Quotes Bingo
Quotes
“...anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”-Maya Angelou
“Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies.”-Jane Austen
“This love is silent.”-T.S. Eliot
“We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.”-Rabindranath Tagore
WILDCARD
“If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?”-Khalil Gibran
“Never forget me, because if I thought you would, I'd never leave.”-A. A. Milne
“Dreams are necessary to life.”-Anais Nin
“To see you naked is to recall the Earth.”-Federico Garcia Lorca
A/N: For the mini-bingo round at kakairu_fest. Because of a slight OCD, I didn't post until I'd finished every single frackin' square. *Phew*.
I'm torn with this square; I feel like I've done half of them really well, and I'm proud of them, but there's a few which are a little iffy for me. I think maybe the word limit (which I crossed twice, regardless) held me back a little, as did a few of the more difficult and ambiguous quotes.
Anyway, don't mind me! Read and enjoy yourself~!
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begin
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1. “We gain freedom when we have paid the full price.”-Rabindranath Tagore.
Warnings: AU.
There was a certain beauty to the rivulets of dark crimson, almost a blackened red in colour, that were trickling down his back in little tiny rivers of hot liquid that stung like a widow’s tears. Oh, but the real tears falling from the eyes were salty and bitter and cool on the flushed skin of seething anger - or was that the red of frustration? No, it was the tinted rosy pink from the sweetness of sharp pain.
It was a melody, almost, with the notes and the movements-but if there was movement, then it surely was a dance-in set times and the rhythm kept being struck as the arm rose time and time again, the whip falling every time with its flinchingly resounding crack, followed by a moan of pain.
“Serves you right,” spat the guard, his whip rising a bit higher this time, the crack a bit louder and wetter, the groan softer, less defiant. Tied up to a stump, the man on the receiving end had chafed, bleeding wrists from his struggles, and his back was open and raw and the blood from there felt ten times hotter than the small drips trailing down his arms. His knees brushed the floor, legs too tired to hold his weight, even as his shoulders and arms protested vehemently at having the bear the heavy body.
Through a haze of pain and incoherent dizziness, Iruka felt the forty-eighth strike deeper in his back and he vaguely wondered whether it had hit bone. Surely it had. It hurt as though it did. His shirt was discarded to his right, his shoes to his left, and his ragged pants were the only things he was allowed to don, and they were soaking up the blood his back wept.
Finally, the 50th hit echoed in the square, and Iruka’s binds were roughly cut, letting him sink to the floorboards. The public watched with wide eyes, his pain made into an example to the oppressed people.
“At least you didn’t scream,” sniffed the man as he slid his hands down the length of his whip, splattering Iruka’s face with cold moisture that he belatedly saw to be his own blood. “Can’t stand the screamers,” the man muttered before he curled up the length of rope, hanging it on his belt and walking away.
Iruka found himself in a fly-filled tent, the air humid and the sun beating down made waves of heated air rise from the baked ground. It took him a moment to realize he had passed out and was waking up in a hospital tent. He was lying face down, and his back burned, but he made an effort to twist his head so he wasn’t looking out the door and instead found himself eye-to-eye with a man so bizarre the words he was trying to form died in his throat.
“Why did you oppose Lord Masashi?” growled the doctor, the lower portion of his face covered by a surgical mask. “It’s common knowledge he whips slaves.”
“I am not a slave,” rasped Iruka, his throat raw and tender. “I am a free man. He is a monster who destroyed my village.”
The doctor eyed him critically, and if Iruka weren’t lying on his stomach, back still bleeding from open wounds, he might have felt inclined to jump at the sight of mismatched irises; blue and red, a bisecting line scratched vertically down through the crimson eye, the scar faded but harsh.
“Don’t let the boss hear your words,” the tone was light but saturated with warning. “Rebellion is punished with bullets, not whips.”
“Then let the guns fire,” snapped Iruka defiantly, patience wearing thin.
“Insanity,” muttered the doctor, who looked away, moving to tend to the wounds instead. “The fighters always die,” he added almost inaudibly, as a heavy afterthought.
