hours after telling Minato that he loves him. ...and I'm sorry. I love you...I love you...I love you...Minato, forgive me... Each time he says it, he kisses Minato's body, and leaves no space for him to ask, "Why are you sorry? Forgive you for what?"
When Minato finds Kakashi missing from his bed, he doesn't call out to him, though he wants to. He doesn't search for him in the house. He knows that he is gone.
What he is not prepared for is the empty bassinet.
Neighbors report the sounds of a dying animal trapped in the house. The police fail to investigate.
Time lapses again. It takes longer than he expects. Two weeks. He wishes Kakashi would have done it himself, but the enemy is smart enough to send someone objective. On his knees before his executioner, Minato smiles when they call him "General." Kakashi loves him, otherwise he would be here.
Kakashi saved Naruto. Kakashi loves him.
Minato regrets not finishing the fox sculpture.
He is silent when the bullet makes contact. The last image in his head: Kakashi's government-issued boots tossed haphazardly onto the floor before falling into bed together. His last thought: that it is a fitting punishment for treason, for fraternization, for loving an enemy.
