Chapter 25
It was bizarre.
Uzumaki Naruto couldn’t wrap his mind around it, couldn’t make sense of it. He held up his right hand and watched the sun catch in the steel, glowing metallic silver. His brain said: make a fist.
And he felt absent fibers obey, as his fingers curled against his palm, knuckles gleaming. His brain said: twist your wrist.
And he did.
He could still feel the burn, the ache, piercing and radiating up to his shoulder. His elbow was the worst of it, a constant throb he couldn’t rid himself of. Tsunade had told him it was called phantom pain; that even though his arm was gone, completely, the pain was there. He wasn’t crazy.
It was real.
He wondered at it, not paying any attention to Daikoku-Sensei as he blathered on and on about situational awareness, or something. Instead, Naruto focused on the way his prosthetic limb functioned. If he looked closely enough—and if his eyes weren’t fooling him after nearly an hour of intense staring, then he was certain his prosthetic was half a blink slower than his organic arm. He made twin fists, trying to watch both at the same time. Then he did it again.
And again.
Someone behind him giggled, and a flicker of a moment later someone’s foot gently nudged his ankle. Breaking out of his distraction, he glanced up at the board and noticed that Daikoku-Sensei was gazing at him quite pointedly, lips pursed and expression shaded in something like forlorn disappointment.
“Were you listening to a word I said, Naruto?”
Naruto grinned, eyes crinkling as he automatically lifted his right arm to rub idly at the back of his neck, a habit. Daikoku-Sensei sighed, shaking his head and turning back to the board to re-teach the latest information in broken down, summarized form. Once he seemed certain that Naruto had at least attempted to pay attention to him, he said, “This is important, Naruto. Get notes from a peer. Hinata, if you wouldn’t mind?”
Naruto turned to see Hinata already sliding her notes his way, nodding at Daikoku-Sensei and flicking a gentle glance Naruto’s way. Naruto immediately dropped his right arm, hiding it inconspicuously under the table against his leg. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed of it, really. It was just…different.
And Naruto had always been different—that was the problem.
He fisted his steel fingers against his thigh, glancing over to Hinata from under his lashes, uncharacteristically shy. Her expression was completely open to him, cheeks dusted pink and eyes tracing the slope of his quirked lips. She immediately glanced down to her notes as Daikoku-Sensei continued with the lesson, coming to a close.
“I color-coordinated them,” Hinata whispered, reaching out to show him the different sections noted in different colors. Her fingers were slender, pale as the paper. She ducked her head. “I apologize if they’re a bit confusing.”
“Oh, no,” Naruto disagreed, eyeing her notes long enough to actually read some of them. His eyes leapt to the orange ink, followed it to gold. Each winding tendril of ink attracted his attention, and it was surprising, the way that a simple change in color helped him to finally take in some new information. “It’s awesome!”
Hinata smiled, head still ducked, and without thinking Naruto lifted his right hand to trace a single line of her text.
“Is this for real?” He asked, lifting his head to glance over at her, finger still pressed to the page.
Hinata stifled a laugh, nodding her head. Her eyes followed the streamline plates of his prosthesis with subtle curiosity, and it was enough to remind him that he had his arm out in the open between them. With eyes trailing over his metallic fingers, she said, “Yes, of course.”
“Geez,” Naruto laughed, smoothly removing his hand and tucking it back underneath their shared table. He heard Daikoku-Sensei end the lesson a moment before the bell, the sounds of chairs scuffing around them, people gathering their things. He couldn’t take his gaze from Hinata’s face, the way her eyes leapt from his hidden arm to his vulnerable eyes. He felt exposed under her gaze, but not uncomfortable.
“You can take my notes home with you tonight,” Hinata said, as she turned to slowly start gathering her own things. “I’ll get them back from you tomorrow.”
“Really? Hey, thanks Hinata!”
Flushing ruddy, Hinata glanced back at him with a smile. Together they gathered their things, two amongst the last few people in the room preparing to head to their next class. Naruto reached up unthinkingly to grasp the strap of his backpack with his right hand, and before he could correct the movement Hinata reached out in a surprising show of boldness.
