Chant d'Automne

Chapter 5: Decline of Day

Kakashi drilled Hinata for the rest of the afternoon, calling orders and tips from his perch in the tree.

To his student, laboring under the sun, light in her eyes, he was becoming somewhat irritating. She tried to push this feeling aside, but kept coming back to the fact that he was in the shade, un-sweaty and reading that orange book again, while she was not.

Besides the heat and the sweat beading on her forehead, her hair kept falling in her eyes. It had grown long since her time as a Chuunin, so she looked even more like Neji. Father had praised her new look saying that it would be much easier to find her a husband. Why did he never pester Neji to get a less girly haircut? The real reason she had grown her hair long, though, was to hide. When she was embarrassed, or feeling particularly shy, she could just retreat behind a veritable curtain of deep indigo, and no one would pay her any attention. Unfortunately, this strategy had backfired, and now held Kakashi’s attention.

“Get your hair out of your eyes, Hinata. Just because you can’t see doesn’t mean your opponent can’t see you.”

Unable to find a hair tie on her wrists or in her pockets, she stopped and went over to her teacher. He looked up from his book.

“Do you need something?”

“Ah- a thing to tie back my hair?”

He gave her an odd look and brushed his hand over his own hair. “Ponytails have never really been my style.”

“Oh. Right. Um, sorry. Stupid of me to think…” She trailed off, scanning the ground around her feet, as if hoping to find one among the dirt and decomposing leaves.

Suddenly Kakashi grabbed her shoulder.

“Wha-?”

He stuffed the book in his pocket and clapped his other hand over her mouth.

“Quiet!” He whispered. “Don’t react, but there’s something out there.”

Hinata dipped her head to signal that she understood, and Kakashi let go of her.

“I know you’re tired, but we should keep moving. Consider dealing with fatigue as part of your training.” They leapt onto one of the oak’s sturdier branches.

“Yeah, everything’s a part of my training,” she muttered under her breath.

“I heard that.”

“Sorry, sensei. Can you see who it is?”

“No. I don’t think it’s a person, though. It smells sort of-” He frowned. “That’s odd. I can’t- Do you have your backpack? We should get moving.”

“Yeah, I-” She hesitated as she saw a shadowy form materialize behind her sensei. It drew a long, hissing breath and held up a long, dirty katana.

“Kakashi! Behind you!” Hinata gasped. She reached for her own weapons, but knew that if this ninja had been able to catch Kakashi unaware, there would be little she could do.

The thing didn’t seem to be a ninja either. It wore a long cloak with the hood up, shrouding it’s face- very bad for peripheral vision, as any decent ninja knew. And it’s other garments, though nondescript, were loose and looked heavy. How could it move so fast?

Her teacher had turned, and prepared to jump and evade the attack, but too slowly. The shadow thing thrust the sword, landing a blow with a solid thunk!

Hinata had been about to panic, but saw that in place of where her teacher had been a few seconds ago, there was now a log.

Both she and the enemy ninja looked at each other in surprise then realized they would now be fighting each other.

The thing hissed at her, sounding more like steam escaping from a test tube than any snake she had ever heard. In one imperceptible motion it moved from about five feet away to right in front of her. She hadn’t even seen it lift its feet.

Where was Kakashi? That didn’t matter. She was desperate and about to panic and freeze up, just like when she was younger. She couldn’t do that anymore. She wouldn’t. What if this was actually a test? If she didn’t show Kakashi that she was mentally capable of facing a foe, he might say she wasn’t physically able either.

“Pull yourself together,” she breathed to herself, voice ragged. “Pull yourself together.”

Kunai in hand, she spread her feet apart, holding the knife like Kakashi had shown her. Was that chirping noise she was hearing a creation of her mind?

“Hinata, get down!” Kakashi yelled from somewhere overhead. Apparently not. She ducked and rolled out of the way just in time.

The copy ninja plummeted from above, hand in front of him, looking like a comet engulfed in blue lightning.

