fuck yeah! SasuKarin

Title: It could have been home Word Count: 1.462 Setting: Post-Gaiden. Dedicated to: @elleluvsl and @heka-writes  ❤

“Hey, Sasuke,” 

He glances at her from the top of his tea mug, and Karin swallows to moisten her suddenly dry tongue.   

“Did you know that bastard Suigetsu thought you and I would be a thing?” 

She picks her best disbelieving tone, throws in an eye-roll for good measure. Pretends she isn’t watching his every move, sensing even the slightest shift of his chakra. 

There is none, not really. But Sasuke does arch an eyebrow a fraction, and Karin follows his clue to explain. 

“Juugo told me the other day. Seems like Suigetsu used to go on and on about it back when we were Taka.” 

Sasuke snorts, attention going back to his tea. “Don’t know where he got that idea from.” 

His reaction is just about what she expected, but it still stings to hear him say it. To hear Sasuke dismiss the thought of them so easily; to know in no ambiguous terms that it never even crossed his mind. At all. 

Still, Karin knows better than to let the pang of hurt show; knows she’s supposed to snort in kind, cross her legs and take a sip of her own tea. So she does just that and throws him an airy, “Right?” 

She plays her role and plays it well. Thinks the conversation is done, stores it away to mull over it when he isn’t around to see her ache. So when Sasuke leans back, the last thing Karin expects is what comes out of his mouth.

I forgot to mention this, but a while ago I bought the French release of the Naruto volumes with the third-party SK commentary just to see how they handled it. Let me tell you, they went all out with the SK 😎

First is of course, Tobi saying that Sasuke went out of his way to recruit his favorite (お気に入り), aka Karin. While Viz's glosses over that bit with a simple "I see now why Sasuke chose [Karin]", the way Kana worded it got me ROLLING 🤣

"[It was a wise decision to bring this woman with him. She's useful.] He sought her out, seduced by her skill."

More under the cut!

touchin’ foreheads..thank you @skania

While we’ve already made some gifs about the matter, this picture is far more straightforward, I believe.

A short comparison between Naruto’s and Karin’s roles during Sasuke’s descent into darkness during Part 1 (his deflection, VotE) and Part 2 (Kage Summit, his fight against Danzou). Sharing it here in case you guys find it interesting, too.

In these scenes where Sasuke is preparing to finish Naruto/Karin off with his Chidori, the translation in English used different wording (“Later” vs “Farewell”), but Sasuke’s goodbye in Japanese is actually the same “じゃあな” (Later/See you) in both.

Kishi really went and gave SK all the painful parallels with none of the emotional pay-off 😂

But the thing is, it’s not that Karin suddenly “grew up” and gave up on him and so her love “became” selfless.

It was always like this.

When Karin says this in Chapter 482, she’s talking about Sasuke’s smile. The kind, carefree smile he showed her when he saved her from that bear in the FoD.

In other words, as early as Chapter 482 Kishi had Karin state that all she wanted was to see Sasuke happy again. That’s the reason she went so far for him and why she stuck with him through thick and thin. She did it all in the hopes that by accomplishing his goals, Sasuke would be able to find happiness.

That is the way she loved him. Being with him romantically was secondary to her focus and her wish for his well-being and his happiness (and in fact she only tried to make a move on him three times in the entire manga).

And here is a quick sketch with characters from Naruto (AU!)! Aww I haven’t drawn them in a long-long time~

So what do you think about story of art? One of my friends said that the picture reminded her of the goukon ahah :) 

In process of drawing I was thinking about a Karin’s concession speech, something like «Well, I feel it’s time for me to give up… I’d be lying if I would say that I liked Sakura from the beginning, but… When she helped me, I … Well, I think she’s a very good girlfriend, you look nice together. And if it’s good for you, it’s good for me…” etc ahah Very sweet and primitive speech yeah. But nevertheless it made an unspeakable impression on Sasuke (classics!) and forced to look at Karin from the other side (winks)