Tag: dreaming one shots

Ascendant (2018-01-24)

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Tobirama-sensei chooses Hiruzen and something you didn’t even know existed within you shatters.

Everything after that is just collateral damage.

—

The first is an accident.

Or, at least, that’s what the report will say.

A training accident, two wartime soldiers unable to readjust to peacetime sparring.

A misunderstanding, you say, still covered in your teammate’s blood. You thought it was a genjutsu, luring you into a false sense of security.

It’s not completely improbable, is the thing. Kagami is–was–the most mischievous of the now disassembled Team Tobirama, with a flare for genjutsu and tricks. A smile and bright captivating eyes that had nothing to do with the Sharingan.

An Uchiha that even the most stalwart Senju trusted.

The first is an accident.

Decades down the line, you’re not certain if that’s true anymore.

—

Second and third are easy, the wrong words whispered at the right time.

You are not the only one who got skipped over.

Why Hiruzen? How is he more worthy than us? Were we not all students of the Hokage?

Politics, you’ll hiss at them, a blade sliding between ribs right into their hearts.

An enticing weapon, but ultimately a trap.

Shisui’s eye is a redundancy.

—

Fourth bows out before you can do anything.

Torifu was there during the first, he remembers it as well as you do.

Better maybe.

He steps aside and for that you turn your attention away from him, from his clan, and their vassals.

In your last moments, you will wonder if that was your fatal mistake.

—

For a while, you think that is enough. Prove your worth and sweep away those in front of you, it is only a matter of time before Hiruzen’s weakness provides an opportunity.

But time does not stand still. Soon fifth through seventh arise.

Children, compared to you. Literally. Hiruzen’s students. What do they know of war? Of sacrifice? They do not have the experience.

But youth and talent–and pedigree in young Tsunade’s case–is not something so easily dismissed.

For now you can do nothing–nothing overt, at least–but they are primed to tear themselves apart.

It doesn’t take much to help that along.

—

Eighth, you almost regret.

He is the youngest, certainly, but you were once a child in war–surely if your sensei’s grand nephew were actually worthy, he would have survived.

Perhaps it’s the loss of the Mokuton that you regret.

—

The ninth was never truly a threat, a dreaming boy with no real claim.

But Konoha was built on dreams and you will not let some upstart stand in your way.

—

The White Fang of Konoha, a silly moniker that somehow strikes fear into enemy hearts.

As formidable on his own as Hiruzen’s brats are altogether.

No, this won’t do at all.

It is not enough for him to die, you need to destroy him utterly–his career, his reputation, his spirit.

You are ruthless with the tenth.

—

Every so often, you push them along–fifth and sixth and seventh succumbing to their own flaws–weaknesses that would have been exploited by enemies of Konoha.

Cowardice, fear, so quick to run away from what should be her only priority.

Obsessive and vain, so easy to distract and lead astray.

Foolish and sentimental, desperate for approval.

You are protecting your village by exposing them–what else reason could there be?

—

(You overreached with The Salamander, the man who titled Hiruzen’s students. You thought it would be a simple trade of services, a mutual extermination of brats.

But foreign shinobi are hardly worth the effort; the deal is dropped.

Konoha first.)

—

(Uzushio is a separate matter, but their lives are long and their memories longer.

Mito-sama was always biased against you.

Konoha will never be able to achieve its true potential with them forever poised above.)

—

Time marches on.

You uproot those you can, prune those you can’t, but they sprout like weeds beneath your feet.

That absolute infant that Hiruzen chooses may have made a name for himself during the war, but he is nothing more than dandelion fluff easily blown away in the breeze.

Konoha is better off without him.

—

You remember the first.

Uchiha that even the most stalwart Senju could trust.

There might as well be no more Senju, but the sentiment applies. Shisui follows in Kagami’s footsteps and the clan head’s brat has far too much potential.

You remember the first.

You remember that Konoha was built by two clans.

One is near to extinct. Surely the village can also survive without the other.

—

Hiruzen is old, weighed down by years and loss and having to put on the hat for a second time.

Or so he says.

You wouldn’t know, you’ve never worn it.

He is so completely unaware of all that you do for Konoha, so blind and soft. He walks amongst the villagers, a kindly, foolish grandfather instead of the unyielding pillar of strength that he should be.