His hands were cool on his cuts, and gentle with the ointment and bindings. Iruka noted dimly that the doctor smelled of sandalwood.
“I see the orphans you care for run in the square,” the man started off casually, and Iruka frozen, muscles tensing even as the raw flesh protested. “Death and pain seem no deterrent, so I feel I should warn you; I have seen the Lord tackle children down for his cause.”
Iruka’s breath hitched. The children; they weren’t meant to be caught in the crossfire. He was meant to protect them. What if he couldn’t? What would that mean? How many broken promises would fill the void their vacancies would leave?
Choking slightly, he muttered, “Not them. I will jump in front of them, even if it kills me.”
Leaning down, his nose brushing the young man’s ear, the elder murmured softly, “You need order to rebel, not chaos.”
Clenching his hands, fisting the sheets, Iruka growled, with his face muffled by the pillow, “Chaos is all I have.”
“Lucky you met me then,” the doctor muttered, pretending to prod at the bandages some more, in case any nosy interns walked by. “It starts at midnight.”
“What does?”
“The meeting of the restless, of the unbound, of the fighters,” his soft breath whispered quickly, quietly, excitedly. “Those not loyal to the tarnished crown meet to plan and ready ourselves for war.”
Iruka twisted slightly to meet the eyes of the man who proposed an idea so radical, so filled with hope, it was hardly believable. The younger man felt his heart speed up with excitement, anticipation, desperation. The doctor loomed over his weakened form, tall and passive and stoic.
Nonetheless, he smiled and said calmly enough, “You can call me Iruka.”
“Call me Kakashi,” and in an undertone, he added, “I’m one of the ringleaders of the gang.”
“I never thought the day I get flogged would be one of my luckiest.”
“Well, Mr. Iruka,” Kakashi drawled as the made a note on the charts. “The world works in funny ways.”
Side note: jofelly owns my soul because she actually made 'Rebel Dr Kakashi' from a mental image to a reality~! Go and squee over the absolutely stunning fanart here.
2. “Every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies.”-Jane Austen.
Warnings: DAMN IT, I’m over the word limit AGAIN... why can’t I shut up?
The rebuilding process was going to be a long and laborious process, but instead of grumbling or complaining, Iruka rolled up his sleeves and started working on moving the great solid chunks of cracked concrete slabs forced from pathways with the shaking of the earth, mindful of the scattered pile of shattered glass. Pain definitely wrecked the village. But Nine-Tails was worse and they’d rebuilt from that.
It was a hot day, the sun blazing down on them, and Iruka supposed this was far better than having to work in a downpour, but it was sweaty work lumbering around with a stack of wooden planks balanced precariously on your shoulder. For the umpteenth time he stubbed his toe on a previously unseen clump of stone bricks, cursing quietly.
People milled around him, helping or tending to wounds, and it made his heart constrict to see some children with bloodied heads and tears running down their faces. At least the ones he saw had their parents. Iruka wondered how many new orphans would be entered into the system.
Moisture formed on his brow, and as the day wore on, the sweat trickled down his face. His shirt stuck to his skin in a damp, uncomfortable way, and his ponytail was in utter disarray. If the whispers of some of the people around him were anything to go by, he must have looked like an utter wreck! The girls were pointing and whispering behind hands, and the men were eying him like he was an idiot.
Oh. Wait. Perhaps he was. Why was he wearing a shirt and a bulky vest when it was so bloody hot? Iruka wasn’t self conscious about himself or anything. He kept fit, he had muscles, and the scar on his back was something to display with honour, not something to be shamed over.
Slipping off his vest, and his shirt, he almost sighed with relief. The air was cooling his sweaty skin, and he put his clothes in a non-obtrusive little hole to gather later. Pulling his hair out of its constraints, he combed it with his fingers and tied it up high on his hair, knowing that it would hold for a while before it’d slip out.
Wiping his brow with the back of his hand, he stretched and looked to the sun, trying to roughly calculate the time of day. Iruka really wanted water. All this work was tiring. At least it wasn’t painful; the chuunin tried to stay optimistic.
