Chapter 8
Oh shesh, I didn’t mean to take so long.
You know I love you guys, right? I’m always glad to look into my inbox and find new reviews and favorites, even though I’m a lazy asshole and haven’t updated like I should.
There’s no better motivator than a guilty conscience.
About Kakashi’s strange remark: I wrote a bit in a note below.
Team 7 is miserable.
After the initial euphoria of graduation passed, the bitter reality of D-rank missions upon D-rank missions has slowly started to sink in. ‘Playing ninja’ Sasuke called it resentfully, scrubbing away dirt from under his fingernails. Nowadays it’s not unusual to come across the lot of them moping, cursing their lazy, inept teacher … who they still haven’t figured out Hisana knows. It’s a source of endless joy to her that makes their constant whining very nearly bearable.
“I can’t believe he’s a jounin,” Sakura repeats for the fifth time today, fingers twitching as if she’s imagining them wrapped around Kakashi’s scrawny neck. Up until know her team leader has always skillfully avoided team 7, catching Hisana when she’s alone and slinking off exactly when one of them turns around the corner. It’s a succession of beautifully executed near misses that she can’t help but admire a bit. In the past years she herself has only ever referred to him as ‘Shishou’, ‘Taichou’ or, occasionally, ‘that idiot’ in their presence, vaguely aware that introducing them before graduation may not be the best idea. Now she’s absurdly glad for it for reasons that have nothing to do with preserving the storyline.
“Easy,” she calms the girl, offering the last of her dango and watching in pleasure as Sakura savagely tears into them. “Most jounin are a bit eccentric. I can promise you, laziness isn’t the worst you could get saddled with.”
Sakura makes a noncommittal noise that could mean anything from ‘you’re right’ to ‘fuck off’. “I don’t think he’s … incompetent. Or something. But he’s super annoying – I don’t get how this is training. Is he making fun of us?” Probably. Kakashi’s approach to teaching is that humiliation makes lessons stick better. He’s not wrong. But it’s painful while you’re the one suffering. At least, Hisana thinks wryly, Sakura isn’t alone in her misery.
While Sasuke tries to bear training more or less stoically, Naruto is very close to losing his patience. Wave isn’t too long off anymore. The thought fills her with a little less dread than before, but the realization, about two weeks ago, still settled like a stone into her stomach.
Every day now she expects Sasuke to announce that they’re leaving, pack already in hand and rearing to go. Hiding her nerves is a bit more difficult now that she’s surrounded by experienced ninja rather than self-absorbed Academy children, even if she herself has gotten better at suppressing her emotions. Shiki is already watching her with worried eyes, and two days ago Tenzo commented on how little she’s eating. At this point she almost wants it to happen already, just so that it can finally be over.
“Well,” Hisana suggests after some thought, “if you’re not happy with what you’re learning, maybe you can tell him what you want instead. He’s your teacher, he’s supposed to listen to you.” Also, Kakashi-taichou appreciates this sort of drive. Maybe even enough to stop picking on them.
Ironically, the day that Sasuke comes home, excitement written all over his face, Hisana doesn’t even have the time to worry. She’s holding her own pack in hand, Anko and Inuzuka Hana already waiting impatiently for her outside, ready to head towards training ground 44.
“Wave country,” he informs her, savagely pleased to have an important mission for the first time. “We’ll be gone for two weeks.”
There’s a moment of wild panic in which she very nearly reaches for him. But Sasuke still isn’t too good with touching and the very last thing she wants is to worry him. So instead Hisana hip checks him on her way to the door, hard enough to make him stumble a few paces. “Don’t die, idiot.”
His snort follows her out of the room; the last thing she hears before closing the door is his disgruntled, “Who does she think I am?”
“Distract me,” she demands from the other women, not even pretending that Hana’s chakra enhanced ears weren’t all but pressed against her front door.
“No problem,” the Inuzuka replies flatly. “There’s so much work to do, he’ll come back from three missions to Wave and you won’t even notice.”
One can only hope.
It’s true that the work is pretty grueling. After forcing Ibiki and half the Chunin Exam committee into submission, the tokubetsu jounin vengefully put Anko in charge of the Forest of Death. It’s a thankless task involving finicky, old surveillance equipment, giant tigers, traps in places that would be tricky enough without, as well as giant fucking tigers. “I hate you both,” Hana states flatly upending her shoes and letting what seems to be half a swamp splatter at Anko’s feet. A few paces away one of the younger – naïve – chuunin she charmed into helping does the same, face tired and disillusioned. “If I’d known you’d drag me into this, I’d have voted you down so fast your heads would spin.”