He is a disgrace.

(He was your friend, once.

Now he is forever imprisoned within the belly of the Shinigami.)

—

(Kagami was your friend, once, too.)

—

Everything is just collateral damage.

~

A/N: … EURAGHRURH!! I’m disgusted with myself. But, okay, like. This is not meant to be apologetic or sympathizing for Danzo–I literally just wanted to experiment and see if I could get into his headspace and it… I dunno. Did it work? YEURGH, gross gross gross.

Brought about because of the massive hate-on for Danzo that’s going on in the discord, and the ongoing theory that he sabotaged every prospective Hokage candidate in the past fifty years. If it’s not clear who is who: 1 – Kagami Uchiha, 2 – Homura Mitokado, 3 – Koharu Utatane, and 4 – Torifu Akimichi were the other members of Team Tobirama. 5 – Tsunade, 6 – Orochimaru, 7 – Jiraiya. 8 – Nawaki (aka Tsunade’s younger brother). 9 – Dan Katou (aka Tsunade’s boyfriend). 10 – Sakumo Hatake. And then Minato who did succeed at getting the hat because his career trajectory was frankly ludicrous and too quick for Danzo to squash. And then Shisui and Itachi because those dang Uchiha.

I am not too keen on the ending (as per usual for me) given that I didn’t think I should end at the Chuunin Exams but I didn’t want to get into the whole Tsunade is Godaime and the whole constant undermining of her authority, even though I did kind of want to get to the point where Danzo dies? Should I have just stopped at the whole Uchiha it comes full circle thing? … maybe…

Arguably, if you ignore the line in the Torifu section, then this could be Naruto-canon compliant? But obviously I wrote it with DoS in mind. And I am hoping that Shikako is at least tangentially involved in Danzo’s downfall which is another reason why I didn’t go past the Chuunin Exams because… I have no idea what that downfall is going to look like. Fantastic, I assume.

Dreaming One Shots — now on ao3!

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

Combining all of my Dreaming of Sunshine recursive one shots into one collection called Dreaming One Shots on archiveofourown.

For now this includes:

  1. Becoming a Legend
  2. Stories of Ancient Gods
  3. Netsui/Shikako Three Sentence Fic
  4. Dropped Off Stitches (On The Loom Of Fate)

Check it out here!

Have also uploaded:

5.  Chances Gone By
6.  You and Me and Baby (Makes Fifteen)

Have also uploaded:

7.  Winter in the Fields
8.  Semi-Phenomenal, Nearly Cosmic

Have also uploaded:

9.  Reshuffle the Deck
10. Primadonna Girl (Says No Thank You)

Have also uploaded:

11. River Running High
12. Our Share of the World
13. Walking Around (Like Regular People) (+ outsider!POV omake)
14. Take A Step That Is New

Also uploaded:

15. Baby Grows Up
16. Breaking The Shackle
17. Friendship is a (Mutual) Con
18. Heathens Outside And Ready
19. Lies Beyond The Morning

Also uploaded:

20. Fire Fallow Cultivation
21. Painted Red (To Fit Right In)

Painted Red (To Fit Right In), (2017-04-04)

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

Naruto looks at her, head tilted to the side. He’s not smiling, but his face is still a comfort nonetheless–things went to shit when he was gone, and she knows his presence doesn’t automatically mean things will get better, but it’s a gut feeling, a visceral reaction. Naruto is here, he’ll do his best to keep all of them safe.

Optimism for the end of the world.

“Well, what do you want to do?”

—

She didn’t think much of it, at first.

Hostilities between the villages had already been increasing, war councils and updated procedures already in place. Fast tracked promotions, and greater interest in an otherwise dying science.

A buffer nation being attacked would cause concern even without totality of the destruction, the mystery of the circumstances.

She thought it was a logical progression of international tension; she thought it was natural.

It could not be further from that.

—

Sasuke had been on bodyguard duty when things finally came to a head.

Without a Hokage, there’s no one to hold him to that.

Without a Hokage, there’s no one to to relieve him of it, either, he’d argue.

“Don’t worry about me,” he would add, even in the early days when she was more dead weight than help, life energy pulled out of her and slow to replenish. He was taking double watches, kept running perimeters, running himself ragged.

