the woods lovely, dark and deep

Not the ring of maple surrounding Konoha, lush green during the spring and fiery red in the fall; not the towering cedar spread throughout the Land of Fire, tall and proud and old. The woods the stories told of were deeper, darker, hidden. The protective bulk of the trunks twisted together into claustrophobic closeness; the branches, elsewhere spread wide and inviting, in there reaching, clawing, grabbing.

In those woods lived a monster, lurking between the trees. In some stories the trees loved the monster to do as it said. In others, the trees feared the monster far too much to disobey. 

But across all the tales this remained the same: an unlucky traveler, the monster, and trees that would pull apart and twist together behind the monster as it hunted.  The frantic crunching of the leaves beneath a hasty foot, the desperate foray through the thorny branches. Its prey at the end of the trail: exhausted, wounded, trapped.

And with a final rustle of leaves, the screams would stop.

A story told over a campfire, an excuse to cling to his parents and demand their presence as he slept. That was all the monster ever was to Iruka, before he had seen what a monster was for himself: the scorching heat of the Kyuubi's flames as it scoured across his face, its tails blotting out the sky, drifting embers where there had been stars.

And sometimes, when he was far too exhausted to know better - a little boy with bright blue eyes.

But there was no smoke without a fire - no story without a source. And Iruka should have remembered that before he plunged into the woods in an attempt to escape the two missing-nin chasing after him, before he found Tenzou wandering alone in the woods, presumably lost.

Tenzou stood across him now, his head cocked to the side in clear curiosity. And Iruka wondered how he could have ever mistaken the blank look in his eyes for humanity, the attempts at mimicking emotion for shyness or shock. The lean lines of his form for a civilian.

What a joke - and Iruka was the punchline.

“What are you waiting for,” he demanded - and how Iruka hated the way his voice turned rough and desperate - an animal with its leg caught in a snare. It was apt, with the brambles and their thorns tugging against his skin as he shifted within their grasp. “Kill me.”

Kill him, like how Tenzou had killed Iruka’s two pursuers - the first in what Iruka thought was just a plant, if only shaped unusually like an urn. She had thought the wide rim of the lip was a safe place to land in their skirmish within the woods. But her foot slipped and she toppled through the opening and into the liquid below.

Iruka could only watch in horror as she struggled within the sticky heaviness of the liquid, as it hampered all her attempts to climb out of the plant. As her repeated efforts at jutsus failed over and over again, her chakra flaring and faltering away.

It ended when she sank further down into the liquid - nectar, Iruka later realised, the sweet scent permeating through the air - too exhausted to fight, drowning in honey gold.

The other missing-nin died after Iruka met Tenzou - and how laughably protective Iruka was of him then, before he knew what he was. The missing-nin had lunged towards them, and Iruka immediately pulled Tenzou to his chest and out of the way. He remembered Tenzou staring at him then, his face slack with surprise. Iruka just self-assuredly assumed it was awe at his shinobi reflexes.

If only he had been slower to react. If only the kunai had scored across Tenzou’s throat then, and revealed the white sap that would have bled from the gash. If only.

The trajectory of that lunge hurled the missing-nin into another leaf - one Iruka had been looking at moments earlier, the gloss of its surface wet and dripping. He had almost touched it even, curiosity overcoming his wariness for one moment.

It was only later he remembered Tenzou’s eyes then, his laser focus on Iruka's hand.

Would Tenzou have pushed him into the leaf, had the missing-nin not attacked them? Left Iruka to gasp into the wet surface as he was immobilised, to asphyxiate when the leaf rolled shut as it did onto the missing-nin. Was that his plan then, in that hungry gleam of his eyes?

Iruka wouldn’t know - would never know.

“You caught me, it’s over.” He kept on talking - one final act of defiance before he died. Defiance was all he had left when he promised himself to keep fighting, to live. “You’ve had your fun."

