this is where i'll be posting my fics, reblogging chaos from numerous fandoms, and posting whatever else my brain decides to throw into the void. fair warning, i love my dark haired angsty anime men, so you can expect lots of posts about them!

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୨୧ masterlists

To Bleed a Thorne // Levi Ackerman x fem oc reader

| 18+ | canon-divergent • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

Rain Made of Storms // Naruto Uzumaki x fem oc reader | Sasuke Uchiha x fem oc reader

| 18+ | canon-divergent (aged up) • love triangle • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

₊‧꒰ა ໒꒱ ‧₊˚

ᯓ★ before you follow

♡ this blog contains mature themes ♡ please check warnings before reading anything ♡ minors, respect any age boundaries listed on individual works ♡ asks, comments, and reblogs are always appreciated

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ᡣ𐭩 final note

whether you’re reading quietly, liking posts, sending asks, or screaming in the tags, i appreciate you! though, coming from someone who used to be a ghost reader and is now a writer, your interaction is truly priceless to me and is always appreciated <3

i write purely for the thirteen year old girl who still exists in my heart, despite my intentions to bury her when i was a later teen. she persevered and clawed her way back out, and here i am presently—a young, successful adult finding herself and navigating early adulthood—writing fanfiction and cackling in my little writing chair under my sunset lamp (and concerning my cat... but we don't need to talk about that).

welcome in ♡

PLAGIARISM IS ILLEGAL

Pairing: Naruto Uzumaki x female oc reader | Sasuke Uchiha x female oc reader (Naruto) 18+ explicit content

Genre: canon-divergent (aged up), hella slowburn, love triangle, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological

Warnings: 18+—profanity, loneliness, social isolation, implied depression, brief bullying/mockery, references to bad home life, mild angst, idk canon-typical naruto stuff

Word Count: 7707

Status: Ongoing

Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter (coming soon!)

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Chapter 2 - Through the Frame

Read Rain Made of Storm on AO3

Konoha is never quiet. It almost makes you uncomfortable.

The noise spills over itself from the moment the Academy doors open for lunch, bright energy fluttering beneath the afternoon sun. Students shout across the training yard with their whole chests, doubling over in laughter without apology or strain, arguing over kunai and lunches and who did the best during sparring practice. Their voices rise with the dust beneath their sandals as they scatter about the yard, shouting each other’s names and carelessly bumping shoulders every now and then. Their hands reach without hesitation. Their emotions flash between bitterness and laughter before you can understand how anyone survives being so visible.

You sit beneath the tree at the far edge of the yard—close enough that no teacher can accuse you of wandering, but still far enough that no one has to decide whether to invite you in. Your lunch is folded neatly over your knees. 

This is the kind of alone you know best. Not loneliness so apparent that it creates a scene, but it’s not comforting enough to feel like peace. It’s just a space left open around you and your body, wide enough for others to overlook and narrow enough for you to pretend you chose it.

This isn’t the worst kind of loneliness.

The worst kind has teeth. It bites, and it hurts. It laughs in groups and waits for you to look wounded before it bites again. And this is quieter than that. This is the safe space you exist in—the kind people leave around a girl they do not hate, but do not desire either. A space wide enough to keep you separate and narrow enough to let everyone pretend that they have not done it on purpose.

And you let them.

… You’ve found that you’re good at letting things happen quietly.

Your mother packed your lunch too carefully again today, you notice.

Rice is pressed into a perfect square shape. Bitter greens are tucked beside salted fish. Eggs are sliced thin and arranged in a way that measures her care like neatness. It smells different from the lunches around you—sharper, more acidic, touched by spices no one in class ever names correctly. But it smells like home, sharp with that seaweed and brine stench that makes your classmates wrinkle their noses when they pass too close.

You used to hate that. Now, you only hate that you noticed in the first place. There was a time you used to unashamedly enjoy your meal, but you haven’t been able to openly since you joined the ninja academy at age fourteen, similar in age to the other students just joining.

You’re seventeen now.

You are picking at the edge of the rice with your chopsticks when something suddenly skids across the dirt and stops against the toe of your sandal.

A rice ball?

It’s half-crushed and covered in dust. You stare at it.

What the hell?

A heartbeat later, a boy your age drops to his knees so suddenly in front of you it’s as if he has fallen out of the sky.

“Leave it,” he says to you quickly. 

He has hair so blonde it’s almost yellow, a dirty cheek, and the desperate expression of someone trying to defend treasure that has already been tainted by dirty hands. Behind him, a few boys near the training posts start laughing.

“Too late, Naruto!” one of them calls. “It’s dirt flavored now.”

The blonde boy twists his head over his shoulder, face turning one shade more red. “Shut up! It could still be good!”

The boy scoffs, “It was barely good before!”

The rest of them laugh.

This boy—Naruto—squares his shoulders like he means to stand, like he intends to shout back, like he wants to turn this whole yard into a fight if that’s what it takes to make the laughter stop sounding the way it does. But his hand only closes around the newly browned rice ball, fingers pressing into the dirt stuck to it, and turns back to face you once more.

You recognize that reaction from all the times you’ve worn it yourself—not the anger Naruto hides behind blushed cheeks, but the pretending it doesn’t hurt.

He turns back and catches you staring, and for a second, his face changes. The scowl stays, but something behind it goes still, like you saw a part of him that was never meant to be revealed. As if being laughed at is one thing, but being witnessed by a stranger sitting quietly beneath a tree is somehow worse.

You should look away. It would be polite, after all you witnessed. It would be easier for you and him.

Instead, you glance at the rice ball in his hand.

“You probably shouldn’t eat the part with gravel in it.”

And Naruto blinks. 

The boys behind him laugh harder, but Naruto does not. He looks down at the rice ball, lips pressed into a thin line.

He frowns, “What if I eat around it?”

“That depends on if you’re willing to take the risk, and how attached you are to your teeth,” you reply.

His mouth twitches. It’s so subtle you almost miss it, but it’s there. Small. Quick. Gone almost before it even has the chance to arrive. But you see it. Then he sits back on his heels in front of you, still holding the ruined rice ball, and looks at you like you have become something worth noticing.

“You’re weird,” he finally says.

You lower your chopsticks.

“Funny, ‘cause you’re the one eating rocks,” you quip back.

“I said around the rocks.”

“That does not make it better.”

“It makes it smarter.”

“It makes it slower. It’s pointless.”

His eyes narrow, but not out of anger this time. More like concentration, like he’s trying to figure out whether you are making fun of him or talking to him, and no one has given him enough practice telling the difference.

He decides to grin. Wide, warm, and welcoming. Seems too bright for someone who was embarrassed a breath ago, and is too loud even before he opens his mouth.

“I’m Naruto Uzumaki.”

You know that already.

Everyone knows Naruto Uzumaki, even the students who pretend not to. He is the boy who teachers sigh over before he even speaks. The boy who fills whatever space is left empty, not because anyone offers it to him, but because he seems to have decided silence is something he can beat if he is loud enough and fills that space. The boy who parents pull their kids away from without explaining why. 

Still, he announces his name like he’s inviting you to a challenge, as if he expects you to flinch from it, or cower away, or get up and leave.

You don’t.

“Sena Hayama,” you reply.

His grin widens.

“Sena…” he repeats, voice softer than it was when he announced his own name.

Your eyes drop to the ruined rice ball in his hand, then to the boys still snickering, then back to him. Naruto’s grip tightens around what is left of his lunch when he receives your stare, stubbornness hardening his mouth like he is seconds away from eating dirt just to prove he can.

A strange irritation settles in your stomach and robs some of your appetite. You don’t want to pity him because you would hate if someone pitied you, so you don’t give that to him. Instead, you look down at your own lunch, the rice your mother pressed too neatly into shape, the salted fish tucked beside bitter greens, the thin slices of egg arranged with a care that makes your insides twist if you look at it for too long.

You pick up a chunk of rice with your chopsticks and hold it out.

Naruto stares. You stare back.

“What?” you ask.

“You’re giving me food?” he questions.

“No. I’m holding it in the air for decoration. I thought the scenery could use some.”

His eyes narrow again, but not with accusatory suspicion—not exactly. It’s something smaller than that. More careful. A small flame that longs to trust, but has been snuffed out too many times to count. Something more careful.

“Why?” he asks.

You glance at the dirt stuck to his rice ball.

“Because yours has rocks in it,” you deadpan.

“I said I could eat around them.”

“And I said your teeth would suffer.”

For a moment, his eyes meet yours. Then, slowly, like he expects you to snatch it away and laugh in his face, Naruto reaches out a hesitant hand and takes the rice from your chopsticks.

The boys behind him have grown quieter.

You can feel them still watching the interaction, their attention crawling over the space between you and him. It makes your shoulders want to raise and fingers want to fold back into your sleeves. Makes you wish you had kept your lunch to yourself and let Naruto eat gravel if he was so determined to make bad choices in the first place.

But Naruto doesn’t pay them any more mind. 

He pops the rice into his mouth. Chews.

Then stops.

His whole face changes. You watch the color drain from it as his jaw slows while he continues the chewing motion.

Your stomach churns. You know that look. 

You’ve seen that look countless times on classmates who lean too close to your lunch and wrinkle their noses before asking why it smells like that. You have heard the laughter that rolls over them like a wave that comes after. The snickers and jokes about seaweed and old fish and food that tastes like poor, low tide. The way your fellow students have turned a meal into proof that you are not from the place they have decided everyone should come from—Konoha.

Your heart begins to drop.

Naruto swallows with visible effort and points at the container with absolute seriousness, his face contorting into a look of genuine concern.

“That is the saltiest rice I’ve ever eaten,” he says, horrified and strained. 

He reaches for his water and drinks like he has crossed a desert. You wait for the rest—the insults, the laughter, the look toward the other boys to make sure they heard him. But it does not come.

Naruto wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and squints at your lunch again, both suspicious and fascinated.

“Do you eat that every day?” he asks.

Your fingers tighten around your chopsticks.

“Sometimes.”

‘Huh.”

“That means you hate it.”

“No!” he says quickly, voice cracking, then he makes a face like honesty is physically fighting its way out of him, despite his efforts to contain it. “I mean, it’s… weird.”

Ah. There it is.

You lower your gaze to your meal. You’re not feeling very hungry anymore.

“But not bad weird. Just, like—” he frowns, searching hard to find words he clearly does not have, honesty winning the battle. “Strong weird.”

You look back at him despite yourself.

“Strong weird?” you question.

“Yeah,” he nods, more confident now that he has invented a new category to log your lunch inside that doesn’t openly imply it’s unenjoyable or different. “Like it punches your mouth.”

For one second, you forget not to stare at the babblingidiot before you.

Then a laugh slips out of you.

And Naruto’s face brightens like he has won a prize.

“What?” he exclaims. “It does!”

“Food cannot punch your mouth,” you correct.

“Well it punched mine.”

“Maybe your mouth is just weak.”

His jaw drops, faux offense playing on his features. Someone snickers behind him, but this time it does not feel sharp. Neither of you look away from the other.

Naruto points a defensive finger at you. “My mouth is not weak.”

“You almost died from rice.”

“Nuh-uh! I didn’t almost die!”

“You looked close.”

“I did not! I was only surprised!”

“Surprised by… rice?”

“By your rice.”

You should regret giving him any, but you don’t. You can’t. Not as warmth begins to creep from a dark pit deep in your stomach and spread through your veins, washing throughout the rest of your body.

Naruto stays crouched in front of you for another moment, still looking at your lunch as if it has personally challenged him to a duel. He shifts, drops his bottom fully onto the ground, crosses his legs, and sits across from you with the sort of confidence that implies he has mistaken your temporary tolerance for him as an invitation.

