CRIMSON INSTINCTS

Chapter 1, Imperative Matters

"Could it have been a dream?", I whispered against her ear, leveling my lips above her ear, "did I die inside a nightmare that day?"

A small sigh escapes her lips as I carry on.

"I couldn't tell, I was very much skeptical. But then again how would I have known what being close to you felt like? How would I have known that you hair falls in slight waves past your shoulders. How would I have known that you were Hanabi, the spark that ignited through the thicket of the darkness I was in?".

"I suppose you're still in denial", a small chuckle escapes her lips, "I could be dangerous"

I breathed into her dull blonde hair and rested my chin on the crown of her head.

"A spark is a spark, whether it ignites a candle of hope through oblivion or declares on the fire of rebellion. For me there's nothing to fear"

We stare back at the sunset, standing at the full height of the Hokage's tower. In a sense, this was meant to be a romantic moment, however it was very much meant to portray a diplomatic gesture.

I hold her from behind, hands on her waist as we look down upon the guests that came from afar. My chin then drops to rest on her shoulder to get a better look, the wind dragging my hair with it, making my dark strands entangle with hers.

The sun shone into my eyes, the warmth and silence being profound within me. From the corner of my eye I saw her knuckles pale on the banister of the roof top.

"You're unnecessarily nervous darling", I say, burying my lips in a faint kiss on her shoulder.

"You're very much giving me unnecessary butterflies in my stomach sir", she replies back, a hint of a smirk on her lips.

I chuckle softly against her skin and stand back to my full height again.

"I guess Lord Hokage doesn't want us alone anywhere", she remarks, making me smirk.

"Well he probably doesn't want to be called a grandpa so early on", I remark back, earning a half-hearted chuckle from her, "As if-''

Gazing below, I could see how focused she was on the guests. My brows furrowed as I asked, "do you think their visit has anything to do with what we know?"

"Precisely, yes", she answers, keeping a fixed gaze on the Tsuchikage and the other diplomats from the Hidden Stone, "but it's hard to tell their motives apart. Like the Hidden Cloud, the Stone had no information of Fugaku's coronation as the fifth Hokage"

"So you're saying they're here with some measly excuse to earn any form of intel of what happened these past years?", I inquire, loosening my gaze from the guests to look at her.

"Even with my sensory skills, that's something I can't be sure of. Certainly we've kept quite the secrets from other nations since Lord Fugaku's coronation"

"Hmm, so other nations are threatened by the Leaf's security and civil affairs?"

"Fugaku put quite the tight hold of what comes and goes in the village, that is to say, what he chooses to feed to outsiders of intel", she says as she inspects the passerby children that run wild within the village, "but we can't rule out the possibility that they could be here because of a mutual problem"

At this I fell completely silent as we both started to recall the indiscretions years ago.

The mere silence that followed was a bit unsettling as I could see her get flashbacks right under my nose. Time and again I keeping telling myself that we're finally past all that has happened, that we began anew upon that crescent moon, but the look in her eyes and the scars on my wrist are there to be perceived forever, and that's a battle we can't fight forever.