Note to self: in order to write, you have to actually do more than stare at a Word document rereading what you’ve already written. For example, maybe typing new words would be a good strategy.
I WASN’T GOING TO WRITE SOMETHING FOR THIS AND YET HERE WE ARE (why do I do this to myslef)
Kiba wakes in the blazing heat of a sun that feels so different on his skin, under vegetation that’s far too alive that he jerks upright, panic cursing through his veins. Before he can take in anything, his vision swims alarmingly and he feels hands on his shoulders bracing him upright as he sways on the spot, and a slobbery lick right on his neck from Akamaru.
Hinata, Shino and Akamaru’s face slowly come into view and Kiba blinks slowly in their direction, his head taking far too long to catch up.
Shino clicks his tongue in his mouth, shaking his head and leaning in a little closer, looking at Kiba’s face with clear suspicion. “’I’ll be fine’ you said. You’re not fine at all.” He cups Kiba’s cheeks in his hands and looks into Kiba’s eyes. “For the Eighth Hokage, you can be incredibly stupid.”
Hinata lets out an amused and yet exasperated sigh watches as Shino checks over Kiba’s head. “It’s nowhere near as bad as it could have been, there’s not even any blood and plus, Kiba is the only one who could take the brunt of that.”
Kiba blinks again and the surroundings slowly come into focus and slowly, far too slowly, Kiba realises it worked. They time travelled.
“Huh,” Kiba says, and he takes a deep breath. It doesn’t seem like he has any internal organ damage from putting himself under that much duress to get them all here, but his head is foggy. He’s probably mildly concussed.
“It worked,” Kiba hears himself say just as Shino mumbles out something that Kiba doesn’t catch through the loud pounding of his head.
He looks around again – or tries too before Shino gently tugs his face back to face him. Shino turns to Hinata, already forming seals in his hands and a soft green glow alights around them.
“He’s mildly concussed,” he says as Akamaru wines sympathetically at Hinata’s side and Shino presses his hands against Kiba’s temples.
Hinata moves around to Kiba’s back and braces him upright as Shino eases the pulsing pain away and Kiba feels the permanently tense muscles in his shoulders ease more than they have since Kiba had the Hokage role forced on him all those years ago.
Kiba takes a consciously directed breath and stops trying to pull away from her.
In their timeline, the Fourth Shinobi War had blown up in their faces. In their timeline, Sasuke died, and a part of Naruto, a part that was too big to ever replace, to ever heal, had died too.
And after that, people died, and died, and died. Under Kiba’s reign as the Eighth Hokage, he and A as the Raikage had managed to hold Konoha’s ground for longer than anyone could have hoped for, but it hadn’t paid off in the end.
Sakura had shoved the crudely finished remains of Naruto’s seals into Kiba’s hand after Naruto had killed himself – sacrificed himself to give Sakura and Sai a chance to escape – and looked at him with a ferocious kind of anger that almost made Kiba step backwards.
“Time travel,” Sai had said, his face expressionless as ever, and yet his eyes raged with more anger than Kiba had ever seen in him.
Once upon a time, Kiba would have cried, would have refused the last remnants of one of his best friends, but Kiba’s been Hokage for a while now, so he took the seals, nodded at the two of them, and hoped they would understand how Kiba felt.
Kiba hasn’t cried in years, hasn’t faltered a single inch in years. And as much as the thought of Naruto’s dead body, bleeding and broken makes him want to throw up, there’s no chance he was starting then.
Goodbyes had been short and brisk and Kiba looked the remains of his friends – Sai, Sakura and Tenten – who they were leaving behind and hated himself a little more. Kiba, the Hokage, was leaving his friends to die, and even if he was bringing Akamaru, Shino and Hinata with him, it hardly filled the hole in Kiba’s chest enough to make up for it.
Kiba had formed the seals on his scarred, beaten hands and grit his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut as his body ignited with pain and the world he had grown up in twisted away into nothing.
Hinata has a hand in his hair, looking at him with faint concern from where she’s still perched behind him and Kiba immediately feels guilty. He pushes himself upright, rubbing at his temple where the pain still, although barely, lingers just has Shino shoves him back down.
“Exhaustion,” Hinata says, although there’s no frustration in her tone, only fondness. “Doesn’t cure its self with a 10-minute nap.”
The notion that Kiba fell asleep in the middle of nowhere in such a situation as theirs are makes Kiba want to punch himself.
“Sorry,” he finds himself saying. “I shouldn’t have fallen asleep,” Shino holds up his hand holding Kiba’s words before he can say anymore.