You stare at him. He stares back.

“What are you doing?” you inquire.

“Sitting.”

“I can see that.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“Because you’re doing it here.”

Naruto looks around the small patch of shade beneath the tree, then back at you, unimpressed and seemingly amused.

“Is this your tree?” he interrogates.

“Obviously not.”

“Then I can sit here.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“Sure it is!”

You open your mouth to say something back, then close it.

There is a particular kind of mental exhaustion that comes from realizing someone is too stubborn to be reasoned with and too simple to be manipulated, and that is Naruto Uzumaki. He sits before you with a smudge of dirt on his cheek and zero sense of shame whatsoever, holding the ruined remains of his ego like he has not just been laughed away from the rest of the crowd in the yard. 

He also doesn’t look uncomfortable, which is the strange part.

But he does look practiced—like embarrassment is a coat he has worn so often he no longer bothers shaking it off in public.

You break eye contact first, looking down. It feels rude to keep staring at him like this. So close.  However, Naruto seems to take that as victory. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and peers shamelessly into your lunch again.

“So what else is in there?” he asks, eyes skirting around the container.

“Food.”

“You always answer like that?”

“You always ask stupid questions?”

His grin snaps back into place fast. “I didn’t hear a ‘no’ in that response.”

“You didn’t hear a ‘yes’ either.” You fight the urge to roll your eyes, suppressing a soft smile.

“Sooo it’s a ‘maybe.’”

“Incorrect.”

“Too late. You already ‘maybe’d.”

“I did not.”

“You did in spirit.”

You pause, forearm resting on your thigh, chopsticks hovering over the egg. “In spirit?”

“Yeah.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means what I intend it to mean.”

You look at him properly again, unable to stop yourself. Something about his presence is magnetizing, pulling your eyes back into his despite how much you try to look away. To not be seen. 

He just speaks with such absolute certainty that, for one second, you almost understand why everyone finds him exhausting. It’s not only that he is loud, it is that he insists on existing at full volume even though clearly no one is wearing ear protection. Actually, it’s especially then that he insists on operating at maximum capacity. Like the world is a door that keeps slamming shut with his fingers on the frame, and he has decided that the only solution is to shove his whole body through the doorway.

It is irritating.

But it is also difficult to deny the way he stirs your spirit that has been dormant for years.

Across the yard, the boys who once laughed at him have gone back to their own lunches. Their attention has moved on, careless now that there is nothing left to poke fun at. Naruto doesn’t seem to notice their absence from the way he keeps looking at you, or maybe he notices too much and knows they’re already gone, but refuses to show it.

He picks at a grain of rice from his sleeve and flicks it into the dirt.

“Why did you steal someone’s lunch?” you ask.

Naruto perks up immediately. “I didn’t steal it.”

“You were running with it,” you point out.

“I was proving a point.”

“And what point is that?”

“That if someone leaves their lunch where anyone can grab it, then technically they’re asking for it to be grabbed.”

You exhale heavily through your nose. He holds your gaze for three more entire seconds before his expression cracks under the pressure of your gaze.

“Okay, maybe that one got away from me,” he confesses.

“Maybe?”

“The guy said I couldn’t catch him.” He shrugs.

“So you stole his lunch?”

“I caught the lunch.”

“That is not the same thing, Naruto.”

“It was close enough.”

“It really wasn’t.”

Naruto huffs, but there is no real anger in it. His shoulders loosen by degrees as you continue talking to him, the embarrassment around him settling into something more easygoing, bright, restless, and hungry for engagement. You notice he seems to like arguing when it does not end with someone actually upset with him and telling him to leave.

You’re used to silence being the safest answer. Used to swallowing words before they can become trouble. Used to watching rooms before entering them, measuring moods before speaking, learning which questions make your father’s jaw tighten and which ones make your mother’s soft smile twitch at the edges.

On the other hand, Naruto does not measure anything. He just reaches and exists loudly and without caution. And somehow, despite how often the world keeps slamming the door on his fingers caught in the door’s frame, he doesn’t stop trying to make it through the threshold.

“Hey, Sena,” he says, recovering with impressive speed, “you’re in Iruka-sensei’s class, right?”

“... Yes.”

“I knew that.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“To make conversation.”

“Well, you’re bad at it.”

“I’m actually great at it. You’re still talking, aren’t you?”

And now you’re silent, because he is right. Naruto sees the realization settle on your face and beams.

“See?” he says. “Great.”

“You’re annoying.”

“I get that a lot.”

“Then maybe you should reflect on that.”

“Oh,” he considers this for less than a full breath before continuing. “No thanks.”

The same laugh you’ve been suppressing threatens the back of your throat again, but you press it down before it can escape. You’re not sure why you’re fighting it. No one at home would scold you for laughing. Not exactly. Your mother would probably even smile if she heard it. Your father might even soften if the house was already in a forgiving mood.

But laughter doesn’t feel right. It feels like a loose thread; pull one, and the whole thing may come undone.

Naruto tilts his head.

“You always sit here?”

You place your chopsticks back in the container and look away, unable to meet his eyes. 

“Sometimes,” you quietly reply.

“That means yes.”

“No, it means sometimes.”

“Do you have friends?”

His question is not cruel nor interrogative, which makes it worse. He asks it the way he asks everything, with no sense that some words need to knock before they have permission to enter the atmosphere and be spoken to another. He just opens the door and walks right in, muddy sandals, childish innocence, and radiant energy, all without apology for taking up space while spouting the first thing that comes to his mind.

Your grip tightens around your chopsticks for a moment.

Across the yard, you can see a group of girls laughing over something one of them said. Near the steps, two boys trade pieces of their lunches. Someone else loudly calls another’s name, and a response comes instantly, easily, as if being wanted by a friend is not something that has to be earned.

You look back at Naruto, a heavy, familiar feeling you’ve grown accustomed to but have not been able to name weighing your frame down.

“Do you, Naruto?” you ask back.

His face changes—only slightly, but enough that you know you have hit something in him. Perhaps even the same thing he hit inside of you.

Then he grins. But it’s too wide. Too fast.

“Of course I do!”

You don’t believe him. You think he knows you don’t believe him.

For one moment, the two of you sit beneath the tree with the lie floating between you, small and obvious and unnamed by either of you. The warm breeze makes it dance a performative, rehearsed routine, one you’ve grown familiar with yourself.

You look down at your lunch and pick up another piece of egg with your fingers, chopsticks forgotten in the container.

“Do you want this or not?” you ask with a sigh. 

Naruto blinks. The grin settles into something more genuine.

“You’re giving me more?” he muses.

“Well, you keep staring at it.”

“I’m not staring.”

“You are.”

“I’m observing.”

“You’re hungry,” you emphasize. “And obviously so.”

His mouth snaps shut. That, too, is answer enough.

You hold the egg out before you can think better of it, and Naruto takes it less carefully this time. No joke first, no snatch, no loud declaration that he deserves it. His fingers brush the edge of yours for a split second, warm like the chakra you feel brewing within his body, then pops the egg into his mouth.

His eyes widen. You brace for another impact.

But it doesn’t come.

“This one’s good!” he exclaims.

“It’s egg.”

“Yeah, but it’s good egg.”

“This is just egg.”

“No,” he insists. “It’s different.” He points at the rest in your container like he’s presenting evidence before a council to be judged. “It tastes less angry than the rice.”

Despite your efforts, your mouth curves up. Naruto sees, and his whole face lights up.

For the first time this afternoon, the space beneath the tree doesn’t feel quite so isolated.

…

Then Naruto ruins it. With impeccable speed, too.

“So Sena,” he says, leaning closer with the kind of seriousness that makes you suspicious before he even opens his mouth properly. “Are you always this mean?”

You blink.

Is he serious right now?

“I literally gave you my lunch, Naruto.”

“Yeah, but you were mean about it.”

“That’s because you were annoying about it.”

“I was hungry.”

“You were going to eat gravel.”

“I was going to eat around the gravel, thank you.”

“You keep saying that like it helps.”

“It does help!”

“It does not.”

“It shows determination.”

“It shows poor judgement.”

Naruto considers this for a moment, then nods like you have complimented him. “I have a lot of that.”

“... Poor judgement?”

“Determination.”

“With you, they seem related.”

He points an accusatory finger at you. “See? Mean.”

“You asked.”

“I asked if you were always mean. You didn’t have to prove it.”

“Well, I did. You’re welcome.”

His laugh comes fast, sudden and bright, and you find yourself looking down before your own mouth can join his in that unapologetic giggle of his. There is something dangerous about how easily he fills silence. Not necessarily dangerous in the way your father’s voice can become when it lowers, or the way your brother’s chakra makes even the windows tremble when his temper flares up. 

No—

Naruto feels dangerous in a different way.

He’s more innocent. Perhaps even more pure. And he doesn’t know how to leave emptiness alone. He sees a door threatening to jam shut with his fingers stuck in the frame, and forces his whole body through it. And if that door happens to close before he can barge through it, he pounds on it with both fists. He sees a quiet girl sitting alone beneath a tree and decides the tree has enough shade for two.

You should dislike him for that. Your parents would certainly despise him and his lack of orderly, quiet behavior.

You find you’re trying to dislike him.

Naruto is peering into your lunch again. You angle the container away, but his eyes follow it.

“No, Naruto.” 

“I didn’t even say anything!” he whines.

“You were thinking so loudly that I could hear you want more.”

“You can hear thoughts?”

“No. Yours are just obvious.”

He sits back, exasperated. “My thoughts are mysterious.”

“Well, your face is not.”

“My face is great, actually.”

“If it’s so great, why is it being accessorized by dirt?”

He reaches up so quickly he nearly knocks himself in the chin, eyes widening. He uses his hands to aggressively wipe away at his face. His palms are lightly dusted when he pulls them away, then he rubs them against his pants while glaring at the dirt like it has betrayed him personally.

You watch him with the reluctant fascination of someone observing a rare animal existing in the wild, far enough away from its unpredictable behavior to be considered at a safe distance.

Except you’re not at a safe distance.

Naruto is close enough that you can see the scuff marks on his sandals, the small tear near the hem of his jacket, the dirt drying on his knee where he must have hit the ground earlier harder than he pretended. He is all sharp elbows and restless knees and flailing limbs, too much movement tucked into his tall frame that seems still too small to contain it, every part of him prepared to spring up, shout, run, fight, laugh, or fall again and again and keep getting right back up.

There is no stillness in him. You can see that much physically, and also feel that much in his chakra. There is no containing him. It’s almost obscene.

“Why are you staring at me?” Naruto asks.

You look away, cheeks growing warm. “I’m not.”

“You were.”

“You had dirt on your face.”

“That was your fault.”

“How?”

“You distracted me.”

“It got there before we met. How is that my fault?”

“Yeah, but it happened because I knew we were gonna meet.”

There’s that same pesky laugh again, threatening to fall from your mouth. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve said by far.”

His eyes brighten. “So you’ve been keeping count?”

“No.”

“Sounds like a yes to me.”

“It sounds like you have hearing problems.”

“I do not!”

“You sure?”

“Well, I listened to your name, didn’t I, Sena?” He gives a soft smile.

“That was two words I said.”

He tilts his head at you. “Important words!”

The answer comes so quick from him, you almost miss the fact that it makes your chest twist with something strange.

You can’t stop looking at him.

Naruto doesn’t seem to realize he has said something worth noticing. He is already moved on, brushing dust from his knees, glancing toward the training posts where some of the other boys began throwing kunai after finishing their lunches eaten together, already restless inside the brief pause in your conversation that he created.