It was just the two of them, then, surrounded by the shades of what used to be home.

—

In her old world, there had been plenty of media surrounding the idea:

The end of the world. The fall out of a major disaster. Post-apocalyptic survivors trying to scrape out an existence.

She believed, maybe, in her most paranoid yet fanciful imaginings, that it would be Edo Tensei. She knew that there was a very real possibility that zombies could happen because they had already happened, there was a technique to make them happen. It was why she had squirreled away notes on it, why she kept at her fuinjutsu studies–driven less by her original wonder, and more by a preparatory fear.

She was right about the what.

She was wrong about the how.

—

They are in Sora-ku when Kakashi-sensei finds them, along with a horde of mindlessly aggressive ex black marketeers.

It’s not as if they’re particularly hard to fight–nothing on the caliber of the reavers made from shinobi stock–but despite the seeming abandoned state of the city, there are many of them. Empty skyscrapers a good place to hide a community of smugglers and criminals, like maggots infesting the corpse of a fallen animal.

For a second, she thinks Kakashi is one, too. Stops a beat too long and nearly gets bitten for it, but his movements aren’t jerky and uncontrolled–somehow, impossibly, he’s still himself.

“I was just in the neighborhood,” he’ll say with a shrug, as if he weren’t sent to the frontline and unheard from for months. As if they weren’t miles out of the way from Konoha.

He doesn’t hug them back, but he doesn’t eel out of it, either.

—

She shut the gate, hijacked the ritual, blew up the foundation.

Jashin could not enter. Could not come to their world and consume it in its entirety the way the cultists had planned.

But that doesn’t mean nothing had come through.

Aggression and suffering and pain. Bloodlust threading through the air of an already highly militaristic society.

There wasn’t so much another world war as it was a world riot, a rampage.

She was immune (hello little god) because she had been at ground zero, she had been the last sacrifice, she had been the key.

Only inside her own mind does she think maybe a quick destruction would have been better than this.

~

A/N: … I guess, just some quick thoughts after reading some zombie things which led me to remembering this anon’s ask and, surprisingly, this cute post about how different MBTI people say “I love you.”

Team Seven’s MBTI designations I did over here, but basically I was working with:

Naruto – E(N/s)FP
“well what do you want to do?”
“i picked these for you”
“stay there, i’ll come get you”

Sasuke – IS(T/f)J
“don’t worry about me”
“i’m proud of you”
“that’s okay, i bought two”

Kakashi – IST(P/j)
“stay over”
“you might like this”
“i was just in the neighborhood”

(Kakashi’s is so perfect for him, I’m dying).

I did want to include Naruto’s “Stay there, I’ll come get you,” but I figured him showing up even though he started halfway across the world with Jiraiya is enough?

Uh. Sorry about the whole melancholic mood lately, y’all, it’s that time of year and work has been brutal. :/

Fire Fallow Cultivation (2017-03-27)

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In the early morning hours as the sun begins to lighten, dawn slowly crawling into the sky, she sits on the veranda and breathes. Morning dew glistening on the grass, bird song filtering from the treetops.

For a few moments she can imagine that she is a child once more, those simpler happier times. When the house was fuller than just her and Shizune and the ever present ANBU guards, when the silence would be broken by the sounds of her family beginning to awaken.

Instead stands a copse of trees, the youngest nearly two decades old–for her cousin, Kohari–the next youngest after that for Nawaki.

Hers will be the last tree planted here. The end of a tradition, the end of a clan.

For a few moments, Tsunade drinks her tea and imagines.

—

Of the Lucky Seven brats–Hatake included–it’s obvious that the Uchiha brat is the least troublesome. She loves Naruto, and it’s not just professionalism that has her keep bringing Kakashi and Shikako back from their stupidly persistent death wishes, but Sasuke is the least problematic and she’s not ungrateful for that.

Of course, he still is a Lucky Seven brat: least troublesome does not mean not troublesome whatsoever.

“It’s a routine patrol,” she says to the impassive ceramic face of ANBU Hawk, “it’s been run every day for decades! Probably since Konoha itself was founded!”

Still, ANBU Hawk’s face does not change. His posture, though, slouches just that tiniest bit.

