(for best reading affect, read with the cover of "Little Wonders" by Joy Aileen)

.

Our lives are made, in these small hours,

These little wonders, these twists and turns of fate,

Time falls away but these small hours,

These small hours remain.

"The piece is just down this hall, miss."

Tsubaki treats the man to her best negotiator's smile, made up of soft lines and a demure twist of her lips. She inclines her head to him. "Thank you, Akiyama."

He's a portly man with thin black hair and sallow skin that takes on a yellow hue in the dim candlelight illuminating the hallway. He has a kind smile, though. Not a smile that Tsubaki trusts, but one that she finds shades of gentleness in, and she wonders if he has children.

With a gesture of his hand, Akiyama leads her down through the manor's main hallway. Tsubaki follows from a respectful distance back, and Rui ghosts behind her, never more than an arms length away.

The manor is rather unexciting to the untrained eye. There are no massive murals made of rich reds and gold strewn over the walls, or luxurious vases held high on marble pedestals. But Tsubaki sees where Lord Shinji has invested his money. She notices the plush velvet carpet beneath her feet, the immaculately constructed beeswax candles lighting the area by the dozen, and the ebony walls left bare, and she knows that the man she's about to do business with is not somebody she'll be able to swindle.

That's a bit of a shame, considering she doesn't plan to leave this home without her prize, but that's simply how the game goes sometimes.

Tsubaki places both of her hands on the small of her back. She holds out two fingers for Rui to see and her ears just catch the low noise she gets in affirmation. Though she can't see it, she knows the bag of jewels she intends to barter with will be heavier when he hands it to her in a few minutes.

They reach an innocuous looking door at the end of the hallway, made of the same ebony as the rest of the walls.

Akiyama wraps his hand around the glistening black handle. "I require one moment, please," Akiyama says.

He bows. Then, he opens the door and slips inside, closing it behind him with a soft click.

Tsubaki turns her chestnut eyes to Rui. His expression is a clean slate.

"Are you excited to see the painting?" she asks.

"I'm on duty," he answers.

She smooths down the teal kimono she has on and tucks any stray locks of lilac behind her ears, the beads clinking as she does. "You can have fun on duty," she says. She pinches her cheeks, hoping to bring some colour to the otherwise pale skin. "I'm about to. This painting is supposedly three hundred years old—I've never gotten to see something that old. If it's genuine, it's a miracle that it's gone so long without being destroyed."

Rui hums.

It's the fifth time she's said that him this week in some form or manner, and patient as ever, he lets her say it again without comment. She can't help it—this is incredible! She's never had the opportunity to feast her eyes on something with this much history before. Heard of them, yes. But witness it? With her own eyes? No.

And now she's being given the opportunity to purchase it.

She smiles widely at him, feeling like a child in a pastry shop. "I know you're as excited to see it as I am, even if you're going to pretend you aren't to keep up your intimidating persona."

He gave her a cool look. "I am intimidating."

"I know, it's what I pay you for."

"And here I thought it was for my good looks," he says, deadpan.

"That, too."

Rui doesn't say anything else, and she knows better than to expect he will. She won't find out his true thoughts on the painting until she's purchased it and they're back in safe territory, when he goes from Kokurui Hatake her bodyguard to Kokurui Hatake, the man who presses flowers and stops to listen to every street musician they come across.

Akiyama reappears with that same smile on his face. "Lord Shinji will see you now."

He opens the door and ushers them inside. She sees Rui stiffen in her peripheral, something she can only tell because she's spent the last five years of her life with him for nearly every waking moment. A chill settles over her skin.

Not even trying to be subtle about it, Rui nudges Tsubaki out of the way, opting to be the first one inside the room. Normally, she'd find that overkill, but something about the situation has him unsettled (which has her unsettled), so she doesn't make a fuss about it. Once he nods towards her she steps inside.

The door shuts.

There are three men already in the room, on the far side of it from where she's standing. Two are samurai, their katana visible on their hips, and the third sits on a cushion between them. His posture is formal and his expression regal—he can be none other than Lord Shinji.

Tsubaki stops about ten feet away from the table and bows low.

"Rise and approach," Lord Shinji says in a voice far higher than what Tsubaki expected from a man who looks as rugged as he does.

There is no chance somebody might mistake Lord Shinji as a man of noble birth. He's a warlord through and through, from the rough scars over his face to the sword of his own he has holstered at his side. The kimono he wears is black with gold detailing, contrasted with his hair that is the same shade of black, dark as midnight, but flecked with silver instead of gold.

She situates herself on the remaining cushion. Rui stands behind her like a panther settled back on its haunches.

"For whom do you seek to purchase for?" Lord Shinji asks.