Important words.

You pick up a piece of bitter green with your chopsticks and hold it toward him.

Naruto looks at it. Then at you. Then back at it.

You see the suspicion return to his face instantly. 

“What is it?” he hesitantly asks.

“Food.”

“No, I know your tricks now, woman. What kind of food?”

“The green kind.”

“It doesn’t look kind.”

You almost roll your eyes, but decide to cave. “It’s bitter greens.”

“That sounds like a warning.”

“It is.”

“Then why are you giving it to me?”

“Because you said your mouth is strong.”

“I did not say that.”

“Well, you said it wasn’t weak.”

“That’s different!”

“Yeah? Prove it.”

Naruto’s eyes narrow, contemplating your challenge. That’s a trap, and both of you know it. 

And Naruto Uzumaki, you quickly learned, is very easy to trap if the bait is his pride.

He snatches the greens from your chopsticks and stuffs them into his mouth in one big bite before either of you can think any better about it. For two whole seconds, nothing happens. But you can already see his eyes glossing over, and you know more is to come.

After the third second passes, his entire soul leaves his body.

His face contorts with the full betrayal of a twelve-year-old discovering—too late—that his confidence will only carry him so far. He clamps one hand over his mouth and makes a sound that might have been a cough if it had not been oddly similar to a gag.

You raise your eyebrows in amusement, watching him fight for his life—for real—this time.

He chews once more, and his eyes begin to water.

“You can spit it out,” you offer.

Naruto shakes his head, jaw paralyzed.

“Are you sure, Naruto?” you ask, resisting the urge to chuckle at him.

He nods, attempting to chew, face red and shiny with blossoming sweat now.

“Looks like you lost this match to the greens,” you say.

He swallows. Barely. And clearly suppresses a gag. Then he grabs his water again, chugs half of it in one go, then gasps like he has returned from war and is no longer famished. You wait for him to recover.

He wipes the water and sweat from his mouth and the surrounding area. Then, he looks at you with fixated attention and seriousness.

 “That,” he coughs, “was a dirty, dirty trick.”

“You chose to prove yourself,” you shrug.

“You challenged me!”

“You accepted.”

“You poisoned me!”

“Please, you’re still alive, aren’t you?”

“Barely,” he wheezes.

“You’re dramatic.”

“And you’re evil.”

The retort is so absurd coming from him, so offended and breathless and pure, that the laugh slips out between your lips before you can stop it. Small, sure. Quieter than most would notice, but there nonetheless.

And Naruto hears it, of course. His expression changes with amazing speed, all the tragedy caused by the bitter greens vanishing beneath his vibrant triumph.

“You laughed,” he breathes.

“Barely.”

“It was more than that.”

“You hallucinated.”

“No, I heard it!”

“You were merely recovering from poison.”

“I was not.”

“You were.”

“It was real,” he insists, leaning forward, grin growing wider. “You laughed because I’m funny.”

“I laughed because you looked like you were in a losing fight with vegetables.”

“You’re lying.”

You’re annoyed. You should be more annoyed. But you can’t bring yourself to be. You’re still smiling, and that makes the annoyance less convincing than it should be.

Naruto notices that too. He seems to notice every crack in a wall once he realizes it exists, and what he has to do to see that specific crack out of all the others.

He points at your face, triumphant. “See? You’re still doing it!”

You turn away. “Whatever. Go eat your rocks.”

“I don’t have rocks anymore.”

“Then go find some!”

“You trying to get rid of me already, Sena?”

You hear it. The question is tossed out like another stupid joke of his, but something quieter lingers between the words and clings to the breath he used to say them. You feel it, too—the small shift, the tiniest pressure change in his chakra. It makes the air tighten around him, compressing him into something smaller. He hides it (badly) beneath a growing grin, hesitation lingering behind his eyes.

You wonder how no one else seems to see it.

You look into his eyes. Naruto is still smiling that too wide, too bright, too ready for your answer to hurt smile. And you realize, with a strangely familiar flair in your heart, that he does not expect people to let him stay. He expects to make people laugh, entertain—or exhaust—them for a while, force his way into something light and desirable, and then be shoved out of the way once he has fulfilled his purpose or has let too many things slip between the cracks of his teeth while adorning that infamous grin of his.

You understand that more than you want to. Understand him more than you think is appropriate for having just properly spoken to each other. And it’s not because you too force your way through doorways trying to slam shut despite your fingers being caught in the frame, but because you don’t. Because you have spent most of your seventeen years trying to be easy, only to still be set aside.

Your hands fall in your lap.

“No, Naruto, I’m not trying to get rid of you,” you finally say.

And he blinks, face straining to maintain that too wide of a grin. You see him fighting to keep the edges up despite their will to soften and lose some of their sharpness. For a moment, he looks younger than he did before. Younger than the shouting, the stealing, the stubbornness, the radiance he wears like a suit of armor around his heart.

“Good,” he says, sitting up straighter, “because I wasn’t planning on leaving.”

This time, you’re the one to ruin the moment.

“I didn’t invite you to stay,” you tease.

“Yeah, but you didn’t tell me to leave.”

‘That’s not the same thing.”

“It’s close!”

“You say that about everything, Naruto.”

“Because everything is close enough if you don’t think too hard.”

“Like how close my fist will be to your face if you don’t stop being annoying?”

He smiles again. And this time, it’s softer—actually genuine.

As the silence settles between you, it doesn’t feel like something you have to break. It is still unfamiliar and fragile, but Naruto fills silence quickly and brightly enough that—somehow—the space he leaves behind feels less empty than it did before.

You eat a bite of rice. He watches.

You angle your lunch away from him again. He smiles brighter.

“Can I have more egg?” he asks.

“No.”

“You’re supposed to offer.”

“I already did.”

“Offer again.”

“You’re very demanding for someone who ate my lunch and insulted it, Naruto.”

“I didn’t. Your lunch was the one to punch me in the mouth! If anything, I’ve been victimized!”

“That’s an insult.”

“That’s a description.”

“You said my greens poisoned you!”

“Well, they attacked me first!”

“You bit them, instigator.”

“They still started it!”

You and Naruto hold each other’s gazes, completely serious for approximately one moment before another grin tugs up one side of his mouth. And though you would rather throw yourself into a freezing pond than admit it, talking to Naruto is actually enjoyable. He talks enough for the both of you, which is fortunate because you do not yet know how to talk to someone who seems so determined to answer silence with himself—however that may be. 

Naruto then begins telling you about how Iruka-sensei is unfair because apparently yelling in class only counts as disruption when he does it. He tells you that Sasuke Uchiha thinks he is so cool just because all the girls have a crush on him, which, according to Naruto, is exactly what makes him not cool. He tells you he is going to become Hokage one day, loud enough that a few students nearby roll their eyes without properly facing him, and he says it with enough conviction that you can tell it’s more than a dream to him.

You tell him that yelling his goal across the yard does not make it more feasible. He tells you that makes it official. You tell him official things usually require paperwork, and ask if he knows how to read forms. He tells you paperwork is for people who are afraid of authentic greatness. You tell him that something that great knows how to read forms. He tells you that you sound like Iruka-sensei. You tell him he sounds like another headache.

And he laughs and claims another victory.

Naruto collects these little victories from places no one else would think to look, you’re beginning to understand. A stolen laugh, a half-answer, eye contact, a piece of egg accepted without complaint, a conversation longer than a minute with a stranger under the cool shade of a tree. He gathers them all with greedy but gentle and bright hands, as if the scraps may eventually become a feast if he collects enough.

To anyone else, it would be pathetic.

… But to you?

There’s something tender about the quiet that settles between the both of you. It’s incredibly bright and impossible not to see now that it’s there. Naruto looks at you, cheeks tinted pink, and for once, his mouth does not know what to do before his mind catches up. The grin falls into something softer, and the tightness around his eyes loosens.

Around you, the Academy yard keeps living. Kunai strikes wood. Students gossip. Someone shrieks with laughter near the water pump. Iruka-sensei calls a name from the classroom door, then another shortly after, his voice ringing throughout the yard.

No one calls your name.

No one calls Naruto’s either.

“What’s your house like?” he suddenly asks.

You feel your muscles tense. You try not to show it, and hope that he doesn’t notice. He is leaning back on his hands now, legs stretched out, staring up through the leaves as if the question is casual and means nothing. As if houses are simple—which he should know they aren’t always, as rumor tells about his own. As if everyone has one that can be described without choosing which truths to hide first.

You follow his gaze to the sky above, visible through little slivers between the leaves. Sunlight breaks through in scattered pieces, vibrating when the wind blows. It paints Naruto’s face in patches of gold and grey—bright, shadowed, bright again.

“Why?” you muster through your drying throat.

“Because you’re weird.”

“That’s rude.”

“I didn’t say bad weird!”

“You keep defending yourself badly.”

“I’m trying to say that you’re… interesting, Sena.”

You don’t face away from the view above, but your eyes drop in his direction. He’s still lost in the clouds that appear in splinters between the swaying leaves above, shoulders relaxed, feet crossed at his ankles. He looks careless. Easy. Like the word costs him nothing.

Naruto must feel your gaze on him, because he turns his head and catches you staring.

“What?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“That means something.”

“It means nothing, Naruto.”

“No, when people say ‘nothing’ like that, it means something.”

“You’re suddenly an expert?”

“Yeah.” He taps his temple. “People are always saying ‘nothing’ to me.”

The words are too honest. Too naked. Too innocent. He doesn’t even seem to realize until after they leave him, or the impact they’ve had on you.

For one breath, the noise of the Academy yard quiets around you. It’s not entirely gone, but it feels more distant, like that world has been pulled thin and away from you and Naruto. His gaze drops from the sky, head looking into his lap, his shaky hands keeping him upright digging into the dirt.

You understand then that Naruto’s loudness is not merely the opposite of silence—it is what silence made of him.

Your begin to feel strange.

You know what silence has made of you, and you don’t know what to do with someone it made so differently.

“My house is quiet,” you confess.

Naruto looks up too quickly. He’s waiting for more, impatiently at that, as if whatever answer you give him will matter because you are the one giving it.

His nose wrinkles. “That sounds boring.”

“It isn’t.” 

A lie.

“What, do you have secret stuff in there?”

He laughs before you can even answer, waving a hand between you both like he has already moved on. “I’m just kidding. My place is quiet too sometimes.”

“Sometimes.” … A lie.

You can tell. The word comes out lighter than the rest, faster, and too practiced to be a casual truth. You look at him, but he is already smiling again, this time shoving the door to his world closed, mindful of your fingers still resting on the frame, before either of you can peer too far through it to the other side.

“So,” he begins, “if your house is quiet, that explains why you’re like that.”

“Like what?”

“All…” he gestures vaguely to your person. “Like that.”

“That tells me nothing.”

“You know what I mean!”

“Well, that makes one of us.”

He sighs. “You sit like you’re trying not to make sound.”

He didn’t mean it cruelly. He doesn’t wear a teasing grin. There is no accusation sharpening the edges of the words, ensuring they pierce you as they fall upon you. If anything, it’s the opposite. Naruto says it like he’s pointing out the sky is blue, like the observation is something missing a more complex, subjective experience.

The words settle in softly.

Your eyes find the tree roots near your knees, twisting through the dirt all dark and knuckled before disappearing beneath the ground—where no one can see how deep they go.

“I’m sitting normally,” you answer, dismissive.

“No, you’re not.”

“You barely know me.”

“For now, but I can see you.”

Oh, you hate that. It’s not because it’s deep, because it’s not. Naruto certainly isn’t a poet. He has dirt on his face and bitter greens have nearly taken him out. You hate it because he doesn’t understand the things he touches when he reaches for them, he only reaches and doesn’t give it  a second thought.