She softens her tone, “Better for it to be discovered than not, of course, I just don’t know how this could have stayed hidden for so long.”

Neither of them mention the Sharingan. The whole point of ANBU Hawk is anonymity.

Before, Uchiha in ANBU were sent out immediately on ops. An Uchiha on a routine ANBU patrol would have been inefficient, underutilizing their abilities… or so Danzo would have said.

If there are any hidden caches and tunnels that only a Sharingan can see around the Hokage’s residence…

“Bodyguard duty for you,” Tsunade says, and tries to make it sound like punishment.

—

Seeing her face on the mountain–alongside her grandfather’s, her granduncle’s, her sensei’s, and that Namikaze brat’s–she thinks about legacies. About responsibilities and inheritances and the cloying, clawing threads that tie her down.

Konoha was her home. Konoha was her hell. Konoha is in her blood, in her heart, in her bones. In every word she speaks and every person she heals and every desk she shatters under her fist. All the paperwork blurring beneath her eyes, every face that looks up to her, every building every weapon every tree.

She is Hokage, she is Senju, she is Konoha.

Konoha was not just one clan’s dream, Konoha is not just one clan’s inheritance.

—

Shizune adjusts to living in the village easily enough, but Shizune has always been adaptive. It helped on the road, when Tsunade was more drunkard than mentor, and it helps now when Tsunade has to allocate more and more of the hospital’s running to her first apprentice.

First apprentice. How strange to think of Shizune that way when she is more than that–her confidante, her friend, practically her niece–and yet it’s not inaccurate.

Tsunade never thought she’d have a second apprentice, but there’s something about that Haruno girl. Potential, yes, but a joy and love for life that she can barely remember having herself.

She certainly never thought she’d have third one, and not even for medicine at that, but the Uchiha brat has an eye for administration. She’s not just talking about his Sharingan, either, though that certainly helps with the paperwork.

Tsunade was raised to be head of a waning clan, groomed for the position, no matter how futile it turned out to be. Sasuke never had that.

He was the spare, the youngest. A child with a hyper-competent older brother, a fully functioning clan, an entire infrastructure that had no need for him.

And yet.

There is no formal invitation. She does not leave confidential information lying around, though it’s not as if there’s much of a Senju clan to manage anyway.

But if she voices her decision making processes out loud more often. If she’s become observant of customs long set aside. If she has two cups of tea prepared for the early morning hours, well.

Everyone adapts eventually.

—

In the backyard of the Hokage’s residence is a copse of trees, a holdover from a past era.

She remembers digging for every single tree: scoops of soil in clumsy toddler hands, crescents of dirt beneath her nails as she clutched her newly orphaned brother close.

Trying so hard not to cry on Nawaki’s because it would devastate her if his tree withered from salt. (Dan should have a tree. A few months more, maybe, but she’s done with pleading for an impossibility).

She came back long enough to plant Kohari’s tree (and regret that she didn’t know what the Uzumaki traditions were) and leave with Shizune in tow.

It might be blasphemous, might enrage all of her Senju ancestors, but what does she care what a bunch of dead people think? If she wants to have an Uchiha plant her tree, well, who is going to stop her?

She’s the last of her clan; she wants someone who will remember her as such.

~

A/N: Less Tsunade and Sasuke bonding and more implied bonding and character analysis? Hope you enjoy anyway, @future-tongue!

Fire fallow cultivation, aka slash-and-burn agriculture, is when fields are burned so that the ash can enrich the soil for future crops to grow. 😀

Dreaming One Shots — now on ao3!

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

Combining all of my Dreaming of Sunshine recursive one shots into one collection called Dreaming One Shots on archiveofourown.

For now this includes:

  1. Becoming a Legend
  2. Stories of Ancient Gods
  3. Netsui/Shikako Three Sentence Fic
  4. Dropped Off Stitches (On The Loom Of Fate)

Check it out here!

Have also uploaded:

5.  Chances Gone By
6.  You and Me and Baby (Makes Fifteen)

Have also uploaded:

7.  Winter in the Fields
8.  Semi-Phenomenal, Nearly Cosmic

Have also uploaded:

9.  Reshuffle the Deck
10. Primadonna Girl (Says No Thank You)

Have also uploaded:

11. River Running High
12. Our Share of the World
13. Walking Around (Like Regular People) (+ outsider!POV omake)
14. Take A Step That Is New

Also uploaded:

15. Baby Grows Up
16. Breaking The Shackle
17. Friendship is a (Mutual) Con
18. Heathens Outside And Ready
19. Lies Beyond The Morning

Heathens Outside And Ready, a different Team Seven ficlet (2016-11-18)

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Shikako is the first to leave.

Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say she never came back to begin with, walking from battlefield to traveler’s roads to places in need of exploration.

Warrior to wanderer, seamless.

—

First she is invited to Wind Country, as friend and scholar both, to research the remains of the Gelel Empire.

She is invited to a great many places after that–Snow Country, Land of Birds, Land of the Moon–retracing her own steps and the steps of civilizations long gone.

Alone, she wanders, aimless.

—

Sasuke is next–eagerly shaking off the limits and legacies from Konoha.

The tangled, dusty, and sticky cobwebs of the past brushed away to make way for the future, for a new Uchiha clan.

It’s time for Sasuke to follow his own path.

—

He catches up to her in the high stony mountains of Lightning Country, or maybe in the marshy lowlands in the Land of Tea, or perhaps its the small island of Wave atop the bridge bearing the name of their missing teammate.

Regardless, they are reunited, the hawk and the deer.

Paths are better when walked together.

—

Naruto is last, only because he spends so long resisting the call, trying to fit into a role never written for him.

Before, with Ero-sennin, traveling was training, was a mission, was an obstacle to overcome so that he could finally come back home to Konoha.

Except home isn’t Konoha, it never was: home is his friends.

—

He looks wan in the beginning, pale and tired, lifeless–that blazing spirit drained out of him in a way that war couldn’t dampen.

They wait for him in the ruins of Uzushio, a place as vibrant as the people it once was home to.

But it’s not theirs, a mere waypoint, a rest stop to revitalize and reconnect and ready themselves for the journey of their lives.

—

Kakashi enjoys a rare moment of calm, quiet solitude.

The Hokage’s hat is a heavier burden than he thought–certainly not one that he ever wanted–and it’s time to pass it down.

Sakura is more than capable, having spent the years learning at his shoulder; maybe Kakashi can join his other students for an adventure.

~

A/N: Fill for the two anon who wanted platonic wanderlust!Team Seven as nomadic badasses with a little bit of Kakashi and Sakura. Seven sets of three sentence fic makes twenty one–hence the title!

Post Word Count: 365, Running Word Count: 6728

Friendship Is A (Mutual) Con, a Team Seven ficlet (2016-11-16)

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When asked, Nara stares blankly at them, silent and unimpressed, Uzumaki laughs, grin wide and sharp, while Uchiha closes his eyes as if their questions were of no concern.

Hatake is the only one that talks, but they almost wish he had kept his mouth shut instead.

After all, when trying to confirm the number of enemies, hearing a noncommittal answer is less than reassuring.

—

“There are only four Lucky Sevens,” one of the captors say, brash and absolutely wrong.

Kakashi smiles, pointedly–somehow still obvious through the mask they’ve oddly let him keep–enough that the man notices and stutters out, “A-aren’t there?”

“Well, if you say so, the other three must not be very lucky then.”

—

“Their comms have been destroyed,” Sai says bluntly, smile on his face; he once read that smiling could help soften bad news.

Yamato sighs, face palming, while Sakura barely resists doing the same–she’s only here to temporarily help the team, auxiliary member only, and yet…

Once this matter is cleared up, she promises to never complain about Anko-sensei’s choice of jobs again.

—

Their jailers are not so stupid as to keep them in the same cells, but that doesn’t make very much difference.

There’s a pipe running along the corner of Shikako’s cell, up and through the wall–she doesn’t have her gear with her, but demolition isn’t the goal right now.

The clinking of handcuffs against the pipe is answered with more clinking from beyond the wall.

—

Sakura is more used to following after Anko-sensei’s trail of destruction, her students near invisible in comparison, or enjoying the absolute silence of Yakumo’s technological illusions.

Just walking up and talking her way into a place is not a method she’s comfortable with, but it appears to be working.

“I’m Agent Tenzo, this is my partner Sai, and our trainee,” Yamato says with way more confidence than she’s ever seen from him, “we’re here to follow up on the explosion on the docks.”

