Chapter 4:

a/n: wowee chapter 4 comin' in hot

Binded

Kakashi had known somewhere in the back of his mind that Rose Quartz would make a move on him (if she was still alive that was), but this soon was stupefying to him. He thrusted his cutlass deep enough into her to kill. The amount of blood she would lose, especially combined with the prickling salt water filtering through her wound, would surely be fatal to her. The man had read his fair share of anecdotal publications and factual volumes about the physical regeneration prowess of a Siren, but he had no idea Rose Quarts would heal this quickly.

He imagined that the Siren would stake him out while he was docked at Earth. There were many vantage points surrounding the island, from large scaled rocks protruding out of the ocean to hidden sandy shoals. He had never seen a Siren use a bow and arrow as their lifestyle was in opposition to the craft. But if one was set on set on killing another, they would take up any means necessary to do that.

The captain was also shocked she would choose to confront him on land. Albeit her tail was still in the water slightly, she was almost powerless on the shore where he pinned her down on. She could not get up and run, she could not tackle him down, she could not dodge his attacks. Rose Quartz had nothing on land. It was a bold move, to be sure, and for a moment he felt a sense of pity for the woman. She was willing to risk everything to see him dead. The sense of pity was paltry enough for it to go unnoticed by Kakashi as he slammed his knee down into the lower area of her body to prevent her sharp fins from whipping into the back of his exposed calves.

He could tell from his knee's position that her scales were delicate. His knee sunk into her tail a tiny amount, creating a smooth indentation. It was almost on par with soft human skin. The scales offered her no armored plating to withstand attacks like all the other Sirens he encountered had.

The Siren wrestled get her razor fins into some part of the captain. Kakashi elongated the leg that was on Rose Quartz' tail and dug his foot into her tapered fins to halt the action. He immobilized her even further by fastening his hands around her wrists tighter and tighter, until blood flow was almost cut off. She hissed in pain at the sudden loss of circulation. The woman's dagger had long ago been thrown to the right of them so Kakashi could have full preeminence with his hands over her. Another weapon of its' kind was holstered to his thigh, affixed onto a brown leather strap. All he needed to do was be swift enough to draw it before she could slither back into the water.

Sakura felt disgusted that Kakashi Hatake had his hands enclosed around her wrists like this. She wished he would just kill her already and get everything over with. To think that she would die by a faction she had sworn to atrophy, and hopefully eradicate in the process, was pathetic and wretched. She felt the burning fingers of humiliation stifle her, enclosing around her throat as they looked at each other. However, the man was not moving to strike, or moving at all aside from digging his toes painfully into her fins. In fact, he seemed just as curious in her as she was in his infected eye.

She was not putting up a fight. There was nothing that a Siren could do while she was on land, especially with Kakashi restraining her like this. The captain was far more stronger than she was in her water, so what was he capable of doing while on his own land? She awaited her own dissolution without a word, her gaze drifting over to his infected eye. He took note of this gaze.

Kakashi had a knack for reading people through their eyes, and the look in her gemstone ones told him that she was ashamed, not scared. She did not fear her own death. She was only embarrassed of her defeat. The scant amount of Sirens he destroyed had no such gaze in their eyes; they all feared for their life, fighting for their last breath at his hands. Rose Quartz was an honorable opponent, knowing that she had botched her assassination attempt on the captain by being too careless. She faced her aspirant with shame filled eyes, albeit they were still defiant. It was a gripping juxtaposition of emotions, and before he plunged his dagger into her throat, he wanted to know more about her.

It was unlike him to do this. But Rose Quartz had nowhere to go, and he wanted to test a theory that Sirens would wither away and die without water. Nobody had actualized this claim, and it would be conducive to know in the future.

He caught her gaze and offered to her their first words between one another.

"Can you speak English? The song you sang to me was in a different language," Kakashi asked her softly, calibrating her reaction to him. He got a small sneer in reaction to his query.

She flipped her head the other way, to the right, to look at her dagger buried in the sand. She exposed her long neck and collarbones to him and nodded towards the weapon.

"Just kill me," was her curtailed response. It did answer his question, at least.

Her speaking voice was as beautiful as he expected. The lifts and dips in tone, the feminine ambiance it carried, and the petite vibrato that rode the sound waves of her voice were all alluring to him. Never had he been as magnetized to a woman's voice as he had to this one. And he had only heard three words from her.