Only days ago since he first made that promise - as the trees and the leaves all shook around him, sending terror caterwauling through his every nerves. (Iruka would later know it as Tenzou’s first attempt on his life.) He had almost given up then, as that wide-eyed child that had reveled in the fears of his peers as but could not face his own.

A quick death, he thought in his despair, was kinder than a prolonged chase.

But Naruto's face flashed in front of him, then. Iruka would have thought that impending death would herald images of saddened faces, perhaps a few tears - but instead he saw Naruto’s face: brows scrunched in concentration, scooping up the last of his noodles even as a single strand hung limply out the side of his mouth.

Of Naruto being irrepressibly, undeniably, happy.

It was ridiculous - Iruka wasn’t the boy’s caretaker. He wasn’t anything, just his teacher, and sometimes a person who woke up shivering from nightmares of what was contained within. But even so Iruka knew that the whole village loathed the boy, and even if the Hokage did not he was far too busy to care for him.

To think that if he died then. Naruto would… he would go on. He’d eat at Ichiraku. But would he be happy? Iruka couldn’t find it in himself to answer that he would.

So, no. Iruka couldn't die. If he was unwilling to let a couple of missing-nin kill him, a monster couldn’t have him either. 

But now that the monster had him in his grasp, why wasn’t it doing anything?

“Fucking kill me already!” Iruka snarled.

Instead of raising the bramble and letting the thorns dig into Iruka’s flesh, letting it drag a hole wide open in the soft skin of Iruka’s throat - Tenzou stepped closer, his face still disquietingly intent. And, Iruka thought, still hungry.

“You’re so… interesting,” he finally said. “Most of your lot just scream and scream… but you talk.”

“You tricked me,” Iruka bit out. “You pretended you’re a human, of course I’d talk to you.”

He had talked to Tenzou and Tenzou had talked back, as Iruka led them through the forest and carved symbols and directions onto the trees. As Tenzou shifted the trees and grew bark over the symbols again and again, leading Iruka in an unceasing spiral.

And over the days he had gotten more tactile - curling an arm into Iruka’s own, leaning into Iruka’s space. Twisting and combing his fingers through Iruka’s hair as he woke up. And Iruka had been too far indulgent, dismissing it as a civilian’s need for reassurance, reasoning that comfort for a shaken civilian was one more service he could provide as a shinobi.

It only took Tenzou becoming bolder, grabbing Iruka from behind. Iruka had reacted on reflex: the kunai, always in his hand from that first day - he spun around and stopped short of driving it into Tenzou’s face.

Its sharp point scratched the skin of Tenzou’s cheek, and the white sap that oozed out before the injury sealed itself away was the resounding toll of a warning bell that Tenzou was not what Iruka thought he was.

To which Tenzou had only raised a hand to touch at that injury that was no more. To which he said, even delightedly, “this is the part where you run.”

And run Iruka did - straight and straight and straight, desperate for an end to these woods. Surely it had to end somewhere - where the trees reached up towards the sun instead of after him, where the vines draped themselves across branches instead of lashing out towards his ankles and curling around his wrists.

He ran on as the light through the foliage slanted eastwards, as the shadows grew longer and darker and deep - ran all the way to that path into the woods he first saw in his desperate flight from the two missing-nin. Instead of leading out, it led him to a wall of brambles - far too tall and too widespread to have grown naturally over the course of days.

And Iruka, with a kunai in his hand and a monster on his tail, had chosen to forge forward, to hack through the thorns instead of turning around and facing his death.

A foolish effort, a futile attempt. In a dash of cruelty, Tenzou had let him through almost the entire way, where Iruka could see through the gaps the main road and the carts of the merchants passing by, had let him almost think he’d won - before the brambles shifted and curled around Iruka and dragged him screaming back into the forest. Away from freedom.

And now here they were, with Tenzou brushing a thumb lightly across Iruka’s cheek.

“I’ve never been saved before,” he murmured. “How novel. I was going to kill you, and then you saved me.”