A giant, yellowed tooth comes away from her leg with an unpleasant sucking noise; the matching tiger carcass has by now sunk to the bottom of the swamp. Anko snickers. “Don’t act as if you don’t get off on it. Your clan is full of adrenaline junkies.”
“But not me! Why did you think I became a vet? Not for the thrills of castrations and emptying anal glands, I assure you.” The swampy chuunin makes a squeaky noise, and Hisana can see the last of his crush on Hana die a swift death.
“You do realize we’re wasting daylight?” Hisana interjects delicately, lifting another wooden crate into her arms. “I don’t know about you, but I have absolutely no desire to find out what else crawls around in here after sundown.”
Anko’s face does something complicated; Hana’s freezes awkwardly in realization. The muddy chuunin abruptly jerks the crate out of her arms and sets to work with renewed vigor. “See?” she tells the women as he stalks off, “He’s smart.”
They do end up staying the night. And the next. It’s an experience Hisana carefully puts into a box and shoves into the deepest recesses of her memory.
But despite the unpleasantness of the forest itself and Anko’s steadily deteriorating mood, she’s grateful. Because as soon as the constant chorus of DANGER! DANGER! in her head falls silent, Hisana’s thoughts turn back to team 7. Three days – have they already encountered Zabuza? They must have. Half of her wishes she could have accompanied them – actually, she’s still itching to just take a leave of absence and follow them. But this is, once again, an important point in the timeline that she can’t risk botching. Sasuke needs to awaken his Sharingan – sooner or later – and what better place than under taichou’s watchful eyes? He will need it for the exam, for Gaara, and, as much as she still dislikes it, he needs to enter the damn exam in the first place. If they don’t impress Kakashi, team 7 will have to park their collective butts on a couch while Konoha is overrun by Sound.
Also, the fight against Haku will have a powerful impact on both Sasuke and Naruto. Powerful enough, that in the original manga it forged a bond between them that neither Orochimaru, nor Itachi, or even Sasuke himself could sever completely. Hisana thinks they could probably work without it now, held together by happy childhood memories and a solid friendship, but does she really want to pass up the opportunity? The answer is an emphatic ‘no’.
Of course she completely forgot that Kakashi now had a tool to utilize that he didn’t have the last time around. Her.
Or maybe that’s not quite right. While definitely taichou’s tool first and foremost, it’s not really him how does the wielding this time.
At almost two at night a sharp knock on the bedroom window finds Hisana already awake. There’s no chakra signature that would have woken her, but the familiar scent of petrichor and sword oil announce Tenzo’s arrival clearly enough. Without Sasuke sleeping in the room a slow, creeping paranoia has gripped hold of Hisana; sleeping in such a state of hypervigilance is … difficult. For a moment they stare at each other through the glass, Tenzo’s eyes zeroing in on the bruises beneath her eyes, before she opens the window to let him slip in.
He visibly restrains himself from commenting on her appearance and instead shoves a ragged piece of paper into her hands.
“I got this from taicho,” he says, sounding vaguely unhappy. “I’d go, but I can’t.” His tone makes it clear that it’s official business, and Hisana doesn’t even bother to ask about it.
‘Assistance appreciated; ran into a bit of trouble. Don’t tell Hisapi.’
It’s written in chicken scratch that far surpasses Kakashi’s usual messy scrawl – the result of chakra exhaustion – and is followed by a string of coordinates that Hisana knows correspond to a tiny village in Wave, right in the middle of nowhere. A number of questions fight to topple off her tongue; what comes out instead is, “What does he mean, ‘Don’t tell Hisapi’?”
Tenzo gives an uncharacteristic little wriggle that makes him look boyish and a little helpless.
“After he told you not to worry about Sasuke-kun he can’t really ask you for help, can he? You’d never trust him with your cousin again. But I really can’t leave. And I thought … if taichou asks for help in the first place …” – it would be because it’s pretty serious.
Hisana has no doubt that, if it weren’t for team 7, Kakashi could juggle Zabuza and Haku by himself without problem. But team 7 is there, and an opponent like the S-rank missing-nin can’t be defeated on the defensive.
“So what now? I just … leave?” One hand already reaches for the windowsill, her body ready to run before her head has really processed the situation. She can’t go. She has to go. Tenzo grabs her by the shoulders and steers her towards the bed, as if already scenting danger.
“First you will pack your bags,” he says slowly, as if speaking with a particularly dumb child, “and then you’ll take a leave of absence at the Hokage Tower. Taichou is currently your direct superior and only commanding officer. As long as you’re not needed anywhere else in the village you can leave and follow him.”