And he doesn’t realize that, sometimes, merely reaching is enough to knock a fragile door off its hinges.

You begin packing your lunch up, and Naruto straightens immediately when he sees what you’re doing.

“Wait,” he looks at you with wider, sadder eyes than he did before. “Are you—you’re leaving?” 

“I am.”

“Why?”

“Because lunch is almost over.”

The tension in his shoulders eases slightly, but his eyes don’t let up. “Lunch isn’t almost over.”

“It is.”

“How do you know? Iruka-sensei hasn’t called us yet.”

You stand. “He’s about to.”

“So? Stay until he does,” Naruto pleads softly.

He scrambles up after you so quickly you take half a step back before you can stop yourself. You don’t think he understands why, but he notices—enough that his hands lift for a second to reach out and steady you, palms open, visible harmless.

That small, unconscious gesture unsettles you more than if he had actually grabbed you to steady you. Something tugs at your heartstrings. Something that weighs your body down, and wills your feet to not leave the shaded area under the tree. Something that wants you to sit back down. Sit closer to him. Spend more time talking with him.

His eyes are still wide, though this time you think it’s from surprise at his own automatic reflex.

“I didn’t—” he begins.

“It’s okay.”

His hands lower.

For a moment, neither of you move, staring at each other as slivers of grey and gold pattern your skin and his, your eyes locked onto his and his on yours, tender. The wind brushes through your hair and tussles his, the remnants of the lies that danced between you being carried up before disappearing in the leaves.

The spell, if that is what it was, breaks when the door slides open across the yard, and Iruka-sensei calls for everyone to come back inside. Students groan. You hear one complaining that lunch was too short as he meanders toward the door. The boys poking fun at Naruto earlier pass without looking at him, their laughter already entertained by something else.

Naruto doesn’t watch them.

“After class,” he begins, “you can show me where you go.”

It’s less than a statement, more than a question. An inkling of hope and attachment glimmers in his eyes as he keeps looking at you.

And you crush it.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because, no.”

“But I just met you,” he says, like that should make his request more reasonable instead of significantly worse. “So if you leave now, then I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

So he really didn’t notice before.

“We are in the same class, Naruto.”

“Oh.” He pauses. “... Right.” You stare at him, face blank. He grins back. “But still—” 

“There is no ‘but still,’” you interrupt.

“There’s always a ‘but still.’”

“No, there isn’t.”

“But still,” he repeats, proving himself in the most irritating way possible, “you should hang out after class.”

“I have to go home.”

“Just for a little bit?”

“No.”

“Tomorrow?”

“No.”

“Another day?”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what day I mean.”

“You mean any day.”

“Yeah.”

“No.”

Naruto scowls, but there is something wounded beneath it now—the small, stubborn bruise of a boy who has decided too quickly that he wants something and still cannot understand why his wanting never makes the world soften.

“But… why, Sena?”

Past the Academy, past most of the roofs in Konoha, toward streets you could walk with your eyes closed, lies a house that is already waiting for you in silence. A house where time is measured differently. Where being late is not just being late. Where questions must follow strict guidelines. Where laughter must know its place. Where your mother’s care is folded into perfect lunches and your father’s fear wears the shape of rules.

You think of saying all of it. 

He just wouldn’t understand.

You look back at Naruto, who has known you for less than an hour and already seems offended by the idea that he cannot keep you.

“My house,” you choose your words carefully, “has strict rules. I mustn’t be late.”

Naruto frowns. “That’s stupid.”

The answer comes so quickly, so pure, a part of you grows so amused you could laugh. But you don’t, because he says it like rules are things that can lose their shape if you bend them enough. Like your house is only wood and doors and adults who can be ignored if you are quiet enough. Like home is not something that has swallowed you whole.

You head toward the open door where Iruka-sensei is greeting the students filtering back inside. Naruto bounds to your side, because apparently being at your side is something he does now.

“Can you tell me what kind of rules?” he asks as he matches his pace with yours.

You don’t answer. It’s not that you’re trying to be mysterious—

It’s because the first rule of your house is that you do not explain the rules to anyone from the outside.

And Naruto Uzumaki, loud and hungry and strange enough to sit beneath your tree and make conversation with you without asking first, is still a stranger…

Even though he’s not entirely feeling like one anymore.

---

a/n

hi readers <3 i hope you're all enjoying the story so far! feedback is welcome :)

i only proofread this one time cuz this chapter is so mf long. please forgive any editing mistakes i missed.

PLAIGARISM IS ILLEGAL

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x female oc reader (Attack on Titan) 18+ explicit content

Genre: canon-divergent, hella slowburn, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological

Warnings: 18+—profanity, distress,1 spell of dry heaving, self-loating, injury, pain, blood, wound description/cleaning, low self-esteem, negative self-talk, beginning of homicide discussion: death of a family member revealed, idk canon-typical aot stuff

Word Count: 2578

Status: Ongoing

Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter (coming soon!)

---

Chapter 22 - All Is Quiet Before Sunrise

Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3

Mornings in the Underground never arrive with birdsong or warmth. There are no rays of sun streaming through windows, or gentle breezes that caress skin like the soft touch of a mother. Dew merely drips from the cavernous ceiling above, condensation slick against cool stone as it seeps through and saturates the Underground with rot. It festers in quieter places—in the seams of brick and the hollows of warped floorboards. In the folds of fabric left out too long to dry. In the lungs of drunks that have never known what it feels like to breathe clean air. The rot settles into everything with slow, patient persistence, until the entire world feels heavy. It’s mushy in all the wrong places, dry and cracked in the ones that matter the most.

And the chapel is no different. 

When you wake this morning, the air is already choking you with it.

The flame of the lantern perched on your desk sways lazily, barely keeping the shadows away, and it dimly illuminates your room. Rot clings to your skin as you sit up, dries the back of your throat as you draw your first conscious breath, and saturates the bandage at your neck where your dried blood has stiffened the cloth into something rough and unforgiving against your skin. The ache in your ribs and wrist greet you before your first thought does, deepening the moment you straighten your spine. 

You don’t pay any mind to the pain. There is nothing to gain from acknowledging something that will not leave.

You push your plush blanket from your body, swing your legs over the side of the bed, and rise, acclimating yourself to your old friend before crossing the room. The chill of the stone floor bites at the soles of your feet with immediate hostility. It reminds you that a new day has arrived, and the sunrise is nigh whether it welcomes the morning or not. 

Your clothes await you in your dresser, folded seemingly more from habit than care. You reach for them and begin putting them on, still without thought. Your shirt is unpleasant as it brushes over the bruises scattered across your ribs and shoulder before settling tight against your skin. Then your pants—black cargos. The simple, routine act of dressing feels heavier this early morning, each motion slower, your body reluctant to forget what was done to it last night—or only a few hours ago.

The fresh pair of black boots Silas bought for you sit by the door—still pristine. You’ve been mindful to take care of them.

You stare at their polish for a moment.

Then you pull them on.

By the time you step into the corridor, you’re assembled as Silas’s Thorn enough to be seen. The chapel has already begun to stir to life around you. Sluggish boots drag heavily through the halls. Low voices echo off the walls, indistinguishable before they’re swallowed by the old spine of the building. Somewhere afar, wood groans beneath the drag of a crate being hauled into position—likely the goods from the shipment, you presume—followed by the sharp murmur of a man cursing under his breath. The building itself feels half-asleep still, swaying, but never fully resting. It never does.

It never can.

The washroom sits at the far end of the corridor, tucked between a storage closet and one of the narrower stairwells—one you frequently climb as you aimlessly wander around the halls like a caged farm animal. The washroom door hangs slightly crooked on its hinges, rusted with years of rot and damp, and groans softly when you lift it to shut the door fully.

The air inside is colder. And wetter.

It smells faintly of soap, but not enough to conceal the mildew that has long since made a home in the grout between the stone wall. A shallow porcelain basin sits on an old table beneath a mirror gone cloudy with age, condensation accumulating on the side of the mirror closest to the open window, reflection warped enough to make your face look slightly wrong.

You look at yourself only briefly, but it’s long enough to note the exhaustion in your eyes. To recognize the shape of your own face and feel no attachment to it—like the Thorne you once were has long since been stripped from to her bones, and the reflection before you now only recognizes the Thorn sharpened by Silas’s hand. But you feel no attachment to her. You don’t feel much of anything at all, for that matter.

Your mind has long since grown quiet. Obedient to Silas. 

You reach for the bandage at your throat first. 

The cloth peels away swiftly, stinging in places where dried blood has welded it to your wound. The cut beneath isn’t deep, but it’s angry—red and raised, bruising slightly in the skin that surrounds the open wound.

A reminder. A reminder left behind by a man who could have ended you, and very nearly did.

Doom grows in your chest.

You set the bloodied linen aside and dip your fingers into the basin. The cold water stings your knuckles. You drag your fingers carefully along the cut, cleaning away what dried blood frames it like a painting. The sting is immediate. And you welcome it, for pain that can be cleaned away is easier to tolerate. 

You rewrap your wound with clean linen stored in the washroom and using your experienced hands, chin tippied up as you fasten it at the front of your neck. The fresh cloth is rougher than you wish.

Your wrist comes next.

The linen around it stiffly wrapped. You begin unwinding it slowly, careful not to jostle the joint. Even so, pain blooms deep in your wrist and climbs into your hand and up your forearm, hot and immediate, with each pass you make to remove the cloth. 

You clench your jaw and exhale a sharp breath through your nose.

Your wrist looks worse under the washroom’s pathetic lantern light. Swollen at the joint, the skin is stretched taut and darkened into shades that resemble what you imagine would paint a cloudy sunset aboveground. Your fingers twitch and threaten to curl into a fist on instinct, then stop when the pain restrains them.

Sloppy. Too confident. 

Nothing without the power of another…

You should have been better.

You dip the rag back in the basin and drape it carefully over the swelling. Cold shocks through the joint enough to force a quip inhale through your clenched teeth, and your fingers tense. Your hands find the lip of the basin and they tighten until the porcelain design imprints into your palm, grounding you while the pulse of the ache settles into something lower and quieter.

Morin walked away with mere bruises.

And Damon had to intervene. 

Gods, you useless, weak girl.

Humiliation curls heavily in your gut, shame following close behind and coiling even tighter with every breath that strains against your bruised ribs. You feel guilty that you could not fulfil Silas’s mission—

Not alone.

Your jaw tightens. Bile stirs in your intestines, sour. The thought rots fast—faster than the half-spoiled fruit that makes it way into this Underground hellhole—turning rancid before it can even settle.

You can’t digest it.

Useless is too soft a word for what you were last night.

Sloppy. Predictable. Weak. 

Weak enough to need saving.

Your tense fingers tremble at your side, itching to curl into a first, only stopped by the sharp protest of your wrist. 

You find your cloudy reflection in the mirror again. You stare at the linen around your throat, the bruise blooming beneath the bandage, at the girl Morin nearly folded into the dirt and left there.

Shame overcomes you so fast it disorients you. It burns hotter than the pain of your wound and wrist. Hotter than the sting in your throat. Hotter than the pulse in your ribs and shoulder. It climbs your spine in a slow, nauseating crawl, leaving a wreckage of goosebumps in its chilling wake.

Bile stirs again, this time higher in your gut.

Your stomach lurches.

No.

Your good hand shoots to the basin just as your body folds forward.

The retch tears through you violently, sharp enough to light your ribs on fire. You brace yourself harder against the basin, shoulders tightening, wrist screaming as a dry heave wracks through your body and leaves you shivering over the bowl. You cough and bitter acid burns the back of your throat, humiliation following in wretched, ugly loops.