“Relax, Eighth. We are not likely to die here. This point in time is nowhere near as dangerous.”
Hinata pulls Kiba back up against her chest and gives Shino an approving look. “Let us handle this part,” she says to Kiba, her voice soft. “Let your body rest.”
Kiba’s instincts writhe against the very notion of letting his guard down to allow for that. Before, he had the excuse of Shino’s healing and his annoying habit of knocking Kiba out for a few minutes with it, but Kiba’s body has been hardwired to always be ready, and hauling all four of them across space and time probably hasn’t helped Kiba’s head.
Akamaru rests his head on Kiba’s chest, blinking up at him with patience that Kiba has never understood how he could possess. You’re an idiot Akamaru’s gaze says.
Kiba takes a breath. Shino is right there, his charka not diminished at all, ready to protect them at a moments notice and Hinata is right behind him, her hands around his shoulders is more grounding than it should be.
He sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes. Shino, Hinata and Akamaru can handle themselves without Kiba’s help, and it would be an insult to ever think otherwise.
“I’m being stupid,” Kiba says and closes his eyes as Shino chuckles in agreeance. “wake me up in half an hour.” Hinata hums in acknowledgement and for the first time in a long, long time, Kiba falls into a dreamless, undisturbed sleep.
LOOK WHAT YOU’VE CREATED ANON. LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE
Thank you for sharing your dream with me I’ve been thinking about it non stop!!!!!!!
The metal is cold in Kiba’s grasp and Kiba’s mind feels incredibly still considering the situation.
Kiba can feel Ukon’s cells inside his own, Ukon’s cells attacking to his own and killing them. Literally killing him from the inside out.
Some part of Kiba knows he should be panicking, screaming, anything, but he doesn’t. He grips the cold metal of the Kunai in his hand and feels bitter indifference about what he’s about to do.
Kiba raises the kunai and slams it into his stomach where his plate armour ends. He feels skin burst and peal, feels warm blood explode from the wound. He can’t stop the contorted yell that escapes him and his breath is punched out of his chest.
Kiba is killing himself and he is killing Ukon. If Kiba is going to die then Ukon will die here as well.
Kiba turns his head as blood dribbles out of the corner of his mouth. “Die with me,” he whispers, smiling too hard with too many teeth for it to look anywhere near a smile, but Akamaru lays motionless a few metres from them and Kiba can’t even see his chest move.
He finds he doesn’t care about what happens to him. He doesn’t care if he dies here, in the middle of nowhere, just a Genin. He doesn’t care if he dies for Sasuke. And maybe that should scare him, maybe his indifference should at the very least put him on edge.
It doesn’t.
Ukon screams louder and writhes inside Kiba, he can feel their connection begins to tear and so he tears the kunai out and slams it in again, harder. Ukon screams something that rises from deep in his chest that barely sounds human.
Kiba can barely breathe himself, but Ukon is dying as well, and Ukon will die here, by Kiba’s hand. he’ll make sure of it.
“Suicide? You’re – you’re insane,” Ukon gurgles, the blood pooling in his mouth obscuring his words but Kiba scoffs all the same and grinds the kunai into his wound.
“I’m not the one bending over backwards for a man prepared to kill anyonefor a fucking madman. I’m not anyone’s little pet,” Kiba says. He coughs up more blood and savours the outraged look on Ukon’s face.
Ukon opens his mouth, but Kiba doesn’t let him even start, he slams the kunai into his side for a third time and sees white. He hears Ukon’s gurgled cry and feels the connection rip it’s self from Kiba entirely.
The tearing hurts as much as Kiba stabbing himself in the stomach and with the sudden absence of Ukon, all of Kiba’s balance evaporates and he pitches forward, slamming into the dirt.
Ukon screams behind him, gripping the wound in his stomach, and Kiba feels like he’s inches from death itself, but Kiba had said that Ukon would die right here, and Kiba finds himself determined to see it through.
He stumbles upright, his vision swirls and his stomach riots, but because of Ukon, Akamaru is hurt and who knows how badly, and for that Ukon has lost all of Kiba’s mercies.
Anyone who knows the Inuzuka knows they would raise hell itself for their pack.
Kiba stumbles over to him and falls to his knees at Ukons side. He grabs Ukon’s horn, holding him in place.
“I killed your piece of shit puppy!” Ukon crows out, eyes wide with hysteria and breath wildly erratic.
“You can kill me, but I killed him!” Kiba lifts the kunai up, and for the first time looks Ukon right in the eyes. He can smell Akamaru, he can smell pain, desperation, but he can’t smell death.