Hisana nods, only passively listening. Her mind is already occupied with the things she needs to pack, the ways she can speed up her travel; if she leaves tonight, will she arrive before Zabuza? Does she want to arrive before Zabuza?
“Listen,” Tenzo rips her from her thoughts, “You need to calm down or you’re going to faint. It’s taichou, it’ll be fine. You’re not the emergency reinforcement, you’re the clean up. You get there, clean up the mess, and carry everyone home who can’t walk.”
That’s right, she thinks faintly, trying to force down the panic, I’m not the hero. I’m the clean up. Though not really. A week, or two – how much longer did team 7 stay in Wave because of the bridge? How long before Zabuza recovers and returns to finish the job?
Hisana has no idea. How could she be just the clean up and risk coming too late? Tenzo is right; it’s taichou, they’ll be fine. Just like they were in the manga when no one answered his call for help. But how can she look into taichou’s eyes and say ‘I did my best’, ‘I came for you’, knowing full well that it’s a lie? She can’t. As much as she hates it, because it complicates everything, it’s not only about preserving the time line anymore. This is her life, her decisions, her karma.
Naruto and Mizuki were easy. It hurt, yes, but it was simple to rationalize; something good came out of it and no one got permanently or seriously hurt. But this is different. It’ll scar both Naruto and Sasuke for life. On some level she knows it’ll frighten taichou. And who knows how Sakura will react this time around?
Hisana bites down on her thumb nail, trying to come to a speedy decision. Fuck this.
At almost three in the morning, yet another ninja is woken. This time not by a knock at the door, but by the scratch of dull claws against wooden floors. Hyuuga Kohaku’s Byakugan activate without a whisper of chakra, scanning the surrounding compound for intruders, his breathing still even and inconspicuous. An irregularity emerges in the shadows below his desk; a glint of eyes where there should be none. “Good morning, sunshine,” Fudo drawls, wet black nose wriggling in the moonlight. “You got a minute?”
Her former sensei is as close to pissed off as Hisana has seen him since she passed the Chuunin Exams, but with growing familiarity his glower has lost a lot of its menace to her.
“I’ll owe you,” she impresses on him, while he adjusts his yukata against the chilly air.
“‘Owe me’,” he grits out. “It has been nearly sixty hours since I slept last, and I need to be at the Hokage Tower early in the morning.”
Whining won’t help, Hisana knows; it’ll only annoy him more. So she grits her teeth and stands her ground. Favors count a lot around here, especially from clans people. She has no doubt that she’ll be working her ass off to pay for this. Finally his lips thin in vexation. Victory.
Kohaku-senpai’s Kuchiyose no Jutsu produces no smoke and makes no sound. Instead a ghostly figure emerges from the ground like a blooming flower. The great crane towers over both of them. Its legs and neck are spindly but its wings are strong and broad. It stares her down, the look in its eyes eerily similar to that of its master. A put-upon sigh – “So, so,” Kanon muses, her feathers quivering in agitation, “we are in trouble again, aren’t we?” Her long beak passes by Hisana’s cheek, briefly tugging at her hair, bringing her big, yellow eye up to Hisana’s face. It blinks.
“It’s not my fault this time,” the Uchiha insists with as much dignity as she can muster at three in the morning, with her hair askew and clothes disheveled. Kanon clicks in disapproval and sheer disbelief. Kohaku-senpai clears his throat. “The coordinates,” he reminds her and Hisana jerks the paper out of her pocket.
“It’s in Wave,” she says, smoothing out the crinkles and holding it up for Kanon to see.
“Yes,” the bird says flatly. “I can see that. How quickly will we need to travel?”
“Uhh … – how about ‘as quickly as possible’ …?”
It seemed like such a good idea at the time. Hisana leans against the giant bird as her insides seem to flop around in her. She dry heaves, stomach already empty of everything but acid.
Kanon sighs. “Come now. Only two more hours and we will take another rest.”
Hisana nods faintly, wiping her mouth with a ragged tissue and gripping the white feathers determinedly. “Sorry,” she mumbles. “Let’s try again.”
I hope all of you had happy holidays<3
About Kakashi:
I was really surprised that a lot of you seemed a bit bewildered by his comment. But just as many of you came really close – Prinzenhasserin being the closest to the main point. Neither Hisana nor Kakashi – for all their brains – are reliable narrators.
Just imagine: Hisana came to him, huffy, to berate him about not telling her about team 7. From Kakashi’s perspective there could be two reasons for that : 1) She worries about Sasuke, and 2) she’s jealous of his new team.
He was telling her that he can watch out for her cousin and that Sasuke isn’t going to replace her; they both mean different things to him. Of course they were both talking about different things so his remarks mostly went over Hisana’s head.