Your breathing runs ragged.

Thin.

Utterly pathetic.

A knock suddenly booms against the washroom door. You straighten so hard and fast your back cracks.

“Thorn,” a deep, groggy voice mutters through old wood. One of Silas’s men—of course.

Your stomach drops.

“Boss wants you. Now.”

You stare into the now discolored basin below, pulse pounding in your ears.

For one shameful second, you want to wither away.

Then training and instinct take over.

“Understood,” you call back.

Your voice comes out rougher than usual. 

Silence greets you from the other side, followed by heavy retreating footsteps.

In less than a few moments, you snatch the rag from where it fell over the basin’s lip and wipe your mouth quickly. You dump the contents of the basin out the window to get rid of the evidence. Your hand trembles only once when you set it back down, but you force it still. You scrub the remaining chunks from the porcelain with urgency until the only thing left behind is the smell of soap and mildew. 

Just as it was when you walked in.

You release a breath you didn’t realize you were holding, bracing yourself over the basin for only a second longer.

Then you straighten.

Carefully.

Your ribs protest anyways. Your wrist throbs. Your throat stings from more than just Morin’s blade now.

But none of that matters, because by the time you reach for the door, your face is empty again. Wiped clean like the basin. Composed. Stoic. Unreadable. 

Silas’s Thorn does not let anyone see the cracks.

And she certainly does not break over a damn basin before sunrise.

—

By the time you arrive at The Confessional, you manage to push the nausea down far enough that it begins to feel like hunger. 

The fire burns lively in the fireplace when you enter the room, but its heat does not travel far enough to reach you. It merely illuminates the room, casting orange hues over stone and smoke over dim lanternlight. But it warms nothing it touches.

SIlas sits broadly at the head of the table, one ankle crossed over the opposite knee, arms loose in the way they tend to be when it’s just the two of you. His suit is immaculate as always. Dark. Pressed. Pristine. His hair is slicked back with what looks like a mixture between grease and gel—he must not have had time to bathe. Not a single element out of place to suggest he lives in a city built on filth, rot, and blood. 

He looks up at you only after the door closes behind you. 

You step further into the room. 

Damon is not here. Your eyes register that fact immediately. Some small, instinctive part of you expected him to be stationed somewhere in the corner of the room, covered in shadows with his arms crossed and his expression unreadable, within an earshot of Silas’s conversation with you. 

But it’s only Silas. And the crackle of the fire. And the heavy quiet that suffocates the remainder of the space.

Silas watches you take your final step toward the table, his gaze dropping briefly to the fresh linen at your throat, then to the wrap around your wrist.

He says nothing about either.

“Sit.”

You obey.

The chair groans softly beneath you as you lower yourself in it. Pain strikes at your ribs sharp enough to remind you of the state of your body before your mind can conjure what the hell this meeting could be about. You keep your face still. Posture straight, despite the ache in your lower back. Your hands sit politely in your lap despite the hot throb of pooling blood in your injured wrist.

Silas studies you for a moment longer than necessary, then reaches for the teacup beside him.

“You look awful,” he says at last. His words aren’t unkind; they’re objective, observant—which makes them worse.

You force your expression not to shift, and it’s not difficult because you barely have the energy to make an expression.

“I’m functional, Silas,” you tell him.

His mouth curves up faintly, but it’s not quite amusement. Not exactly approval, either.

“Well, I hope so.”

He finally takes a sip of his tea, and the room falls quiet again.

You can’t quite explain it, but something feels… wrong.

Silas has rarely been this patient when he has summoned you in the past, and you can’t imagine he would summon you for some small-talk. Or even for a check-up. He prefers his conversations to be of purpose. He values efficiency. Direction. He wastes no breaths speaking empty words, often cutting right to the core of his summons whenever he sends for you. He does not call you into The Confessional simply to let silence breathe between the two of you…

Which means this is not simple. Which means he has something to say, and he’s trying to say it carefully.

Your stomach tightens with the realization. 

Silas sets the teacup down on the table with a soft clink, then folds his hands together atop the table.

“There’s been another development in the mission,” he says.

Your pulse spikes once against the cut at your throat, and it begins stinging.

“What development?” you ask.

Silas’s gaze stays on you, calm and unreadable. He looks at you in that way that always makes you feel as though he’s studying you from the inside out.

“It concerns someone tied to you,” he continues.

Something inside your chest draws tighter than Silas’s web ever has around your neck. It’s not quite fear… more like an activation of your nervous system. Your body seems to understand where this is going before your mind can process.

And Silas notices. Of course he does.

His eyes sharpen for a fraction of a moment—nearly imperceptible—as they track the quiet tension that begins to overtake your frame. He leans back in his chair, bringing his folded hands to his lap. He taps his index finger twice on the knuckle of his adjoined hand. 

Then he sits as still and cold as stone.

And when he speaks again, his voice is low. A near whisper. Almost gentle.

“Your grandfather was murdered.”

---

a/n

i hope you're all enjoying! feedback is always welcome.

this story is about to get darker and psychologically heavier. shit is getting REAL folks. i also have a little more free time with summer and all, so hopefully i can update for frequently for yall :)

thats all.

PLAIGARISM IS ILLEGAL

Pairing: Naruto Uzumaki x female oc reader | Sasuke Uchiha x female oc reader (Naruto) 18+ explicit content

Genre: canon-divergent (aged up), hella slowburn, love triangle, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological

Warnings: 18+—profanity, canon-typical violence, implied mass violence, bloodline persecution, attempted capture, self-destruction/suicide as a wartime protocol, implied death, fear, trauma, Orochimaru fuckass-related harvest implications, DARK themes, idk canon-typical naruto stuff

Word Count: 3782

Status: Ongoing

Masterlist // Next Chapter

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Chapter 1 - The Harvest

Read Rain Made of Storms on AO3

The sea breathes against the black rocks and fine sand as it always does, dragging foam over the shore in long, pale streaks. Fishing boats knock softly against the docks and against the waves farther out in the ocean. Children run barefoot through narrow lanes slick with saltwater and puddles, the only evidence that remains of last night’s storm that has long since been chased away by fluffy clouds and a warm, bright sun. Smoke rises from cookfires. Prayer bells chime somewhere near the old temple, squawking seagulls dominating the skies as the villagers roam the streets; bodies lean into jewelry stalls, hands graze ripe and juicy fruits, hungry eyes skim over fish freshly caught an hour ago.

Everything looks alive.

That’s the mercy of it—of this quiet village surrounded by water.

The morning moves the way mornings always move in the village—slowly, as the rest of the population stirs awake to catch up with the early-risers. Doors slide open to let the fresh air in. Windows welcome the warm rays of sunlight. Fishing nets are untangled. Old women sit beneath awnings with their hands folded over baskets overflowing with bitter greens, harmonious laughs erupting from their mouths. Men barter over the price of fish. And somewhere in the distance, someone laughs too loudly, and somewhere else, a mother scolds a child for stepping too close to the tide pools.

Nobody in the village is prepared.

The first wrong thing is small enough to be overlooked, after all.

It’s a bell—one that does not answer its usual call.

There are many bells in the village. Temple bells. Dock bells. Prayer bells. Warning bells set high in the watch posts beyond the outer roads that surround the island. Their chimes are old and familiar to all the villagers, each one distinct enough to be recognizable from anywhere on the island. The bell to the east is thin. The bell on the harbor is deep. The temple bells sing in solemn harmony.

Today, the north bell does not sound, even when it should. Not even after the western bell sends another ring its way.

The northern path is the first to catch mainlanders, the first to taste foreign fruit, the first to tell the village when strangers are coming through the Traveler’s Port. Every arrival is announced without failure. Every merchant caravan. Every wandering monk. And every time the bell to the west rings, the northern bell responds, followed by the chimes of the eastern then southern bells.

This morning, the northern bell stays silent.

Most of the villagers don’t notice, their ears familiar enough with its chime to drown it out altogether. A fisherman wipes his knife against his apron. A girl bites into a plum and lets the juice pool in her hand and run down her wrist. Two boys chase each other between drying sheets strung out in the backyard, their feet slapping drying stone.

But near the old temple, an elder pauses. His hand tightens around the string of prayer beads at his wrist. A woman at the fruit stall looks up a moment later, not toward the customer who appeared before her, but toward the rooftops. Her eyes narrow, and her pulse jumps. But she says nothing. She only gathers the child beside her with one hand and reaches beneath her sleeve with the other.

Then, from the northeastern part of the village, a dog begins to bark.

Once.

Twice.

Then it stops.

Abruptly. 

The morning shifts by a degree so slight it would be easy to mistake it for a chilling gust of wind. The seagulls scatter from the rooftops all at once, wings flashing white and grey against the clear sky. The wind changes direction. Smoke from the cookfires grow thick and heavy and drop, polluting the air in the village. At the docks, ropes tied around the fishing boats groan under newfound immense strain, though the tide has not changed.

And beneath it all—this quiet, routine, familiar way of welcoming the morning—something unfamiliar taints the air.

It’s not loud. Barely apparent.

But there.

A foreign chakra signature slips through the village like light slivering beneath the crack at the bottom of the door. 

Those who cannot sense the chakra continue their routines—

Those who can grow still.

But not all at once, for that would be far too obvious. And this village is old enough to know that fear, when shown too quickly, becomes an invitation to seize.

A jeweler lowers a silver chain back into its tray. A temple attendant stops sweeping. A woman selling seaweed broth turns her face away from the crowd and murmurs something to the employee beside her.

“Go home.”

The employee frowns. “Why—?”

“Now.”

Across the stand, a mother orders her child to do the same. Then another villager down the street does the same.

Still, no one acts irrationally or chaotically.

Not even as five men appear at the mouth of the northern road.

They don’t come dressed as soldiers. That’s the second wrong thing. There are no banners. No uniform. No armor of any kind. No headbands marked with a village crest despite their intense combined chakra—which is the third wrong thing. No declaration. No shouted demand for surrender. 

Their clothes are plain, their faces half-shadowed by large woven hats. They could almost pass for travelers, if travelers moved with such silence and intense chakra. If travelers arrived without the bell at the Traveler’s Port being rung. If travelers carried sealing tags stitched into the inside of their sleeves for easy access.

They step into the village.

The marketplace, once vibrant with life, noise, and villagers scattering about, has come to a halt.  

One of the outsiders turns his head—

Away from the center of the marketplace, and toward the old bloodline quarter.

It seems the villagers come to a conclusion then—one drawn from years of wisdom, practice, and knowledge of the ancient bloodlines that live quietly here—though the conclusion is not grasped fully. Not understood with the weight it carries, affirmed by the crushing presence of the chakra of the outsiders before them.

Mothers reach for their children. Elders step away from the open streets. Doors close, softly at first, then faster.

The outsiders don’t stop them.

They do not care about the doors that close in the fishermen’s district. They do not care about the cooks, the merchants, the children with plum juice on their hands. 

They simply do not care about the village… as a whole.

Only certain houses. Only certain names.

It is then that the prayer bells begin to ring wrong.

—

The old bloodline quarter of the village hears it first.

Doors shutting. Curtains snapping shut. Children whining from being pulled inside by hands that tremble too violently to be gentle. In the brief space between a sharp exhale and an anxious inhale, the narrow lanes surrounding the oldest houses in the village grow vacant. Stalls are entirely abandoned. Bowls of broth sit still steaming on tables. Half-counted coins are left on the counter.

Life in the village has entirely retreated.