“It didn’t work,” Kiba says, and he slams the kunai down into his neck and scapes it across, tearing through blood vessels and skin until it hits the armour covering Ukon’s arm and part of his neck.
Ukon gurgles out a cry, desperate and full of fury. Kiba leaves the kunai in his neck and pushes himself backwards, his own wound flaring up. He sits there for a moment as blood soaks his jacket and breathing becomes harder.
He pulls himself upright with painful slowness and approaches Akamaru. He can’t fight the other twin like he is, in so much pain he can barely walk straight and his head swimming.
He falls down gracelessly next to Akamaru and he closes his eyes. If Kiba is going to die here, like this, there is no way in hell Kiba is going to die laying down. There is no way Kiba is going to just let someone kill him.
He pulls himself upright again, unable to muffle his groan and pulls Akamaru into his arms. Kiba’s never been good at giving up.
Kiba wakes in the hospital to hissing words and his head pounding.
I’ll kill you the voice says and Kiba looks around the room, pain forgotten in his haze of panic because Kiba knows that voice. That voice is Ukon’s.
I killed your pup his voice says and Kiba looks at Akamaru sitting, resting on a little pillow, Hana is sitting there as well, watching him with obvious worry in her eyes.
“Kiba are you,” she asks but Kiba loses the rest of what she says as Ukon hisses some disjointed words that Kiba can’t make sense of and Kiba struggles to breathe. Ukon is dead. Kiba killed him. Ukon is dead.
He looks around the room, trying to find the origin of the voice and sees only the ninken.
Useless the voice shouts, loud and abrasive and Kiba flinches, pulling on stitches and he doubles over as pain shoots through him
Hana is suddenly right in Kiba’s face, her hands on his shoulders.
“Kiba, breathe,” she says just as Ukon’s voice whisper you can’t run and it sounds like it’s right in Kiba’s ear but that’s not possible because Ukon is dead and Kiba killed him.
Hana is suddenly gone and that strikes cold fear in his heart. He puts his hands over his ears, as his throat constricts, his eyes burn and Ukon whispers heated words that make no sense to him. The world around him falls, pain forgotten until all Kiba can hear is the voices echoing through his head.
He comes too again when he is literally in Tsume’s lap and she’s running hands through his hair, looking at him, her features pinched in worry.
“You with me now?” she asks and Kiba realises his hands are still pressed firmly over his ears and his whole body trembles.
He nods and Tsume slowly eases his hands from around his head. “You were trying to say something earlier,” she says. “You can hear someone in your head?”
Kiba nods and tries to pull his thoughts into some sort of order. It’s Ukon’s voice, but he’s saying out of context phrases that make no sense or confusing babbles, there must be just enough of Ukon left inside him to hear him.
“I killed him though,” Kiba whispers. He wants to say more, desperately wants to tell his mother everything because his mother is amazing and there’s nothing she can’t handle. Kiba could handle Ukon fusing to his body, could handle stabbing himself, but now, there’s a bit of Ukon left inside him and Kiba doesn’t know how to handle that.
“None of that,” Tsume reprimands him as she runs a patient hand along his back, willing Kiba’s breathing under control. She gathers him up in her arms, wrapped in blankets and turns to Hana, her face pulled into a kind of determination that Kiba hasn’t seen on her before.
“Update Hikari on the situation, she’ll know what to do. I have people to visit and faces to punch. I’ll see you later sweetie,” she says.
I want to get stronger! Ukon’s voice returns, screaming into his mind, pounding the words into his head with enough force it actually hurts. Kiba flinches in Tsume’s hold and he misses whatever Tsume or Hana says next, his breath stuttering and vision swirling.
The next thing Kiba realises they’re running through the forests of Fire country, tucked into his mother arms, Kuromaru by her side and Kiba feels so weak in her arms. “You’re going to Orochimaru?” he asks because he doubts anyone else can fix this mess.
She glances down at him and smiles, her powerful canines on full display before she turns her head back to the forest. “Don’t worry kid,” she says. “I’ll have Orochimaru pissing his pants by the time I’m done with him.”
Knowing his mother, Kiba doesn’t doubt her in the slightest.
Hc that Tsume swears like a sailor and so, Kiba learnt from the best.
Summary: “There are no unwounded soldiers in war,” she says. The words are soft and almost too quiet but Kiba can hear them all too well.“
Every shinobi who survives always comes back a little deader on the inside.”
Kiba’s chest clamps up like someone is squeezing and won’t let go because she’s right. She’s right.