Wasting no time on pleasantries. A warlord, indeed—no nobleman would pass on the chance to soak up the deference small talk brings.

She'll pay him in kind. "Myself, my lord."

"Oh?" he says. "And what might a lowly merchant bring that might be equal in worth to a prize such as this?"

"That will depend on what you show me," she says.

Lord Shinji grins, an action that bares his teeth. "A woman with sense," he says. "That is almost as rare a find as what I have in my possession."

She gives him no reaction; she won't let him goad her into making a rookie's mistake.

Lord Shinji raises his hand and curls two fingers towards himself. One of the samurai breaks off from his vigil, disappearing for a few seconds before he returns with the most exquisite thing Tsubaki has ever laid her eyes on in his hands.

The painting, filled with bright colours and frayed along the edges, is pressed between two paper-thin sheets of glass. It's not large, about two feet on all sides. But packed inside that space is a rendition of the sakura trees in what is now the outer rim of Otafuki Gai, and it steals the air from her lungs.

The area looked different when the painting was made. It was a small village of merchants, at the time. Now, it's the largest, best fortified city in all of Fire Country, renowned for its beauty in the spring.

Tsubaki doesn't allow even a sliver of the awe she feels bursting inside her chest show on her face. "May I, my lord?" she asks. "I would prefer to get a close examination of it before I make my offer."

"You may."

The samurai sets the painting down on the table in front of her. Tsubaki reaches into the front of her kimono and pulls out the glass device one of her clients designed for her some years ago, something that will allow her to see the finer details.

The first thing she notices is a mark on the painting. A series of branching circles, like the way water ripples when a stone is thrown into it. Somebody hit the painting hard enough to leave a mark at some point. And in the visibly faded paint around the mark, she can see cracks. She moves the glass device down a bit and finds that there are a few cracks—one might have been a consequence of the hit, but multiple? Unlikely.

She turns her attention towards the thin line of parchment that borders the painting, next. All of it's gone yellow. But there's a pattern to it, rather than it being any uniform discolouration. She's seen that before, on paintings that experienced long term smoke exposure, like what might happen if the painting were hung in the same room as a hearth. It's not the kind of thing that can be faked.

Tsubaki leans back. Slowly, she places the seeing device back in her kimono and regards Lord Shinji. "This is quite the piece you have."

"That it is," Lord Shinji says. The samurai takes back the painting. "What offer do you have for me, merchant?"

She holds out her hand and Rui places the black velvet bag into her palm. The fabric chafes against the delicate skin.

The painting is authentic, of that she has no doubt. And she doesn't for a second doubt that Lord Shinji is well aware of its worth, either. Now it comes down to whether he thinks he can rob her blind for it and how devoted he is to accomplishing that.

Tsubaki tips a dozen pieces of gemstone-encrusted jewelry out of the pouch. They skitter onto the oak tabletop, glistening in the candlelight.

"Well, well." Lord Shinji eyes the collection. "Where did a woman like you get a bounty like that?"

"Business has been good as of late."

In actuality, Tsubaki has accrued this collection of precious stones over the course of her entire career as a merchant. Some were gifts from clients and suitors, others were incredible finds that she scooped off of unsuspecting sellers, and each one is worth enough to feed a village for at least a month.

"So I see."

"I'll offer you the jade ring and the amethyst pendant," she says, knowing full well he's going to turn down the offer.

Lord Shinji's eyes have been locked on one particular trinket since she emptied the pouch—the very same one that Rui added to her bag earlier. A silver ring with twin serpents twined together, a topaz the size of her pinky finger held between their maws.

The ring is likely worth more than the painting. Her eyes near popped out of her head when she came across it in the pits of Fire Country, in the possession of some peasant family who had passed it down through a few generations. She got it for a fraction of its worth, which is why she doesn't mind getting shorted for it as much as she probably should.

If she allows Lord Shinji to turn her down and counter, she'll be in a better spot.

"That is a decent starting offer, but I believe I must counter it," he says. His gaze never leaves the ring.

Tsubaki smiles. "Yes?"

In her peripheral, she sees Rui go stock-still, and the chill returns, racing up and down her spine.

"I believe I will simply have to take all of it."

Before Lord Shinji even finishes speaking, the two samurai flanking him lunge towards Rui, and a third breaks off from the shadows behind them to attack from behind.

The sound of steel against steel shatters the stillness in the air.

Through the door, she hears Akiyama shout, followed by the sound of footsteps raising back down the hallway. More people will be on their way. They need to get out, now.

Tsubaki hastily sweeps up the jewelry and dumps it into the pouch, jumping to her feet.

Rui.

Her attention snaps to him, her heart stuck in her throat. He already has one samurai bleeding on the ground—the other two won't take long. She doesn't understand why Lord Shinji would attempt something like this. It's common knowledge that samurai, while they have their uses, are not comparable in strength to the average ninja.