And within the oldest houses, behind walls carved with symbols no outsider of the bloodlines has ever been taught to read, the sacred bloodlines are summoned.

The ones who made it home in time, at least.

Private messengers move through hidden corridors established beneath the bloodline quarter, concealed from foreign eyes, their sandals striking damp stone, their voices low and urgent as they carry the meaning of the bells' misaligned chimes from one house to another. Lori. Arashi. Then the smaller branch families. The keepers of old archives. Soldiers. The elders whose bodies have long since weakened, but whose memories still hold techniques never seen by paper.

They do not gather at the temple.

No—

That would be too public. 

They gather beneath it, the sacred bloodline families pooling into the underground chamber where only matters of utmost importance have been deliberated. Beneath the prayer wall, the offering room, and the stone floor of the temple worn smooth by generations of knees and bowed heads. The chamber is older than the temple itself. It’s circular on the inside, built from dark, dense stone veined with pale mineral lines that faintly shine when chakra moves too close. There are no decorations. Only a few low candles scattered throughout the room and pooled in the center of the large, round table.

The bloodline elders stand in silence around the table. Clan heads and advisors do the same. Nobody sits. They do as the elders do. Their presence has weight here—

House Lori. House Arashi. Branch Vaelith. Branch Seryn.

Old names. Ancient names. Guarded names. Names spoken softly in the village due to respect, and never spoken of at all beyond it.

The last elder to arrive is bleeding from the mouth. He does not wipe the blood away.

“The enemy has breached the north watchtower,” he reports.

No one asks how. The question is irrelevant.

Another elder steps forward, her hair bound in silver cords, her palms pressed together so tightly her knuckles have grown white. “How many?”

“Five seen in the market. More scouted moving through the treeline. More seen coming in at the docks.”

“And their target?”

The bleeding elder closes his eyes, as if trying to escape the horrifying reality before him.

The chamber grows silent. 

“The carriers, undoubtedly.”

The air tightens with the collective understanding of every person inside the chamber, even though no further explanation comes. An invasion can be survived. A siege can be endured. A war can be negotiated or resisted or at least fought.

But this is not war.

The woman with silver-corded hair looks toward the oldest among them, a man so old and thin he seems carved from a grave, his eyes gone grey with age but still steady. Sharp. He has not moved since entering the chamber. He has only listened.

Now, he lifts one hand.

“Destroy the records first.”

No one argues when the High Patriarch speaks.

Along the chamber walls, men and women turn toward the side passages. Within moments, the first group moves out, venturing deeper into the underground bloodline quarter. Toward family archives hidden underground and behind false walls. Toward scroll rooms sealed beneath deceptive floorboards. Toward memory stones, teaching tablets, marriage records, birth ledgers, ritual maps, anatomical studies, training diagrams, bloodline histories, and every written proof that the Lori and Arashi names have ever existed with power worth stealing.

“Burn what can burn,” the High Patriarch says. “Break what cannot. Salt the ink. Leave nothing whole enough to be deciphered.”

A younger elder flinches. “There are centuries kept in those rooms, High Patriarch.”

The High Patriarch does not flinch. 

“Ensure the chakra catalogues are completely destroyed.”

The younger elder bows. “Yes.”

The next order from the High Patriarch comes even faster than the last.

“All soldiers step forward.”

This time, the chamber stirs.

The Arashi fighters step forward first. They are easy to recognize even before they move, not because of their distinct maroon clothing, but because of the pressure their chakra places on the room. It pushes outward by nature. Even contained in a chamber, it strains. It hums under vibrant skin and bone like thunder waiting for permission to rumble after a lightning strike.

The Lori fighters move after them, quieter, their chakra sinking inward until even the chamber seems to lose track of where they stand. They don’t look as dangerous. That has always been the mistake outsiders make.

“Your orders are not to defend the village,” the High Patriarch begins. “The village soldiers will handle that.”

He looks at them all.

“You defend the bloodline houses. You delay capture. You destroy routes behind you if necessary. You do not allow the enemy to access the archives. You do not allow them to access the elders.”

No one misunderstands.

“Most of all, you do not allow them to access even the dead.”

His last order chills the chamber more than the rest.

Not even the dead…

Because this enemy has not come only for the living’s chakra. Even a cold body can be useful if the hands are cruel enough.

The silver corded-woman inhales, and when she speaks, her voice is gentle. Though it is an order that leaves her lips, it does not sound like one. It sounds like fate inevitably on its way to seal their lives.

“If capture becomes certain, you know what must be done.”

No one answers. They know.

Every bloodline soldier in the chamber was taught the final rite before they were taught their first killing technique. Not because anyone believed it would be needed—not truly, at least. Not in this age. Not in this quiet village surrounded by water, where the outside world feels distant enough to become a myth. Where the sacred bloodlines are far enough removed from civilization that they themselves become a myth.

But these old families have not survived all these years by blindly trusting distance.

The final rite is not spoken of often, nor is it written in any records. It is not practical to perform before children. It lives in the body, in the chakra pathways, in the last place an enemy can reach before death. 

The High Patriarch’s gaze moves between each of the soldier’s eyes.

“If you are taken, you end yourself. If you are restrained, you end yourself.”

The candles in the center of the table bend low, cowering under the weight of his orders.

“If your body is about to fall into their hands, living or dead, you destroy anything that can be used.”

A soldier near the front closes his eyes. Another reaches for the prayer cord around his wrist. A third exhales a shaky breath.

The High Patriarch’s voice hardens, as he gives his final command to the soldiers.

“You do not die intact.”

The last hope for survival breaks.

The soldiers bow as one, then they leave.

There are no speeches. No cries of honor. No promises of victory. No high spirits. They move into the passages beneath the temple and disappear toward the houses bearing their names, toward streets where outsiders are already walking with sealing tags and destructive jutsu sewn into their sleeves, toward homes where children are hidden in cupboards, beneath floors, anywhere small enough for their terror to fit.

Only after the soldiers are gone does the chamber turn toward the ones who have not been allowed to step forward yet.

The young.

The untrained.

The unfinished.

The ones old enough to understand the situation, but not old enough to be trusted with carrying it out themselves.

Maela Lori-Vaelith stands beside one of the stone pillars, her fingers curled so tightly into her sleeves that her nails pierce through the fabric. She is only seventeen. Too old to be comforted. Too young to be useful in the way she wants to be—and by only a year. Her chakra is folded down so hard inside her body that her skull aches with it in a debilitating migraine.

Across the table is Vaeren Arashi-Seryn, looking ready to tear the chamber apart with his own two hands. He is freshly eighteen by a day, broad-shouldered and shaking with the effort of remaining still. His chakra presses outward with every breath, angry enough to make the mineral veins in the walls glow around him. Two older Arashi men stand close—not touching him, but near enough to stop him if he runs for the stairs and tries to take matters on the surface into his own hands.

His eyes are on the exit.

Maela knows it, because hers are too.

The silver-corded elder looks at them first. Then at the others gathered behind them. Seven young carriers in total from the two houses. A few more stragglers from the branch families. Some barely past childhood. All old enough to bear names the enemy wants. None trained enough to protect their names from being taken.

“You young ones are to leave through the lower tide passage,” she says.

Vaeren’s head snaps toward her. “No.”

An older man behind him snarls his name.

“I said no,” Vaeren affirms, louder now. “You need fighters. I can fight.”

She raises a hand, and Vaeren stills. “What we need are survivors of the sacred bloodlines.”

“But I can fight!” the boy yells.

“You can burn,” the elder says. “You cannot control the ash yet, young House Arashi boy.”

Vaeren’s jaw clenches. The pressure of his chakra swells, and several people from House Lori nearest him brace without meaning to. Maela feels it in her teeth. In all her bones. In the old fear beneath the room.

But the elder, ascending from House Lori herself, does not step back.

“If they take you alive, you do not know enough to stop them. If they kill you, you do not know enough to make your body useless. You are not being spared because you are weak. You are being sent away because you are incomplete.”

Vaeren has a look in his eyes that says he would rather be called weak.

The High Patriarch suddenly turns to Maela. “You—”

She straightens immediately.

“You will keep all them hidden as long as you can,” he orders.

Her mother is not in the chamber. Neither is her father. They are somewhere above, scurrying around House Lori and Branch Vaelith, destroying what her family has spent generations preserving. The knowledge makes her stomach twist violently, but she keeps her face still because that is what she has been taught.

Containment is not disappearance. But right now, she wants to disappear so badly it feels like a prayer she hadn’t realized her soul had been longing for.

But she perseveres, and gives a curt nod to the High Patriarch upon receiving her order. Because that is what Lori-Vaelith daughters are taught to do. Hold. shelter. Swallow the shaking before anyone can see it, and lend a steady hand to those who cannot bury it themselves.

A sound suddenly tears through the ceiling above them. Stone dust falls from the chamber roof. Someone screams in the temple overhead—unsettlingly audible given the layers between the chamber below and the floor of the temple above. The candle flames around the room bow sideways as a wave of foreign chakra overtakes the rest of the village.

This meeting is over.

The silver-corded woman grips Maela by the shoulders and turns her toward the lower passage.

“Maela, my dear, do not dare use your true names once you leave this chamber.”

Maela stares at her, face stoic.

The elder’s fingers tighten around her shoulders and a look of desperation flashes across her face.

“Do you understand?”

A thousand things move through Maela’s heart. Fear. Confusion. Rage. The sudden, childish thought that if she obeys, if she stops being Maela Lori-Vaelith of House Lori and Branch Vaelith, descendant and grandaughter of House Lori’s elder, then the girl who was born in this village will die before her body ever does.

Above them, another explosion shakes the temple. More dust rains from the ceiling along with a few broken pieces of stone.

Maela knows it’s time to leave now.

She nods at her grandmother.

“I will protect the carriers.”

Across the table, Vaeren’s eyes are wet with fury.

“And when do we come back?” he yells in fury.

No one has an answer, and that is enough. His face changes, and Maela sees the exact moment he understands that he is not being sent on a mission he will inevitably return from; he is being exiled from his grave before it is dug.

The High Patriarch steps forward at last. His frail hand gently closes around Vaeren’s wrist as their eyes meet, and for one breath, the pressure in the chamber eases.

“You carry House Arashi blood in you,” he says. “And Branch Seryn.”

He then looks to Maela. “And you carry House Lori and Branch Vaelith blood.”

His gaze moves across the other children who remain.

“You are not children today. You are what remains if we fail.”

The High Patriarch then reaches into his sleeve and removes a small black seal, folded into the shape of a square. He releases Vaeren’s wrist and reaches for Maela’s, pressing it firmly into her open palm. The paper is warm.

“What is it?” she asks.

“A route that will burn after opening,” the High Patriarch replies.

“Where does it lead?”

“Somewhere that is not here.”

A scream echoes from above, closer. Louder than the first.

The lower passage opens behind them with a groan from the heavy stone. Cold air pours up from the dark, wet and sharp like salt flakes, smelling of seaweed. 

The young carriers are ushered toward it one by one. Some cry. Some do not. One boy shakes so violently that he vomits against the wall and apologies until someone drags him forward despite his body’s instinctual protest. A girl no older than thirteen keeps repeating her mother’s name until she’s out of breath.

Maela does not cry. Vaeren does not move.

For a fleeting moment, their eyes meet each other from across the table. They know each other, but not well. Not intimately. Not yet. Their houses are old allies, old opposites, old balances like yin and yang. Heard each other’s names in lessons about what containment must withstand and what release must defend.

Now their names are being buried in the same breath.

But they are the two oldest of the young carriers. They know their roles.

“Vaeren,” Maela says.