"In time. Are you that quick to die by the hand of a sailor?" he said to her. She craned her neck to the left to look at him. She knew the captain was fishing for a reaction. She knew he was trying to figure out her motives before he ended her life. No doubt he wanted to see if there were any more of her kind in the sea, dedicating their time to shipwrecking and killing his sailors. It was obvious that she held a grudge against the water-faring band by the reaction he drew out of her. Rage fabricated in her eyes, quickly replacing the shame that clouded over them earlier.

Sakura closed her eyes and composed herself before offering him a retort.

"A captain," Sakura said to Kakashi, not wanting to give too much information out to him.

"Leader of sailors," Kakashi answered, "so in essence, it is worse."

"With all of your men I've killed, I might as well have just killed you. I've damaged your battalion beyond repair," the Siren spoke smoothly. Her words glided off her tongue and twirled into Kakashi's ears.

Kakashi regarded her challenging eyes with a small smile. The seriousness of the situation and the truthfulness of her statement aside, the creature was shrewd and witty. He breathed in the stimulating night air, loosening his death grip on Rose Quartz' wrists. He did not relinquish his knee and foot from her tail, however.

"It's nothing I can't recover from, Siren," the captain continued, "but you, however, have not recovered from something. Tell me, what have my sailors done to you? Stolen from you? Killed a human friend?"

Sakura looked up at him inquisitively. It was bold of him to assume that she wasn't just doing this for sport and fun, as Sirens were always detailed as malicious creatures in novels and rumors anyways.

"My rationale is none of your concern, Captain. Since when did my intentions become an object of your interest?" Sakura said. Her long, wet hair unfurled more from the way she jolted her head forward to meet his finally. Sakura added onto her statement.

"I have destroyed hundreds of your ships, killed thousands of your men. This is reason enough to stop questioning me and end my life."

"Yes. But I'm not blinded by rage like you are."

Sakura's eyes radiated hate for this man. With his quick comebacks and cleverly worded statements, he was baiting her into telling him what he wanted; her intentions. Why was she exerting all of her time and effort into murdering sailors who had not targeted her, and were simply on their way to the nearest dock?

"I'm not an open book," Sakura shredded out through gritted teeth, "and there's more than meets the eye."

"We can both relate to that," Kakashi said simply, "but if you are about to die, what is stopping you?"

After the captain said this, her gaze drifted once-more to his corrupted eye. He was cognizant of this switch in focus.

"Would you like to trade your life for healing my eye?" Kakashi abruptly asked the Siren. He had not put much thought into his deal and said it in the curiosity of the moment. He would follow through if she was willing, though. His eye had been plaguing him for decades. No doctor in the integral parts of the world he had traversed thus far was able to properly fix the optical organ. Many hours were spent on a doctoring chair, leaning back, and staring at a scalpel, only to find a few moments later blood was gushing down his face and pooling in his collarbone concavity. The doctors he frequented had done more harm than good.

Sirens had superb, even supernatural, healing aptitude. The tail he had plunged his cutlass into was fully healed. Maybe she could translate whatever ability she possessed to that part of his body.

Rose Quartz' expression altered from anger to disgust. She shook her head.

"I would die before helping a man like you. And that isn't a metaphor," she spit out.

The water droplets on her body coruscated in the moonlight, dripping down from the small gills on her neck into the crimson seashells adorning her chest. They made their way down to the flare of her hips where the webbing of her tail began. Just then was he reminded completely that he was trying to make a deal with a wild creature.

He pinned both of her wrists down with one large hand and extracted the dagger attached to his waist. He drew his arm up and made the attempt on her life before she spoke again, moving her head away from the weapon seconds before it struck her neck.

"I will comply. I fear death," the Siren said to him. He halted his weapon and it hovered right near her jugular vein.

Kakashi looked at Rose Quartz. This creature did not fear death in any way, shape, or form. A flicker of something the man could not place dashed across the ashamed glitter in her eyes, before they just settled on the latter completely. With the dagger still braced in his palm, he lowered it to the sand by her head. Kakashi spoke.

"Siren, you do not fear death. You only fear by whom you die by."

Kakashi released her wrists, being cautious to keep the pressure caused by his knee and foot on her tail and fins.

"But I will call your bluff."

Kakashi carried her bridal style to his immense ship. No words were spoken between the two of them on the short journey. The air wasn't tense for Kakashi, but he could sense from the Siren's physical posture that she was anything but comfortable. Her lithe tail swayed with each step he took, and he was careful to avoid bumping into her fins. In fact, his peripheral vision was constantly focusing on them. They were the most dangerous weapon she had built into her. Aside from her voice.