—

Naruto’s restraints are over the top–elbow to fingertips behind his back–they see his muscles, the breadth of his shoulders, and think he’s the fighter on the team.

They are wrong.

He snickers, even as he curls up and tears at the hem of his trousers with his teeth, lock pick at the ready.

—

Yamato looks around, steadily getting more worried and angry at what he sees:

The flaming wreckage of crates and warped metal of shipping containers aren’t a surprise, but there are bullet casings littering the grounds like shiny deadly confetti.

Kakashi-senpai doesn’t use guns, and neither does his team.

—

Sasuke knocks his handcuffs against the pipe in a repetitive sequence, resigned to waiting for one of his teammates to get him.

Normally, he’d be all for fighting his way out, even with his hands tied behind his back, but normally he doesn’t have a gunshot wound sending spikes of pain with every breath.

Well, better him than his teammates.

—

The comms have been destroyed, but that doesn’t mean the secret hidden trackers have.

Of course, Sai’s not supposed to have trackers on the team–Naruto has explained it’s a violation of privacy or something irrelevant like that–but this just proves him right.

With Yamato-taichou distracted by the authorities and Sakura by the blood on the ground, Sai takes out his tablet and finds the rest of the team.

—

Kakashi contemplates the nature of life, twirling his set of handcuffs around one finger and waiting patiently.

He could just break out and go find his adorable students on his own, but he’s meant to be a teacher now and how will they learn if he does everything for them?

He waits another twelve minutes and is rewarded by the sounds of gangsters screaming.

—

The three of them get to the warehouse district in time to hear screaming and gunfire and, unsurprisingly, explosions.

The local authorities are trailing after them by a good ten minutes, nowhere near as fearless behind the wheel as Sai–though Yamato and Sakura would prefer if he had a little bit more fear, clutching at the oh shit handles with white-knuckled hands–so they have until then to clear out their wayward teammates and frame the gangsters.

No problem.

~

A/N: Fill for this anon; I tried to do some kind of three sentence fic non-powered criminal!AU because this rant, but I didn’t flesh it out enough, I think, so it’s kinda…

Post Word Count: 697, Running Word Count: 5744

Breaking The Shackle, a Shikako/Neji fic (2016-11-13)

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aka, Shikako and Neji’s Revolutionary Crusade of Fuinjutsu and Great Justice

—

She’ll admit it wasn’t a particularly noble beginning–certainly not on her end–it wasn’t outrage at injustice, or empathy for the oppressed.

It wasn’t even the opposite: scheming to overthrow the largest and most powerful clan in Konoha, or gain the allegiance of over a hundred people with a blood limit.

It was just curiosity… and not a small amount of ego. Riding the high of her own ability.

Because if she could outmaneuver Danzo, could best Orochimaru in sealing, could survive battle against a literal goddess–

(could defy death over and over again)

–what were the Hyuuga clan’s laws to her?

—

TenTen is a fuinjutsu master in her own right, though with a different specialty and style.

She’s been friends and teammates with Neji for so many years, as close to family as she’s ever known–she has nearly as much a stake in his freedom as he himself does.

But she is an orphan without a last name; the Byakugan has great worth to Konoha.

—

Neji has long since changed his view on fate.

Or, at least, his relationship to it.

He still thinks fate exists, but who is he to say what it might be? Who is he to say who will fail and who will succeed?

Lee has long since surpassed the predictions a younger, brattier Neji had once made for him. So, too, has his cousin grown into her potential despite his pessimistic bullying.

He has watched, time and time again, as his friends and his village have defied the odds–rejected what should have been their fated ends–and lived despite everything against them.

But perhaps that is fate. Perhaps fate is kinder than he thought. Beneath his forehead protector is a curse, but perhaps fate will be kind to him this once.

But if its not–if fate is not kind–then he will do as he has been taught and fight against it with all he has.

—

Sai has a scar on his tongue, a remnant of the seal of secrecy that all ROOT members once had.

Given the placement and size, it’s not noticeable at all–more importantly, it doesn’t hinder his ability to speak.

Sai has a scar on his tongue, a remnant of Shikako’s attempts to remove the ROOT seal of secrecy.