Naruto froze, heart racing with nerves as her fingers trailed lightly over the steel. He couldn’t feel her, not the way he could still feel the pain, and that was upsetting.
She ripped her hand back as though touching flame, and for a second Naruto thought he’d accidentally shared some of that pain with her. His heart hammered against his ribs. He blinked, startled himself, and glanced up to see that she was pale, embarrassed; her fingers trembled.
“I’m so sorry, I-I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“It’s okay,” Every smooth shift in her expression was an awakening, novel and intriguing. Her eyes drew him in easily, without effort. He leaned towards her, and tried to calm her, reaching out with his left hand to clasp her shoulder. He offered her a lopsided smile, his heart still racing but this time with something unidentifiable, something new. “It’s weird, huh?”
“No!” She said immediately, voice low but still managing to startle him. “Not weird,” She continued, ducking her head and pulling her backpack further up her shoulder. She shuffled her feet and Naruto, slightly taller than her, caught glimpses of her self-conscious expression through the gaps of her bangs. Laughter could be heard from the hallway, along with shuffling feet, toes scraping against hardened wood. A door slammed shut. Naruto did not look away.
“It’s neat, you know,” she whispered, too low for him to hear. He blinked, laughing a little.
“What?”
Hinata glanced up at him with eyes that spoke of a sudden challenge, and something in Naruto responded in kind, shoulders pulled taut. Her cheeks still flared with color, but her posture was newly rebuilt, structured and confident even as she struggled to meet his unwavering gaze. Huh, he thought idly, not understanding the shift of her emotions or the way that his shifted in response, a domino effect.
Her words, when they came, were a rushed jumble that left him feeling tethered to the lips that spoke them. “I said, I have to go!”
Naruto blinked after her, watching as she turned and just about ran from the room, sandals tap tap tapping against the wooden floors. Even after she had turned the corner and disappeared from his sight, Naruto stood there staring at the doorway through which she’d vanished. He wondered at her abrupt dismissal, and her embarrassment somehow coupled with a surefire posture of a seemingly indomitable will. And—
His still-racing heart.
“Huh,” he said, this time aloud, to the emptiness of the room around him. After several long moments where he merely stood, pretending as though he could hear her steps in the hallway, he finally urged his legs to move. He tucked his hands into his pockets, ignoring the way his elbow clanged when he accidentally bumped it against the doorway. Usually he would’ve tucked it in closer, been embarrassed enough to see if anyone had noticed. Someone was probably preparing to make fun of him already, the shiver over his spine said, and yet—
He didn’t care. He thought about the long tail of her dark hair, and the way her fingers had trembled when she had touched the steel of him.
It was heavy, suddenly; the realization that rather than being embarrassed of his arm, he felt a complicated mixture of wonder and resentment instead.
Wonder; that she would reach for him, for the arm that was his but not really him. A structural weakness. Resentment, too. What had her touch felt like?
He found himself mulling over an irritating yet irresponsibly promising trail of thought, made entirely of silk and lavender. Why had she reached for me, he thought distractedly, as he turned into the room and found his seat alone in the back of class. Someone threw a paper airplane, crumpled but agile, over his shoulder to slam pokily into the neck of a solemn shaded-boy whose energy seemed to buzz around him. Naruto settled his steel arm on top of the table, this time, uncaring of those around him and their proximity to his strange but newly interesting addition to his body. Later, in his own privacy, he would look back at this moment and realize, suddenly, and all at once, that there had been no pain.
He felt his lips curl in the corners, a slow rising, novel ease of joy.
Iruka began speaking, and Naruto looked up. The gleam of sunlight coming through the window caught in the steel of his arm and held in the pools of his eyes, spilling temporary stars into his line of sight. Silver and gold, flickering in front of him, and a single thought pushing like the tide against the shore of his consciousness.
(Will she reach for me again)