(Kiba’s never been good at just rolling over and accepting what life throws at him, and this is no exception. Konoha needs change, and Kiba’s the only one who’s prepared to bring it.)
This is for Kountoall for the Holiday exchange!!
(And also basically for @gay-trans-leo bc this started bc of the fated fic title meme lmao)
Shisui wakes up on a beach in agony, every muscle screaming at him, his eye is missing, dried blood still splattered around the socket and with no memory of how he got there. He knows his name, he knows who is mother and father was, but there’s a giant gaping hole of nothing else in his head.
Shisui hasn’t had an easy day his entire life, so of course, there’s no one on the little island he’s stranded on. Of course, he’s in the middle of the ocean. Of course, he’s the only living thing on the island.
Shisui can barely sit up let along do anything of use that might help him get the hell off the island. Shisui is tired. He’s missing an eye and he hurts so much it’s hard to think.
So, he lays back down, feels the sand under his skin and closes his eyes.
He doesn’t expect to open them again.
So when he does open them again, with scraps of distorted memories floating in his head and the image of a man tearing his eye right from his face and a strange man leaning over him, understandably, Shisui panics.
But Shisui hasn’t regained his strength overnight. He gets as far as the corner of the tiny room, his empty eye socket burns and he can barely breathe.
The strange man – with scarring covering the right side of his face and missing his left eye – doesn’t approach and instead raises his arms in surrender just as someone barges through the door.
The next thing Shisui knows he’s sitting on the ground with his head between his legs and a hand rubbing his back urging him to breathe.
Shisui is confused, in pain and tries to answer the man’s questions as best as he can as he slowly realises he’s on a boat and that sets some deep instinctual fear in him of danger, pain and he wants to run and run and not stop but the strange woman holds him down.
It takes weeks of careful words and gentle touches for Shisui to believe they mean no harm, and even longer to convince him they want to help. Shisui’s never had people to look out for him before, but it’s a change Shisui wants to welcome, even if his instincts keep telling him to run.
Obito and Sakura are pirates, but they’ve always had a bad habit of picking up strays, but this one might be related to Obito, who’s been on a mission to find the scattered remains of his family, and someone hurt Obito’s family enough that it’s taken both Obito and Sakura far too long to get him to calm down enough to even look at them.
Obito has always been bad at minding his own business, but this one could be kin, and Obito’s going to find the bastard that did this to Shisui even if it kills him.
(or that AU where Danzou attacked Shisui on his own ship, tore out his eye, killed his crew and threw Shisui into the water because Shisui was gaining too much power. Obito takes him in because he has no impulse control and ex-soldier Sakura punches anyone who tries to hurt Shisui or Obito and is the only one with common sense.)
Kiba realises there’s too much wrong with the shinobi system after the 4th shinobi when he realises that they’re all hurting so damn much.
Shikamaru’s smoking more than ever and that distant vacant stare he gets worsens with each day like he’s staring into another time. Ino is jumping at shadows and loud noises, wired up like she’s going to explode. Sai hasn’t even tried to smile since stepping off the battlefield and Naruto’s lost an arm and a big portion of the easy calm he used to be able to hold on to so easily.
They’re all broken and damaged in the aftermath of the war and the system accommodates for none of it. The system is only hurting them more.
Kiba realises he’s been living the same missions over and over and sure he hunts down criminals and he’s helping Konoha and getting paid or the while, but that isn’t enough anymore. Kiba needs a better reason, and ‘for Konoha’ as a reason for killing isn’t cutting it anymore.
However, on one mission, the missing-nin with a child in her arms gives her reasons for leaving, her thoughts on the world they live in, offering him the advice that he needs but doesn’t want. Kiba’s fears are only confirmed – he’s a slave to the very system that’s hurting him so much.
Kiba is a shinobi, a bounty hunter, but regardless of fancy terms, he is a murderer.
Kiba goes back to the village having let the missing-nin go, lies in the mission report and tells Tsume of all his plans. He stays just long enough to ask Kakashi for leave and walks out the gates of Konoha.
He’s never been a great friend of Sasuke’s, never liked him very much, but Kiba finally understands why Sasuke wanted to destroy the village and how staying in Konoha would be the worst thing for him. Sasuke is the only one who’ll understand Kiba’s goals and he needs to do something to fix the system, and it’s pretty clear he can’t start in Konoha.
(People are like leaves, they fall so easily only the landing is rarely soft.)
I may be three-quarters through writing a fic for this one why do I do this to myself
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