And then she feels the kiss of a blade against her throat and realizes that without thinking, she'd turned her back to a threat.

The room freezes.

Lord Shinji's hand fists in her hair. He yanks her head back, and she can feel his breath puff against her ear. "Take care, ninja," he says. "You wouldn't want my hand to slip now, hmm?"

At this point, only one of the samurais are still standing. One is definitely dead on the floor at Rui's feet, and the other is clearly injured, clutching his midsection to staunch a wound. Rui is entirely untouched.

Rui's knuckles are white from how hard he grips his tanto. "Put the blade down."

"And allow you to slaughter my remaining warriors and myself?" Lord Shinji asks. Every word drips with smug certainty. "I think not, ninja."

"If—if you let me go, we won't retaliate," Tsubaki manages, and she's proud of how steady her voice comes out. "You have my word."

Lord Shinji gives her hair another yank. "Your word? You are not the one who will do the killing, woman."

Lowly, Rui hisses, "Let her go."

The blade presses tighter against her throat in response, and she feels a sting as it pierces her skin.

A cold, vicious glint enters Rui's eyes.

Lord Shinji assumed that he could back Rui into a corner, and Rui would roll over and show his belly. Rui won't. Ninja are predators, not prey—they show nothing but their claws.

In a blink, the last samurai is on the ground and Rui is nowhere to be seen. The blade drops from her throat, and the hand unclenches from her hair, and then, with a muted thump, Lord Shinji falls to the ground behind her.

Tsubaki lets out a shaky breath.

"Don't look," Rui says.

She won't.

She takes a step towards the door and stumbles. Rui catches her before she can fall, an arm around her waist and a hand on her elbow. His body feels hard as stone against hers, but his hold is gentle and light, like she's made of glass.

"Fine, I'm fine," she mumbles, ushering him away. She clears her throat. The cut burns at that, and she winces, fighting to not reach up and touch it. "Grab the painting, please."

At this point, the painting is the least they deserve, and she has no qualms of taking what she came for. Lord Shinji chose to double cross them—he forfeited his prize with that miscalculation.

One of the samurai stirs. "W—wait, you… cannot…"

Tsubaki turns her attention forward, and she hears the telltale thunk as a kunai embeds itself in the man. She has on idea where. All she knows is that with a gurgled breath, the samurai falls back down, still.

"I have to transport us out," Rui says. "There are too many people around, still, and more will be here soon."

Her mouth turns down, but she doesn't protest; Rui knows how much she hates it and wouldn't ask her to do this if it wasn't their only option. "Alright."

She feels his hand wrap around her waist again and then the world disappears in a blur.

.

.

Rui gets her safely back to their inn room and departs again to clean up the manor scene. It's all a little beyond her, how he does it, but by the time he returns the entire manor will be convinced that Lord Shinji died of natural causes.

The inn is relatively nice, by the standards of the village. It's clean, which is honestly better than Tsubaki can say about a lot of places she's stayed in. There are plain white sheets on the two futons, a small eating area off to the side, and a slightly scuffed desk with some books stacked in the corner of it. The latter is where she finds herself, out of some fruitless hope that she could distract herself with reading while he's gone.

She only makes it a couple of pages the entire half an hour he's gone, unable to keep her leg from jiggling or her gaze from wandering over to the door every couple of minutes.

When he slinks back into the room, there's a fresh layer of blood splattered on his clothes. Tsubaki jumps to her feet with wide eyes.

"Not mine," he says.

Tsubaki deflates. She falls back onto the chair, sighing. "That's good. I'm glad you're alright."

Rui tosses aside his weaponry and busies himself with stripping off his soiled clothes. Tsubaki tries not to stare. Tries and fails. She can count on one hand the amount of times she's successfully kept her eyes off of Rui since the day she hired him as her bodyguard, and it's been a few years since she added to that count.

Once he has clean trousers on and a fresh shirt in hand, Rui turns his attention to her. His eyes flit all over her. They narrow when they land on her throat. "You should have treated that while I was gone."

Tsubaki raises her hand on instinct, but manages to stop herself from touching it.

She sees his expression soften. Rui discards his shirt on the bed and goes back through his pack, from which he pulls out the medical supplies.

"It's not dire," she says. "No need to waste supplies on it."

Medical supplies have been more accessible to them since she started trading with Yui, but not so much that she would ever want to use them frivolously. The cut is just that—a cut. It stings a bit, and there's a trail of dried blood that dribbled down her neck and onto her kimono. She's worried it might scar. That's all, though. It could have been far worse.

He ignores her and crosses the room with bandages and a salve, his posture pulled taut.