He needed to take her to a private area so she could begin the healing process. His men would not tolerate his relationship with the Siren now, even if it was a mutual agreement and he was getting something paramount from it. The captain was prudent to take a route that would bypass his crew. It was a little past midnight and they were already inebriated beyond comprehension, but he was no risk taker.

But he was a risk taker. He held in his arms a vicious and lethal Siren. He was currently in possession of an enchanted being who made an attempt on his life not even an hour prior. A spellbinding monster who would not hesitate to kill him if she obtained the chance, and lured thousands of men to their watery graves through her song. Kakashi was not a foolish man; he knew she was only doing this so she could get close to him without the physical restriction of his hands against her slender wrists.

Kakashi looked down at the half woman, half fish in his arms. She appeared to have no difficulty breathing for an extended period of time in the air, simply inhaling and exhaling through her nose now instead of through the gills gracing the sides of her neck. Her tail was dry now, but the water had not completely evaporated. There was a tint of moisture to it in its' place.

He figured she would have said something if there would have been complications keeping her above water for a while.

As he treaded across the sandy beach up onto the grasslands where the drawbridge of his ship was lain across, his one good eye slanted towards a movement in the town. It was Genma, and he was quickly approaching (for how impaired a man was, Genma could move briskly). The stumble in his gait and the way he held onto the banisters of the dock told both Rose Quartz and Kakashi that he had had one too many at Ichiraku's.

Without a word, the silver haired captain increased his pace to the drawbridge of his vessel. They were both approaching each other quickly, but thanks to the large orb in the sky being hazed over by clouds, Genma could not see the two clearly. The sailor's vision was unquestionably blurred and doubled by now, which added onto his cover.

Kakashi entered his ship with Rose Quartz, who was trying not to lean into his chest. This made it difficult to keep a proper homeostasis between the two of them while he was walking. He drew the bridge up, but knew he would have to hide the Siren regardless because of Genma's unshakable nature. When his friend was tipsy, Kakashi would always be the one he would come to to talk and revel in. He would come knocking eventually.

The man caught the creature's gaze and put an index finger to his lips. Rose Quartz tipped her head in question in response to his unsaid command. The ship was hushed, aside from the quiet creaking of it floating on the water. There was no stirring in the main deck or the forecastle right next to it; no signs of life could be found on this grandiose ship besides the subdued breaths of both Sakura and Kakashi. What was he telling her to be quiet for? Kakashi placed the Siren on his bed, earning a disapproving glare from the latter, and arranged his blankets all around her so that her face and hair were covered.

A knock sounded at the door and resonated throughout the extensive captain's cabin. Sakura's roseate fins still peeked out of the blankets and Kakashi promptly fixed that, being sure to tuck the bottom edges underneath her fins. He cared not if the blankets became shredded in the process as Gemna's knocks grew steadier, faster, and louder.

The Siren examined the captain's walking body as he traversed to the wooden opening of the ship where the knocks were sounded at. He moved with a refinement and grace that was very contradictory to all the other captains she had seen, much less any sailor she had come across. The dimmed fashion of his gait was careful and smooth; he was careful not to clunk heavily on the floor, even with the heavy boots he donned tonight.

As soon as the intruder was heard greeting him, Sakura ducked her head further underneath the covers. The voice was friendly and slurred. Sakura guessed it was the man who approached the captain earlier, since it seemed like the man was headstrong in talking to him tonight.

The man in question elbowed past Kakashi and invited himself into the captain's cabin. Kakashi made no move to halt the action and even seemed to let the man make himself at home. The Siren remained as silent and unmoving as a mouse hiding from a cat while the man plopped himself down on a wooden stool. If bad came to worse, and if the man approached her, she would lash her tail out and slit his throat. He made no notice of her, however, as he rambled to Kakashi about nonsensical topics through his hazy speech patterns.

"Ka-ka, when is the las' time you got laid?' the sailor maundered on, right after he asked if Kakashi had seen the Ichiraku's bartender's rear end prior. Sakura heard Kakashi's soft pace come towards her. He arrived at the ending of the bed, and, Sakura assumed, looked towards his sailor and nodded.