Their adversary didn’t have time to react, and the chidori lanced through its chest. For a few seconds, it stood, unmoving, as if nothing had happened. Then it shimmered slightly in a soft evening breeze, before being swept away like dust.

“What?” Both of Kakashi’s eyes widened.

“I- I don’t know.”

He lowered his hand, which was bleeding.

“Are you okay?” she ran over to him. His hands and arms had long gashes and there was wet blood spattered on his chest and shoulders as well.

“What happened?” She exhaled. “How did you get hurt?”

“I don’t know,” he grumbled, lowering his arms with a small grimace.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’ll be fine. Let’s keep moving in case it comes back.” Though phrased as a suggestion, his tone told her not to ask any more questions.

----------------------

----------------------

When they finally stopped to make camp, it was completely dark, and Hinata felt she was so tired, she wasn’t actually tired anymore.

Kakashi had staked out a clearing beside a small stream, protected by a steep rocky embankment to their backs. The night was quiet and cool and the only sound now came from the calm bubbling of the stream. Hinata breathed in shallowly, still shaken from the encounter a few hours earlier. Her facedown with the thing, for lack of a better word, had rattled her harder than she had expected. Though she couldn’t use her own chakra, she could still sense others’ and the chakra from the other ninja had felt unclean, but familiar. But where would she have sensed a chakra signature like that before, though?

Still wracking her brain for the connection it made between the thing and the chakra signature, she set up the basic tent she had brought. After fumbling for several minutes, she finally got it to stand up and not be too lopsided.

However, when she tried to enter, she found that the zipper was on the inside.

“Dammit!” She cursed, not caring if she sounded childish. She was exhausted, grimy, and worried that the thing might come back.

“What’s wrong?” Kakashi asked from across the clearing. “Forgot to pack something?”

“No…” She heaved out the word in one long breath. “I just put the tent up inside out.”

To her surprise, Kakashi laughed at this.

“It’s not funny, sensei!” She said indignantly.

“Yeah, sorry. You’re right.” He was still chuckling, but suddenly broke off in a wheezing gasp.

“What’s wrong?” She dropped the pieces of the disassembled tent and rushed over to him.

“Nothing,” he said, avoiding her eyes.

“You’re hurt!”

“You caught me,” he shot back dryly.

Hinata did nothing in response, except to take his right arm in her small, pale hands.

“What are you doing?” He tensed up, but didn’t tug his arm away.

“You don’t seem very concerned about your injuries.” She turned his arm over and prodded apart two sides of one long tear in his shirtsleeve. “So if you won’t do anything about them, I will.”

“I’m fine.” He pulled his arm away.

Hinata stood up and fixed him with an uncharacteristically direct glare.

“You’re not. I don’t mean to be rude or overbearing. I’m trying to help.”

“Hinata, I really don’t need-“

“I’m getting water and bandages.” She stalked off, wondering if she had gone too far. Respect for one’s teachers was instilled in all students from an early age. She had been a little sharp. Then again, she was attempting to help someone who wasn’t used to needing help at all, and had a strong aversion to feeling as if he depended on anyone.

When she returned with a bowl full of water from the stream and rolls of white gauze from her supply pack, Kakashi had moved. From his perfectly-pitched tent, a warm light emanated and outlined his dark profile inside.

“Kakashi?”

“Come in.”

She did. He was kneeling on his unfurled bed roll, his mask and flak jacket discarded to the side.

“It’s more hygienic in here,” he explained.

She nodded, knelt in front of him and set down the supplies.

“Could you roll up your sleeves?”

“Here.” He peeled his shirt off. “This will be easier.”

“I- yes.” She swallowed and dipped a sponge in the bowl of water. As she took his arm, she glanced up to see his face. His eyes had followed the same path and a look passed between them- a look so full of barely-concealed restraint, it was nearly petrifying. Kakashi was the first to look away. Neither of them said anything for a few minutes, and Hinata sponged off the dried blood from the wounds on his left arm, carefully avoiding touching him anywhere else.