"Rui."

He tosses the salve down beside her and unfurls the bandages.

Tsubaki places one of her hands on his wrist. "Rui."

A ripple runs through his body. His eyes fall closed. He lets Tsubaki pull the bandages from his grip and for a second, he just stands there, his eyes shut and every muscle in his body stiff, like he's waiting for another attack.

Tsubaki feels her heart clench and the grip she has on his wrist tightens.

Then, a little puff of air only slightly bigger than a normal breath escapes Rui, and his shoulders loosen again.

He opens his eyes to stare at the cut. "If he had pressed his blade two millimeters to the right, he would have hit the part of your throat that you bleed out from fastest," he says. His hand settles along the back of her neck, and his thumb brushes the skin beside the cut. "You would have been dead."

Tsubaki leans into his touch. His fingers leave a trail of pin-prickles along her skin. "But I'm not," she says. "It was close, but it wasn't there."

"Not this time."

"Not any time, so long as you're around."

"You can't say that like I didn't allow you to almost get killed today."

"But you didn't! You kept me alive—that's the whole point. I'm always going to end up in dangerous situations, and you're always going to get me out in the end."

He doesn't answer. Tsubaki pulls him towards her, and he stoops down to lean his forehead against hers.

"I'm right here," she says. "I'm not going anywhere, and I trust you to ensure that."

And then she does the only thing she can think to do: she kisses him.

Their mutual feelings have been out in the open for months now, but Rui has always been clear that it can't work. He can't marry a civilian if he wants to maintain his position within his clan. He won't make her a target like that. He isn't ready to settle down.

So, she doesn't expect him to kiss back, and she doesn't intend to linger there. After only a light brush of her lips against his, she goes to pull away.

Rui places his other hand behind her head and holds her in place.

"Wha—"

The rest of the words are gone as his mouth covers hers and he kisses her with the desperation of a man who's seen the first glimpse of a light at the end of the tunnel after years of all-consuming darkness. Tsubaki makes a noise against his mouth. It's something between a squeak and a moan, and Rui tightens his hold in response.

They break away long enough for Rui to sweep the desktop clean and lift her up onto it, then they resume with vigor.

A thrill runs through Tsubaki. She tangles her fingers in his snow-white hair and he wraps his arms around her back. They're kissing like a couple of overeager teenagers who've snuck away from the village for the first time and Tsubaki can't find it in her to be ashamed by that.

Finally, though, she does pull back, her chest heaving. Her whole body is warm and tingly. Her lips are swollen. Her hair is all out of place, and her kimono has come loose, so much so that it almost hangs off of her shoulder. She looks a mess. But this is the best she's felt in a long, long time.

She interlocks their fingers. "Is this…"

"You're not always going to be around," Rui says. "Neither am I."

Her brows furrow. She goes to lean back, but he holds her firm. "Rui."

"I don't want this to be a 'what if' when I go."

"Don't talk like that, you're not—"

Rui leans forward and captures her lips with his once again, and Tsubaki hums into the kiss. He pulls her against his chest. He's so warm, and the feel of his arms around her is a security blanket, one she can't imagine ever living without.

He's the one to pull away, this time. He whispers to her, "I don't want either of us to have to live to regret not trying this."

Tsubaki stares down at their linked hands, then back up to Rui. She lets out an unsteady breath. He squeezes her hand.

"But what about your clan?" she asks "What will they say?"

He smooths his thumb over her furrowed brow. "Nothing that matters anymore."

"You're sure?"

"Very."

"Then you better keep kissing me, Hatake."

Rui smiles, light and gentle, and Tsubaki feels like her heart might burst out of her chest with the tender way his hand settles on her neck and his thumb brushes her cheek, feather soft despite the calluses.

When their lips meet and their hands begin to rove this time, it's not with the same, harried energy. This is different, something slow and sweet. A dance not intended to make the most of a single, short night, but to welcome in a future with many more dances to come.

Tsubaki could lose that painting tomorrow, for all she cares.

This? What she has curled around her, holding her like she's worth her weight in gold? This is the real treasure, and it only cost her five years and some grey hairs.

A/N: a little recursive is like chicken soup - good for the soul. I loved these two since I first read them in Sanitize because I am weak for Hatake men. So when a writing activity (on Sage Thrasher's Sanitize discord, go check it out if you haven't already) came about for something written in the Warring Era? Well then. It was just a perfect opportunity and I, the weak soul that I am, jumped on it.

And for anybody curious about Fade to Black updates: all the backlog is done and being beta'd, you can expect the first chapter to go up on July 6th! And then a new chapter will be posted every second week following until all 5 are up. As well, for any who don't know, I keep a log of my writing progress on the bottom of my profile that is always up to date!