About an hour later, the sun passed the midway point and was finally beginning its descent into the earth. Iruka possibly would have done more work, but he was passing a surprising number of injured women on his trip to and fro, and he always stopped to help them.
Injured ankles seemed disturbingly common, and he had to help a lot of them hobble; sometimes even outright carry them, to the medic tent. And when Iruka got there, they became strangely clingy and oddly wanting to ‘thank their saviour’. It was very, very odd.
Filling a discarded knapsack with small pieces of rubble, Iruka was hoping to clear up some paths to buildings that were utterly razed. People would want to collect personal belongings as soon as they could. Putting a block of warped metal the size of a soccer ball into the ball, he deemed it full enough to heft over his shoulder and start walking to the drop-zone; the dumping spot that was rapidly increasing to appear somewhat akin to a small mountain.
Halfway there, Iruka noticed a slumped figured leaning against part of what appeared to be a wall of a building. It was amazing that there were still walls in the village. The chuunin paused, wondering if the person was dead or injured, and whether they needed assistance.
“Excuse me?”
Turning around, Iruka caught his breath to see a droopy eyed Kakashi sitting there, his mask in tatters and his forehead protector gone, instead his hair covering his eye. This was the man that had saved him from Pain. How was he going to repay him?
Of course, when nervous, Iruka had a bad tendency to babble about nonsense, which was good on reconnaissance missions because the enemy couldn’t get him to shut up and talk about something important, but right now it was rather embarrassing.
“...and so I want to say thank you,” Iruka finally concluded, after realizing he’d been blabbering on nonsensically for a few minutes now.
Kakashi was staring intently at him, and Iruka shuffled uncomfortably under the piercing gaze. He took a moment to look away and wipe his brow clean of sweat and momentarily his thoughts were taken by the idea of getting a drink when-
A shadow fell over him, and Iruka blinked dumbly for a pause before looking up. Kakashi had gotten very close in his personal space, very fast. Iruka swallowed to speak until a lump formed in his throat when Kakashi suddenly trailed a gloved hand down his chest.
Slightly mortified, slightly turned on, the teacher jumped, but Kakashi had taken his hand away and Iruka must have been suffering heat stroke because he could have sworn Kakashi licked his fingers, tasting his sweat, which was absurd-
“You taste nice. Salty and sweet,” grinned Kakashi innocently. Or as innocently as a tall, silver-haired man with a covered face could look. Which, thinking back on it, wasn’t that innocent at all.
Apparently, for jounin, sampling other people’s sweat seemed perfectly normal enough for them. Iruka tried again to speak but then felt a hand wrap around to caress the damp nape of his neck and froze.
“You don’t need to thank me for saving you,” the jounin began casually enough, “but I suppose tradition states that the damsel-in-distress kisses her saviour?”
A flash of anger passed through Iruka, who felt insulted at being compared to a girl, but then realized with a piercing clarity that Kakashi was hitting on him, in his own socially unacceptable way. This in retrospect shouldn’t have been that flattering, but Iruka smiled widely at the thought.
Pulling down his mask, Iruka gave him a chaste kiss-being a tease, really-before the older man pulled him back and kissed him in earnest. There was enough tongue to be hot, but not enough to be obscene, and wandering hands made Iruka’s skin tingle and suddenly very aware of his lack of clothing...
“Holy shit,” a loud voice interrupted their very interesting... conversation, and the men looked up to see a slack jawed Anko staring their way. “Damn, Iruka. Didn’t know you had it in you!”
When they simply stared at her, she shrugged and waved her hands, “By all means, don’t stop on my account.”
“Is it too hard to give us some privacy?” grumbled Iruka with a frown.
“You’re in a ninja village, honey,” leered Anko. “You want privacy? Work for it.”
“Challenge accepted,” Kakashi smirked and wrapped his arm around Iruka’s waist before disappearing off in the cloud of smoke.
Anko did actually gather a team to find the guys and perve some more, but they were never caught. Damn it, when Iruka and Kakashi wanted privacy, they wanted privacy. When Iruka returned two days later, just as they were starting to get worried for his well-being, they found he had difficulty walking...