The conversation stalled and Genma looked around. The bed was semi-hidden from view from his position; a ridge of wooden wall concealed a good part of the bed. The sailor's double vision focused on a dip in the blanket followed by many other curves. Sakura's long tail served as a female leg from Genma's doubled view, but otherwise, wouldn't have fooled anyone. The being in the bed's form was obviously not human; there was webbing at the hips the protruded through the blanket, fins at the end of the "legs" that also jutted out, and not to mention the fact that the "legs" were conjoined. Sakura heard the brown haired sailor sputter. It was replaced with a hearty laugh and, the Siren guessed from the noise, a slap on the wooden desk by the stool he was sitting on.

"Kaa! You got it tttonight? Before I came," a small hiccup could be heard from Sakura's prone position, "came in?"

"We were about to have sex before you knocked."

Genma stood up with some struggle. He made a few steps towards his captain when Kakashi put a hand out.

"She cares not for publicity. Her father is a simple smithy, and she would rather not the whole town find out she slept with a Captain for his sake," Kakashi said, taking a step towards Genma when he didn't stop.

Genma ceased his gait and offered Kakashi a crooked smile.

"Kakashi, conqueror of seas and defiler of," another hiccup ensued, "and defiler of town daughters," Genma said.

"Not the last part if you don't leave," Kakashi said smoothly with a hint of humor lifting his voice. Sakura rustled a little bit from underneath the blanket. Her sharp fins were beginning to create a tear in the thin, wool blanket. A minuscule tear, yes, but if Genma were to not leave soon, her fins would be clearly visible in no time. Kakashi seemed to understand this and made more preventative measures to get Genma out of the cabin.

The captain looped his arm around Genma's shoulder, being careful to do it soft enough so as to make the inebriated man not stumble and fall down.

"Kaaka can I join? Member when-," the door shut before he could finish his sentence. Sakura didn't even want know what the rest of it would be.

The door lock clicked into place. The ship creaked quietly in opposition to the action.

The Siren wiggled out from underneath the blanket, it catching in her edgy fins in the process. It snared onto her right one, and Kakashi made a move to walk over there and help her.

She took notice of this, looked up, and shot the captain a dirty look. The silver haired man watched as she struggled with the quilt's fabric. She was clearly not used to the dry material, as her hands were moving too fast. She was used to the gravity lessened water.

Sakura finally unfastened the fabric from her fins and crossed her arms. The fabric was stripped beyond repair at the endings.

The Siren watched as Kakashi turned to the desk by his door and removed some parchment and what looked to be a calligraphy pen from the middle drawer. Upon removing the items, he closed it by turning the golden knob adorning it.

Kakashi walked over to her and she unfolded her arms, ready to strike at this unknown and sudden movement. He ripped the shredded piece of quilt off for good. He held it in his hand and looked at her with expressive, black eyes. Kakashi knew that from the way her fingers moved in the air, she was able to write.

"You are going to write down instructions for me and what I need to do, and I am going to fasten your mouth with this cloth," the captain said to her. Sakura opened her mouth to offer a retort; a firm, solid no.

"You have seen what you have done to my men. I cannot risk having you sing and alerting them to your position in whatever strategy you are planning to kill me with right now in your head."

Sakura sneered.

"If your men would turn on you because of a song, maybe it's time you found a new crew," she said, her sneer growing with every pretty word.

Kakashi began tying the cloth around her mouth, forcing her fins down with his foot and her wrists in one hand. The creature thrashed beneath him.

"There is no room for arguing," Kakashi said. He pulled her hair up with his elbow so he could bind the cloth around her head and neck. The Siren thrashed even more at the close contact between herself and her captor.

"I have been," Kakashi lowered his voice, it becoming a few decibels softer as he began to knot the cloth behind her head, "more than lenient with you. I did not string you up and carry you to my ship in binds. No more risks are being taken." Kakashi finished the knot. He triple tied it. He released her wrists and her fins and stepped back, seeming to admire his work.

Kakashi would be lying if he said that the sight of this mystical creature in his bed, her bottom and top lips jutting out from the binding done by his hands, didn't stir some sort of primal, taboo attraction deep within him.

Sakura's pink scales glittered in the lantern's light, along with the burning hatred in her eyes.

Kakashi spoke to her in a low, teasing voice. The captain and leader in him loved the power he had in this moment.

"Or maybe I tied you up because I like your song far too much to share with my sailors."

a/n: it's been like 5 months since i got back on here. i've had school and work pls forgive me. anyways i still love you guys

i hate to be that guy but if we can get this story to 100 follows and 50 favorites, i'll update this story this week. i hate doing that but it'll really motivate me to grind these chapters out for you guys