His eyes cut to her. The chamber shakes again. One of the children begins to wail. The temple bells above crack into a wild, broken, unfamiliar sound.

“We have to go.”

For a moment, it seems like Vaeren will refuse anyway. Then someone above screams his family name, and all the color from his face drains in the moment preceding its echo off the chamber’s walls.

The older men beside him seize his arms and shove him toward the passage before he can run toward the sound. He fights them once, violently enough that one of them nearly hits the wall, but then the old man says his name one more time—not just Vaeren, but the full name, the true name, the name that belongs to his blood and bones and every fibre of his being and ever storm that came before him.

“Vaeren Arashi-Seryn.”

And he stills.

“Live, my grandson,” the High Patriarch says.

The passage swallows the young carriers whole, dense stone sliding back into place with a final, heavy thud.

Above them, the bells keep ringing until they no longer sound like bells at all.

---

a/n

i hope you all enjoy! this is gonna be a super super long one. feedbacl is welcome!

Last updated June 06 2026

Visit my page for the most recent version of my masterlist!

This story is 18+ due to explicit content, mature content, and dark themes.

In a house full of storms, you are the quiet rain.

The overlooked daughter. The useful sister. The shinobi everyone calls hardworking because they do not know what else to call someone without power. Your chakra is quiet. Your past is sealed. Your bloodline is a secret no one dares to speak aloud.

But when an ancient power begins to stir beneath your skin, the life your parents built for you starts to crack.

Between the boy who sees too much and the boy who stays through time, you are pulled into a truth buried before you were born—

A truth tied to Orochimaru, a destroyed, distant homeland, and a name that was never supposed to be yours.

And you are left caught between the life built to hide you and the storm born to find you.

| 18+ | Naruto Uzumaki x female oc reader | Sasuke Uchiha x female oc reader | canon-divergent (aged up) • love triangle • slowburn • angst • smut • mystery • dark • psychological |

Chapters

—please let me know if any links stop working

Read Rain Made of Storms on AO3

Chapter 1 (prologue) - The Harvest

Chapter 2 - Through the Frame

Chapters 3+ are in the works!

———————————————————————

author's note

i hope you all enjoy my story! ALL CHARACTERS ARE AGED UP. it's gonna be a super super long one. SO MUCH lore to establish, dynamics, characters, relationships, all that good stuff. there will be a few chapters in the beginning before naruto, sasuke, and the other shinobi are introduced, but please don't fret; they will be entering the story quickly!

to give the most bland rundown (for clarification purposes), this is a story wherein reader falls for Sasuke first, he leaves the village (canon), reader’s feelings for Sasuke remain, Naruto trains with Jiraiya then returns to the village (canon), then reader later falls for Naruto. They are not a throuple in this story—reader will love both separately. I haven’t worked out who reader is going to end up with as endgame, and honestly, this story is already so layered that the endgame ship is the least of my concern. Lots of pining, yearning, and angst tho :)

enjoy!!

much love,

PLAIGARISM IS ILLEGAL

Pairing: Levi Ackerman x female oc reader (Attack on Titan) 18+ explicit content

Genre: canon-divergent, hella slowburn, angst, eventual smut, mystery, dark, psychological

Warnings: 18+—proofread and edited once, no beta reader chat, profanity, mentions of death, psychological tension, distress, self-loating, manipulation, power dynamics, injury, mentions to blood, blade, implied homicide, reader has very low self-esteem, negative self-talk, potential missed warnings idk, idk canon-typical aot stuff

Word Count: 3935

Status: Ongoing

Masterlist // Previous Chapter // Next Chapter

---

Chapter 21 - Hinge

Read To Bleed a Thorne on AO3

The Confessional is colder.

It’s late. Or early…

You aren’t sure.

The same fire burns, but it does not warm the room when you return. It merely illuminates it—casting sharp lines across the stone walls that have heard every order given, every confession dragged from trembling mouths.

No different than yours tonight, as Damon reports to Silas. You stand behind him, completely overtaken by his shadow, as he chronologically details the fight between you and Morin. Though you’re not touching him, you feel steadier with him at your front, creating space between you and Silas.

You don’t have it in you to sit—to look any smaller than you feel right now. Sitting implies comfort, and you are anything but.

You feel pathetic as you stand before him.

Your throat is bandaged. Not carefully. Not like the only other time you fell unconscious, after you were the victor of fifteen consecutive matches in The Pit. This time, it’s patched just enough to stop the blood from marking Silas’s floor, and the shirt he bought for you. Your wrist is also wrapped tight, bone set back into place with brutal efficiency. Your ribs ache in protest every time you breathe, but you don’t let your shoulders slouch before him. 

You can't. Not after your failure. Not as disappointment and self-loathing creep into your mind and begin their relentless taunting.

And Silas?

He doesn’t even look at you. Rather, he studies the unlit cigar between his thick fingers instead, rolling it slowly as if the outcome of tonight will be any different if he wills to be. He lets out a heavy exhale, and Damon stops talking.

“That’s enough, Damon,” Silas says at last, eyes still fixated on the thick cigar between his index finger and thumb. “What of the shipment?”

“The shipment passed,” Damon answers.

Silas nods once, approving. His eyes look beyond Damon’s figure—without more than a few specks of dirt on it, notably—and settle on you. You’re filthy, mud splattered about your skin, Morin’s dirty bootprints littering your clothes, dirt littering your hair and the inside of your nose and ears. Dark bruises are noticeably blossoming across your visible skin.

“And what of Morin?”

You freeze, and draw a deep breath in through your nostrils. Your ribs wail.

His question drags the fight back up from where you’ve already begun trying to bury it. The taste of your own blood in your mouth. Morin’s possessive hand around your throat. Damon moving from behind your back to save your life.

Damon already laid your failure at Silas’s feet for inspection, and now Silas wants to hear you bleed it out yourself.

You scoff. “I believe Damon told you that part, Silas.”

He looks wicked. His eyes darken slowly, something cruel being brought to life behind them, his tongue dragging across his thin lips. You cannot decipher the look he gives you—whether your failure disgusts him, or if seeing you broken before him pleases something far more cynical.

Does he want to punish your failure… or consume it?

“I want to hear it from you,” he affirms.

The wound on your throat pulses beneath the bandages. This sick bastard already knows, and he wants to hear you say it anyway. 

“Engaged, then withdrew,” you reply.

Silas’s eyes finally lift to you. They are not soft, and you watch them narrow into calculative, analytical, slits as they drag over your body. Over the wrap on your wrist. The bandage on your throat. Before they finally settle on your eyes, his piercing gaze slicing through the atmosphere and directly through you. 

Is he looking at the damage, or something he finds beautiful?

“Withdrew…” he repeats slowly. 

He reaches for the breast pocket of his tailored suit coat. He fishes in it for a moment, then pulls out a box of matches. He strikes the end of the match against the box and it ignites, the sound cutting through the silent room. The walls greedily swallow it.

He doesn’t move to light the end of his cigar, eyes instead fixated on the small, flickering flame. His lips curl into a slight smirk, amused.

“And why did he withdraw?”

Silence stretches. 

Herein lies the fracture. 

Because Damon moved. Because if he didn’t, I would have died.

…

Because I failed.

Your lungs fill slower this time—more shallow, carefully measured against the sear in your ribs.

“He overcommitted,” you respond, disconnected. It isn’t entirely a lie, but it isn’t the truth Silas is looking for. The one he senses you’re shielding from him.

His gaze doesn’t leave you.

The match flame flickers out between his fingers. He drops the charred stick into the tray beside him without his eyes so much as flickering away from you. You don’t think he’s blinked.

“Overcommitted,” he echoes.

The smoke from the fire is growing suffocating. Your nostrils begin to burn again.

“And?” he continues.

Your jaw tightens.

Damon doesn’t move from in front of you. But he doesn’t entirely shield you from your fate with Silas like he did with Morin.

“He underestimated me,” you state, feeling the need to defend yourself before Silas.

Another partial truth. One Silas doesn’t appreciate.

His smirk fades.

“And yet,” he murmurs, calmly, “you stand here wrapped like a casualty.”

His words don’t sound cruel, they’re merely observational, but they sting as they seep into you through your open wounds.

“I… miscalculated.”

His gaze drifts down the line of your bandaged throat, the tight wrap around your wrist, the faint way your breathing tests your ribs. He watches you sulk in the confession, your eyes showing the self-loathing you’ve been berating yourself with the moment you regained consciousness in the dirt, Damon’s rough hands and deep voice rattling you awake. His gaze is slow and unhurried, deliberately cataloguing every ounce of disappointment you have in yourself.

He’s never seen you this way before, never so hesitant, never so guarded, never so pathetic, and he intends to milk every last drop of it before swallowing it whole. It’s another part of you, one he intends to learn and memorize and control.

“I thought you were certain that you were ready,” he says. It is not a question.

Your spine straightens instinctively, pride yearning to defend itself in front of Silas.

“I was,” you affirm. 

But it’s too late.

“Are you no longer?” he asks.

The trap he set is subtle.

Your pride flickers, but you swallow it before it can speak for you. You know Silas knows you feel it trying to claw its way out, and the only option you have is to not let it control you. It’s the only thing left you can do that proves you’re still worthy of his investment. That you can still be useful. 

“I was ready for him to fight,” you answer slowly, carefully. “Not to end.”

Absolute silence.

Damon remains still as stone in front of you, his form hardening before your very eyes. 

Silas’s eyes narrow slightly, seemingly a mix between annoyance, disbelief, and amusement.

“And why,” he begins, “did you prepare for a man like Morin to settle for anything less?”

The truth is that you believed he would measure you first. That he would savour the exchange. That Morin was a man who would like to carve his meals slowly, savoring the taste of the carnage he greedily absorbs. You thought he would enjoy the dance.

Instead, he chose execution the earliest chance he got.

“I thought he would want to make an example,” you explain. “Not a body.”

Silas studies you in the long, suffocating silence that follows. His gaze sharpens, and he clenches his jaw. His cigar is long forgotten between his fingers.

“Men like Morin do not need to make an example,” he replies. “Only erasure satiates them.”

Damon shifts before you—you feel it against your front. It’s not in movement, but in presence. A subtle flexion of his muscles that respond to the tightening in the air.

Silas rises from his chair. Damon steps back until he is at your spine in the same way he was mere hours ago, and Silas settles so close before you that you can feel the heat from his heavy exhales. He doesn’t touch you, but occupies your breaths. His shadow stretches across your boots, flames from the fire wildly flickering from behind his large, towering frame.

“You wanted to be seen as an opponent,” Silas says quietly. “Morin saw a threat. And threats are swiftly removed.”

Silas shifts slightly, his gaze peering over your left shoulder to Damon. His movement is small, but the gravity in the room responds dramatically. Your lungs grow tighter. Inhaling begins to feel like you’re breathing through a straw. Your heart accelerates. Your fingers vibrate in response to your weary hands. What is happening?

“And was that threshold real,” Silas asks Damon, sounding borderline accusatory, like he’s trying to evaluate something, “or imagined?”

Damon’s jaw has been set from the moment you both entered The Confessional, and it does not grow slack now. Not even in the face of Silas, who does not hide his evaluation.

“Real,” Damon replies. 

He inhales a sharp breath before he continues.

“She would have died, Silas.”

Silas’s gaze does not waver. He stares intently at Damon, seemingly weighing the answer as carefully and methodically as he does with all the currency that passes through his hands.

“And you are certain?” he presses.

“Yes.” Damon’s answer is cold, detached, and blunt, as they usually are. There is no pride or heat, just undeniable, irrefutable, objective fact. 

Silas watches a moment longer. His lips purse. Then, he nods. It’s curt, but decisive.