“I should have let you die then,” Iruka sneered, pressing away from Tenzou’s hand. The thorns dug deeper into his back and wrists. “If I’d known - I’d have let you die."

“But you didn’t.” And Tenzou's hand, deceptively soft, cupped Iruka’s cheek. “You saved me,” he repeated, right as he leant in and covered Iruka’s lips with his own.

Iruka froze. He had expected death, not the monster in the shape of a man kissing him, slipping a tongue inside his mouth. And he would have stayed frozen if not for how the tongue brushed back of his teeth and further in, across the cavern of his mouth and further in, down his throat and further in -

His gag reflex kicked in then - he choked, pushing and straining against that intrusive thing that pretended at being a tongue. He wanted it out, he needed it out - in pure desperation, he bit down.

But instead of retracting, liquid flooded his mouth: thick, syrupy and bland.

Sap. It was sap. He was going to drown with a tongue down his throat and sap in his lungs - he was going to die like that missing-nin, choking to death on nectar -

Tenzou drew back, and the tongue withdrew with him. Iruka could only gasp for breath and spit out mouthfuls of white globs, sap mixed with saliva, after.

“What the fuck,” he said, his voice coarse. “What the fuck - “

“I was thanking you,” Tenzou said, nonplussed. The thorns had scratched Iruka’s cheek open again in his struggle; Tenzou delicately licked the gathering blood off Iruka's skin. “You humans do this to thank each other, don’t you?”

Iruka made a strangled noise as the reality hit him: Tenzou had probably witnessed adrenaline-fuelled kisses on the grounds of the forest, as his preys ran from him. A near-death experience jolted the libido for some.

In retrospect - was that what Tenzou was trying to do all this time?

“If you want to thank me,” Iruka said, his words leaving him in a rush. “You’d let me go.”

For a moment Tenzou looked down at Iruka, and Iruka thought that maybe, just maybe, he was considering it. That he would unwind the brambles from Iruka’s shoulders and let Iruka go, that a monster might know of human compassion and act it out.

But Tenzou looked down at Iruka, and decided mercilessly, pitilessly, “no.”

His hand brushed at the strands of Iruka’s hair that had been pulled out by his struggle through the brambles. A mockery of affection.

“I want to consume you,” he whispered. Like a confession; like damnation. “I’ve tasted the hunt and I’ve tasted your blood - I want you. I want all of you.”

His finger traced over Iruka’s scar - and there was that sudden shock of sharpness, as blood began to run down his face from his scar open anew.

“I could eat you right now,” he mused. “You’ll nourish me well. Blood always does.”  Tenzou kissed his cheek then, but Iruka could feel the press of that false tongue against his skin, lapping at the blood. 

“Do it,” Iruka challenged, as weak as his voice was. He would not beg - he refused to. 

“But you’re so interesting,” Tenzou repeated against his cheek. If Iruka didn’t know better, there was affection in his voice. Maybe even fondness. “Talking all the time… You’re different. Special.”

He licked Iruka one final time, before murmuring, “I’ll just have to consume you slowly.”

And Iruka’s elevated heartbeat kicked itself into a staccato beat of terror. Images flashed across his mind: of Tenzou taking a bite out of him, of Tenzou leaving him to bleed. Blood trickling down his skin and dripping onto the hungry soil below.

“I’ll shade you,” Tenzou said over the rush of blood in Iruka’s ears. It almost sounded like reassurance. “I’ll give you water and give you food. And when you ripen I’ll take what I need.”

“Humans don’t work like that,” Iruka said, strained. Like his lungs were being squeezed, even though the brambles were not so tight as to strangle him. “I won't - I don’t ripen - I don’t work like that!”

There was a sound of disappointment, and Iruka waited for Tenzou to decide that Iruka was no longer interesting. But instead he shook his head - the sound of it like leaves rustling against leaves, as the forest too rustled around them.

“You do,” he said, certain. “You will.” His eyes darkened as he stared at Iruka’s face; as he licked his lips for the taste of blood. “I’ll show you.”