Confessional Box

Hitting the bottle fast and hard was a habit she'd inherited from her father, God forsake him. Tenten wasn't very choosy about her sake, about the quality or the way it tasted or the exact heat with which it burned her throat going down, which was probably why she was in that particular establishment to begin with. It was cheap; that was the main reason behind it all, and ANBU didn't particularly pay very well.

The drinking age in Hi no Kuni was twenty-one; Hi no Kuni's drinking age was, in fact, the highest on the continent. Kaminari no Kuni allowed its young people to drink at eighteen, Mizu no Kuni at seventeen. Kaze no Kuni was happy to allow citizens to drink at sixteen, and Tsuchi no Kuni had no established drinking age to speak of. Tenten, at the moment, fell three years short of reaching Hi no Kuni's accepted age to drink, but no one seemed to care. The proprietor of the bar, like many bartenders, was a retired nin and was of the firm opinion that, whatever established law said, those who were old enough to commit murder in the name of the state were old enough to imbibe alcohol.

Tenten did very much appreciate the bartender's attitude, as she downed the saucer, and was quickly supplied with more sake by the bartender, who graced her with a sympathetic smile. While she was not particularly lovely, especially not when her single bun (she had stopped wearing her hair in two buns after the fashion of the country of her ancestry when she entered into ANBU) bled hairs, her entire body was disheveled and her eyes drooping, she was reasonably attractive, and the bartender had a weakness for girls with swords and knives.

"How long have you been here?"

She and Naruto had not known each other very well before they, at the same time, entered into ANBU. They had been put in the same squad for a short time before being passed off to different senpais, Naruto to Yamato-taicho and Tenten to Uzuki-taicho. But now, they were close enough that if one spotted the other at a bar, they would be more than willing to stop in and keep the other company.

Tenten turned her eyes on Naruto to find clear sapphire eyes tipping in her direction, more curious than concerned, though there was present elements of the latter. Her head shook a little too vigorously as she waved her hand in the air. "A couple of hours." She frowned, with slack lips that couldn't make the gesture quite as firm as usual. "Maybe." Tenten was both uncomfortably aware of and completely oblivious of the noticeable slur in her voice, and frowned at it in a way that only someone who was very tipsy could.

Naruto nodded at this, as though it made perfect sense, and in a way, it did. If one was going to drink, then one might as well get their money's worth out of it. He settled in the chair at the bar beside hers, alerting the bartender. "I'd like some sake," he murmured, usually loud voice made permanently quiet by his several months in ANBU. He cast his eyes towards Tenten. "And I'll pay for whatever else she drinks."

"Thank you."

Several saucers of sake later, and Tenten was very concerned about something. It had been a grand total of six months since Naruto's last attempt to bring his erstwhile teammate home had resulted in the death of the final scion of a fallen noble house. Since then, Naruto's visits to the bars that would accommodate underage drinkers had increased exponentially. Tenten could sympathize, but she drank for her own reasons, and chose not to disclose those reasons. The question lingering on the tip of her tongue was a very simple one, but one that most wouldn't have been stupid, foolhardy or suicidal enough to ask.

But Tenten trusted Naruto, and he trusted her. Besides, alcohol was famous for the effect of lowering inhibition, so Tenten profited on it, and prayed to gods she did not worship that Naruto would not take offense. "Naruto…" She hesitated, and struggled to get a grip on the words that were tangling in her tongue. "Can you tell me something?" Her low, mellifluous voice, blurred by sake, somehow retained some of its sweet quality while being utterly saturated with alcohol. Tenten had a very high tolerance level for a young woman.