“You followed instruction. That’s good, Damon.”

Damon tilts his chin up to Silas. 

“Useful as always,” Silas says. “I can rely on you.”

His gaze shifts back to you. His eyes are slightly lighter this time. Almost tender. Slightly concerned. Relieved.

“And I am glad that she remains alive,” he adds quietly, spoken like an afterthought he may not have intended to share. His statement sounds sincere.

Silas turns away and reclaims his seat at the head of the table with unhurried precision. The chair thuds as he sits in it. His eyes find Damon again.

“You intervened at just the correct moment. Precise as ever.”

The most praise you’ve ever witnessed Silas bestow upon Damon. And Damon accepts it the same way he accepts everything: without reaction. Nonetheless, you feel his presence behind you steady. It does not need pride or possession to operate, but it seems to value unambiguity. 

Silas’s gaze returns to you, and whatever warmth existed in his voice evaporates before your very eyes.

“You got to command,” he begins, “and now you understand what commanding costs.”

His eyes hold yours long enough to ensure the lesson has carved itself deep enough in your skin to last a lifetime.

“Do not let it happen again,” he orders lowly, voice deep and steady. A warning, undoubtedly.

“I won’t,” you manage to exhale.

Silas studies you for one final, long moment. You feel watched by him. Like how you did when Morin had you on your knees, knife dragging down your body. He’s looking into you, exploring the depths of your darkness for an answer that matches the expression on your face you try so hard to conceal. 

It’s not fear. Nor humiliation. Not even pain.

It’s something quieter. Unclear. Unresolved.

Silas’s eyes narrow slightly.

“What else?” he asks.

The image of forest green against stone flashes in your mind. That other feeling of also being watched… but in a different way. Measured. And what bothers you most of all—you don’t know why.

You hesitate enough for Silas to notice, though you don’t intend to.

“People were observing,” you say at last. “From a rooftop.”

Silas stills, and the temperature in the room drops once more. You expected him to have a reaction, and the fact that he says nothing—eyes locked onto yours, fingers still pinching the fat cigar—is chilling.

“I think they saw everything,” you continue.

Damon’s presence tightens into alertness behind you.

Silas finally blinks. “Did you recognize them?” 

“No.”

He hums. “And yet you noticed them,” he murmurs. “What did they look like?”

“They were too far to see clearly,” you begin. “There were three. I could see only their top halves. They wore forest green cloaks."

Silas’s gaze rounds your hairline before it settles on your lips. He licks his, and smiles faintly.

“And you, Damon?” Silas asks, his gaze still not leaving you.

“I did not see anything, Boss,” he tentatively replies. “But it seems like you are not the only one who gathers data around here.”

Damon’s implication makes the air shift, and you suddenly feel strange.

Silas blinks again.

“You’re both dismissed.”

He turns away and waves his hand.

“Leave.”

And you do. You turn on your heel in sync with Damon, and wordlessly trail out behind him. 

As the door to The Confessional closes, three certain truths clarify in your mind:

Another unknown, faceless, nameless ghost is on your trail,

Damon did not fail,

And Silas has not made it clear whether he decided you did.

—

An hour later, the street is quieter here than most places in the Underground.

It’s not the brittle quiet that settles over bars when a blade is drawn, nor the tense hush that crawls through alleyways cast in shadow when a deal turns sour. This quiet is softer—more apprehensive—worn tender by years of small, quiet lives trying very carefully not to be noticed.

A small house sits at the end of the rugged street, the framing long since surrendering its shape to time. The mortar of the brick stoop is crumbling in some places, rusted hinges barely keeping the ancient door upright. One of the front windows is patched with cloudy glass that softens the glow of the lanternlight inside into a dull haze, dark colored curtains framing the figure just beyond the window like a painting.

There’s a sort of cozy, homey energy that exudes from the house. It’s the sort of place that nurtures the last of the humanity in the Underground, keeping it safe from the criminality, drugs, prostitution, and boozing that has long since dimmed a once unique way of living.

A man stands across the narrow street for a moment that stretches longer than it needs to, his gaze lingering on the crooked doorframe, the weak light behind the glass, the quiet evidence of a life lived carefully in a place that does not reward care. There is no gang of men at his back, no blades flashing beneath the torchlight that cowers in his presence, no warning shouted from alleys before he spills blood into the dirt.

The street does not yet understand the weight of what has arrived. It continues to exist as it always has—slowly, cautiously, and small—the way it learned to in this place where survival depends on remaining small and insignificant.

The curtain stirs behind the cloudy glass, the soothing lanternlight shifting with it. The figure beyond it is a bit clearer now—the slow, frail old man sat comfortably in a chair reading literature.

Across the street, the other man watches. He chooses not to rush the moment—rather, he lets it bloom like a flower soaking in the warm rays of the sun upon the first warm spring day.

The faint ache in his ribs reminds him of the girl. The way she moved reminded him of a stubborn fire that refused to extinguish even as the breath was stolen from her lungs. The memory of her curls somewhere deeper in his chest—a darker place where the ache has not reached. It warms him like a small, amused flame.

So this is where she emerged from.

The man is sharp with focus.

His gaze is fixated on the house. The soft lantern glows, the fragile warmth spilling from its windows and onto the streets. It defies everything the Underground has spent decades becoming. Here, in this little house that looks more caved in than structured, that warmth seems to push back against the rot around it, however quietly. As if tenderness, when protected long enough, might begin to soften the harshness around it.

The man feels repulsion.

He crosses the street without hurry, the dirt of the stilled street stirring beneath his heavy boots. The torchlight nearest to the house flickers once in the draft of his passing, then settles. By the time he reaches the stoop, the whole street seems to have grown sparse, every caved pillar and darkened window holding its breath as it draws away from him.

The man stands before the door for a moment. He exhales. Then he lifts his hand and knocks softly.

Far too soft for what it intends.

Inside, a floorboard creaks. The blurred shape behind the window shifts, then disappears from the man’s view. A moment later, footsteps approach. They’re slow but not apprehensive—foolishly unguarded by the familiarity of someone who believes home is allowed to remain familiar once night has fallen.

A bolt slides free from the inside.

The door opens only a few inches at first, warm light spilling through the narrow seam and cutting across the dark, a small chain stretched tight between the frame and the door. An old man fills the small opening, boney shoulders barely filling out a worn sweater, age gathered into his features. There is caution and exhaustion in his eyes. The kind of someone who has lived long enough in the Underground to know that it does not manifest on your doorstep and knock without reason.

His gaze falls onto the man before him and his face tightens into a mix of disappointment and annoyance.

“It’s quite early. What is it you need?”

The man on the stoop does not answer immediately. His eyes move over the old man's face with patience that should not exist at this house, tracing the age in him, the strikingly mirrored features, the weariness, the flicker of something that had obviously been hope before the door opened and the Underground stole it.

The man’s mouth softens into something meant to be unthreatening. Neighborly. Faux tenderness laces his voice and conceals his intent.

“I have news about your girl,” he says.

The old man stills. Not fully—not in the way prey stills when it sees a starving predator—but in the smaller, sadder, more shocked way of a heart being struck with hope despite itself. Despite years of wisdom and experience trying to contain it. His fingers tighten softly around the frame of the door. He does not speak. His eyes search the stranger’s face on his doorstep, looking for a glimpse of something trustworthy. 

The man effectively suppresses a smirk. 

“What about her?”

The words landed exactly as intended.

The man lowers his voice, as if he speaks too loudly, the lie will reveal itself.

“She’s alive.”

A breath leaves the old man so quickly it is soundless, the only indication of the words escaping his lungs is the way his diaphragm caves in on itself. The relief that washes over him is fast and unguarded—a genuine response. One so intense it could not be contained, even as the old man’s logical suspicion follows close behind, slower but wiser.

The old man’s features draw tight once more.

“Who are you?”

The stranger’s gaze does not leave his.

“Someone who found her in bad shape. She told me where to bring word. She’s not in any shape to make it back tonight.”

The lie is smooth. Not because it’s pretty, but because this old man is practically milking it out of the stranger, seamlessly fabricating something out of nothing. It tastes sweet as honey on the man’s lips as it spills from them.

Something in the old man’s face shifts at that. It’s not trust—not yet. But enough yearning to wound the quiet enticement of sound judgment. And enough fear to squash it.

“She’s hurt?”

The man lets the question exist in the space between them for a beat too long before he performatively sighs.

“May I come in?”

The old man hesitates. 

And in that hesitation lives the man he once was before fatherhood, grandfatherhood, when age hollowed his joints and softened the ferociousness of his hands. The smuggler who spent years slipping goods between the surface and the Underground does not vanish simply because his back aches now when he rises too fast, or because his mornings have grown quieter. 

But his hope has been starved long enough. 

It weakens him now in ways famine never could—after she left and never looked back.

The old man still remembers the rattle of the doorframe when she slammed it shut, his wife’s quiet gasp, the tremble in his own voice when he asked if they should call after her. The worry that it would be the last time he ever saw her—alive, anyway.

The old man’s shoulders grow slightly slack and his fingers loosen against the edge of the door. His eyes soften—just barely—as something unbearable pathetically crosses his face at the suggestion that his beloved granddaughter is near and breathing and wants to come home and is delayed merely by injury instead of absence.

And the stranger watches it happen. He watches love overtake the honed instinct of a now quiet old man who once was the Underground’s most skilled and tenured smuggler in his prime. He watches the judgement bend, then cave, then entirely reshape itself beneath the old man’s longing. 

“If she’s hurt,” the old man says carefully, steadily, as if he’s doubting the resolve in his own words, “why did she not come herself?”

The stranger lowers his gaze just slightly, shaping his expression into something quiet. Respectful. The sort of face people wear when delivering news to a beloved they know will leave them wounded.

“She tried,” he begins, his voice quiet and low, faux sympathy soothing. “But she’s in no shape to be moving through the streets. ‘N’ you know it’s unwise for her to travel without being able to defend herself… not after the enemies she’s made, as you might’ve heard.”

Fear deepens the lines already carved into the old man’s face. It’s a helpless kind of fear—the kind reserved for the people one cannot protect anymore.

“Where is she?”

“Safe for the moment,” the stranger replies.

The man believes his words may be poorly chosen, too vague. He should have been more prepared to enter a verbal bargain with this old smuggler, but mindgames are a skill rendered underdeveloped in his criminal mind that has only needed to rely on brute force. He never needed to be smart. Only strong and fierce. Always the first to draw the blade and pierce the skin of his enemy. 

But he sees something shift in the old smuggler’s bones, some instinct that has outlived his youth and bloodshed and the decades spent carrying contraband through roads where one wrong step meant lifelong imprisonment or death. It stirs now, faint but persistent, desperately warning the old smuggler to not open the door any wider.

But hope—now given the footing of a shape, a name, a face—is relentless.

And the love for his granddaughter—that kind of love makes fools of men who know better.

And so the old man closes the door a bit and reaches for the chain, metal softly scraping in the quiet of the Underground where noise rarely exists as the beast absorbs it.

He opens the door and steps aside.

The stranger walks in—

And the door shuts behind them. 

Final. 

---

a/n

hiiiii my lovely readers! i survived the semester and am back from my hiatus woohoo! i hope you all enjoy this chapter, i honestly think it's one of my better ones. feedback is welcome :)

i think time away from the story has cleared my head in the best way possible. coming back to this chapter with a fresh mind helped me a lot during the editing process, and i was able to make this chapter transform into something much better than the original draft. i won't yap about the details too much, but i will leave yall with this: a lot more is coming, and baby it's coming soon!

i hope everyone's doing well.