—

Shikako has many secrets, some of which she shares and some of which she will keep beyond her last breath.

One of them is simply this: she did nothing to save Neji’s life.

Oh, she never put him in harms way, always had his back in battle–she treated him the way she treated all of her friends and allies.

She would’ve died for him, if such a thing had been necessary, but she never went out of her way to save his life. Never warned him of his future, never even hinted at the possibility.

She did nothing.

And yet, somehow, he still lives.

She doesn’t know if this is some kind of apology that only she’ll understand, belated and inexplicable as it may be. Doesn’t know if this is out of guilt or some sense of debt…

But she thinks: late though it may be, she should do something.

—

Lee remembers the first time he actively noticed Shikako–surrounded by carnage and flames, the bodies of her enemies lying at her feet.

It’s the kind of first impression that lingers, on which every interaction after that is influenced by.

No matter how approachable and helpful she is after that, Lee will always remember that at Shikako’s core is ruthlessness and efficiency.

—

It’s not as if Neji thinks Hinata will renege on her vow to change the Hyuuga clan–she is not that cruel, not like he used to be–nor does he think Hanabi, if she is to be head instead, will do the same.

But he thinks Hiashi-oji-sama must have once thought the same for his twin, for his twin’s son, and yet Neji still bears the brand.

He knows that the Main Family is more than just his uncle and his two cousins. The Hyuuga Clan is expansive, numbering in the hundreds.

While the Main Family is a small percentage of that, it is still a few dozen. A few dozen who can inflict pain or death on the Branch Family at whim.

The Hyuuga Clan Elders won’t let their elitism be taken away so easily.

Promises are nice, but actions are better.

—

Kakashi figured that if ever one of his students and Gai’s students got together it would be the end of the world. He was only a few months off, really.

Hm, is it too early to joke about that?

—

The aged scrolls Hanabi passed along to them have been much appreciated, necessary for Shikako’s endless notes working out different permutations and removal methods. But there is a time for theory and there is a time to put said theory into practice.

Neji removes his forehead protector, hands trembling minutely. Shikako takes a moment to marvel at how green the seal is, before berating herself.

She looks away, to give him the chance to compose himself, and when she looks back it’s to a Neji with closed eyes, sitting with resigned patience.

One way or another, this will end his world as he knows it.

Closed eyes doesn’t mean vulnerability for a Hyuuga, not truly, but she can appreciate the gesture for what it is.

Absolution. Faith. Trust.

~

A/N: For @cadalie who wanted that revolutionary Shikako/Neji vs Hyuuga Clan fic and got… this.

I tried to make it less feels based, but lets be honest here, isn’t that my wheelhouse?

Unsure if this is Shikako/Neji proper or more pre-Shikako/Neji…

Also, unimaginative title is unimaginative.

Post Word Count: 907, Running Word Count: 4874

Walking Around (the Sakako Uchiha ‘verse) — now on ao3!

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

Since apparently Walking Around (Like Regular People)–or at least that particular spinoff universe–is no longer a one shot, I’ve made an ao3 series to collect the two current installments and any future installments.

Part 1 aka the actual Walking Around (Like Regular People) (+outsider!POV) will still be Chapter 13 of Dreaming One Shots, so I don’t delete the comments, but Walking Around (Sharing the World) is now a separate work and Part 2 of the series.

Check it out here!

Dreaming One Shots — now on ao3!

jacksgreysonLeave a comment

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

jacksgreysays:

Combining all of my Dreaming of Sunshine recursive one shots into one collection called Dreaming One Shots on archiveofourown.

For now this includes:

  1. Becoming a Legend
  2. Stories of Ancient Gods
  3. Netsui/Shikako Three Sentence Fic
  4. Dropped Off Stitches (On The Loom Of Fate)

Check it out here!

Have also uploaded:

5.  Chances Gone By
6.  You and Me and Baby (Makes Fifteen)

Have also uploaded:

7.  Winter in the Fields
8.  Semi-Phenomenal, Nearly Cosmic

Have also uploaded:

9.  Reshuffle the Deck
10. Primadonna Girl (Says No Thank You)

Have also uploaded:

11. River Running High
12. Our Share of the World
13. Walking Around (Like Regular People) (+ outsider!POV omake)
14. Take A Step That Is New