3. “Never forget me, because if I thought you would, I'd never leave.”-A. A. Milne.
Warnings: none.
There was something missing. He eyed the room, but saw nothing out of place. Tattered posters lined the wall, hiding the cracks; eclectic shelves filled with a variety of mismatched books ran around the room; the lighting fizzled in and out, the noise sketchy and buzzing constantly. His classroom was the same as normal.
Except that might have been the exact reason why his skin was tingling like there was something wholly wrong. Never in his years of teaching did he recall his class left in perfect condition. The children would always shuffle the papers on his desk, or smear paint on the walls, perhaps being little pains and taking it upon themselves to rearrange the desk layout completely.
The door swung open and a man walked in, the edges of his figure blurry and for some reason his mind supplied him with the term ‘genjutsu’, though he knew not of its meaning or connotations. Energy seeped from the newcomer, one the teacher related to but didn’t understand.
Unexplainable déjà vu hit him like truck when he looked at the man’s eyes though. They were round and clear and honest and filled with an unbearable torrent of sadness. Were those tears brimming? No, no; that made no sense...
“You still don’t remember.” A soft little sigh rang a bell in his ears, but he didn’t know why the stranger would cloud him in a sense of familiarity.
“Remember what?”
And he looked at him, his eyes; the only familiar part of the man saying if I need to say it, it defeats the purpose. The visitor’s shoulders slumped and he felt as if he had somehow disappointed the stranger.
“Until you are healed, you are trapped.” Rubbing his face, the odd visitor added, “Until you are healed, I am stuck; but I will wait. I will always wait for you.”
The ambiguity of the statement made the man lean against his desk and press at his temples, feeling the beginnings of a headache. Something was tugging at his thoughts from the edge of his mind, but what?
Turning on his heel, the stranger moved to leave the room, but before he did, he paused and did funny things with his hands-seals, his mind unhelpfully provided the term-and suddenly the nondescript man changed into a figure of lean muscles, tanned skin, brown hair and oh, those eyes-
There was a flash, a bang, and then darkness.
Kakashi blinked, looked around his empty room, and wondered what was missing. He was sure there wasn’t something right about his classroom...
Oh. The door was left open. That was it.
4. Wildcard {“His oaths cut him like fine wire.”-‘Tithe’ by Holly Black.}
Warnings: heartbreak.
As he stood stoically, watching the crowd pity him, he thought about all he’d done for his village, his country, his Hokage, and the people he swore to protect. How many faceless, nameless people had he killed for them to live peacefully? Ahh, but peace was merely a farce of hidden violence, and he was the weapon used to cut down so many strings of puppets.
They were all puppets. Every ninja worked at the hands of their village’s leader, and Kakashi was no exception. Apparently his time of free reign was up and his strings were being pulled, forcing him into a trap from which he could not escape. The leaders seemed to want to push him to his knees and rip his mask off and leave him bare; unwittingly, or perhaps knowingly and uncaringly, they were destroying him.
His life was bound to the dead, to those names carved in the stone, to those people he promised to defend but couldn’t. His life was tied to the living, to people he didn’t know and didn’t care to know; to those who knew of him, but didn’t know him for him.
One knew him, though. One ninja of many knew him. Knew his quirks, knew his personality, knew and accepted his past, figured out his mind and mapped out every inch of scarred flesh with eager fingers. A person he loved and cared for so much that it hurt. It hurt because he had to leave him.
For his village, he would enter the contract of marriage to a mysterious bride, bringing together two Hidden Villages together in a rock solid partnership that would ensure safety for decades to come. An alliance that would bring salvation from a brutal war as his heart cracked in two and he plummeted towards Hell. A bloodline passing on in children that would ensure future guardians as his soul burned in the fires since his heart wouldn’t let go.
As the wedding bells tolled, Kakashi finally saw Iruka in the crowd. His eyes said it all. He understood why everything was happening, but he was dying, too.
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fin
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A/N: I hope you've enjoyed the ride so far! Leave a comment and tell me which was your favourite and why! After you've done that, here is the rest of the bingo table, because I'd written too much to keep in one post... >>>