Title: Nightingale
Rating: Hard PG13. Mentions
of sex and death.
Summary: Because she is a kunoichi.
She was a kunoichi and it was expected one day that this would come. For shinobi, sex was tension and stress, and best gotten out of the way as it would only drag them down. For kunoichi, sex was a weapon.
When she is handed that black and white scroll sealed with the ranking of an S-Class mission, she stares but clenches her hand tight around the order.
They offer her a faceless, nameless ANBU for her preparation, but she declines. Some think it would be easier if they had no face, no name to tie to the deed but she is not one of them. She can not give herself up for the first time to someone she does not know, she thinks that it might or might not make things worse between them afterwards, she might regret it, but she would regret it more if she had never known who they were in the first place.
She thinks about Kiba and wonders if she would have given it a chance if it would not have destroyed their friendship totally. She pushes Shino aside because he is an intensely private man, and he would not agree to the act without more meaning attached to it. She ponders of other men in her acquaintance but in the end it is futile. She really only wants her first choice.
She approaches Naruto.
She approaches Naruto, and can't bring herself to speak of the notion at all. He smiles at her with twinkling blue eyes, a glowing smile, and broad shoulders that carried the weight of more then they should – and she can't bring herself to burden him even more.
It is Neji in the end that has observed her irregular actions and awkward avoidances that figures out what is going on. He approaches her one evening and offers.
In the end he is her only choice, and it's not much at choice at all, but she takes his hand a week after he approached her and her time is running out.
He touches her and she trembles. She kisses him and he softens. She surges up against him and he gasps. He pushes into her and she shatters.
It is like their secrets bared to the world. There is not one inch of her he does not see, there is not one part of him she does not touch. It is Neji naked without the past, and it is Hinata without her defences.
And when the time comes, she is led blindfolded through a Geisha house towards an unknown room. They call her the 'Nightingale' and her fellow women address her as Snow. There is one moment when she considers maybe it could have been better if she had chosen the nameless, faceless ANBU who they had offered. Who would have kept his mask on the entire time and she would have been supplied with a similar face protection.
But she disregards that because sex is a weapon and she believes Neji has trained her to use it as a razor sharp edge. Because what use is training with a nameless, faceless weapon who lacks control when compared to Neji, who she can now bend with one evening together. She can still feel his hands on her ribs, the power in his thighs, and the memory of his sex moving in hers.
She shivers in remembered delight before they pause outside one door and there is the sound of a soft knock and shoji sliding. She is gently led into the room and her escorts leave her alone as they exit. She reaches up to pull the blindfold off and the silk gives way to her strength easily.
She sees the target on his back as he lays on the futon in only a dark sleeping yutaka. She approaches with soft murmurs and gentle steps. She kneels down next to the futon and sits demurely, waiting to be acknowledged. There is a far too long silence and she reaches out with tender fingertips to find a pulse.
There is none.
Later when she is retrieved, the mission marked as completed, and flying back to the Leaf in Neji's arms, he breathes into her ear.
" Who do you think was the nameless ANBU they offered you?"
She allows herself a shiver in his arms.
. : weapons are not always obvious : .