---------------------

---------------------

Kakashi held himself unusually tense while Hinata cleaned his cuts. As a general rule, he eschewed physical contact except when it was absolutely necessary. It wasn’t that he disliked it, more that he disliked that most people tried to find meaning that wasn’t there, or ignored significance when there was.

Hinata’s touch was- no surprise- gentle. Her hands were small, soft, quick, with fingers neither long nor short. Kakashi felt his mind and body gradually relaxing, letting himself acknowledge that he felt comfortable under he un-intrusive ministrations. At the same time, it was as if every nerve in his body was stimulated by her proximity, her hands, her scent, her long hair that grazed his arms. Drawing on his ANBU training in self control , he viciously damped his desires. She was his student now, he kept repeating in his mind. Any feelings of a sexual nature would be highly indecent. People would probably be wary of the fact that he had agreed to train her at all. Why had he, anyway? That night in his kitchen, he had surprised himself as well as Hinata. He told himself it was merely curiosity about the sword, and a desire to have his apartment to himself again. There couldn’t be anything more to it than that.

------------------

------------------

Hinata paused after finishing cleaning and wrapping the injuries on both his arms and hands. She sat back on her heels and watched him examine his bandages and flex his hands slowly. He looked up at her and spread his arms wide open.

“Well?”

“Uh, right.” Her gaze dropped to his uncovered chest. There were fewer lacerations there, luckily, but this was still the part she had been dreading. (Not looking forward to, she told herself.)

Instead of wrapping these ones she cut pieces of gauze with a kunai and taped them on. Although she moved cautiously, her hands brushed against his skin. His chest had a few criss-crossing white lines- scars from previous battles. Injuries were nothing new. The rest of the flat, lean expanse had a healthier pigment. She longed to fulfill her impulse to reach out and touch it, but held herself back. She didn’t want to jeopardize their teacher-student relationship. No- she was too shy.

“Does it hurt?” Hinata asked, sponging one of the last wounds.

Kakashi shook his head. “I’ve had worse.”

“Like your eye?”

“That was one. There were a lot of times when I was ANBU, too- but I’m not really supposed to talk about that.”

“Then what can you talk about?” Hinata shifted to work on the last gash, and her breasts were momentarily thrust into his direct line of sight.

“Um…” He forced himself to think of something, anything, to stop the effect she had on his body. “Gai! Gai and I used to get put on the same team for missions a lot.”

“So? He seems nice, and the only person from Konoha who he punches is Lee.” She cut gauze.

“He…went skinny dipping, whenever he could. And he’s always first to sign up for the annual jounin talent show.”

“There’s a jounin talent show?”

“Every damn year. Gai always performs drag queen renditions of show tunes.”

Hinata burst out laughing. “I guess I could see how that’s painful.” She tore off a few pieces of tape. “Almost done.”

“You wouldn’t be laughing if you actually had to sit through it.”

“He doesn’t realize he’s making a fool of himself?” She taped the gauze securely over the wound and on impulse gave it a finishing pat. “There. Too bad neither of us knows healing jutsu.”

“I’d venture to say that he never realizes, what with the green pantsuit, and all…Did you ever fix your tent?”

Hinata let out an enormous yawn before replying, “No. I’d better go do that.”

She started to stand by Kakashi caught her by the arm.

“Just get your bedroll. You can sleep in here.”

Too tired to argue, or even react, she retrieved her bedroll and returned. A part of her barely functioning mind dimly registered what she was doing by accepting, but the rest of it told her to just go with the flow. Generosity came around too infrequently to be refused.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile. He could hear genuine appreciation in her quiet voice. He smiled back.

“I-just- could we stay on opposite sides? I tend to roll around and kick.”

“Sure. I’ll be reading for a while, anyway.” He took the orange book from his pocket and lay down on his mat.

“Okay. Um… good night.”

“Good night,” he replied, already distracted by his reading material again.

-------------------

-------------------

Author’s Notes: I hope everyone is enjoying the story thus far. This is particularly exciting for me, as this is my first multi-chaptered fic that has kept my attention for longer than a week.

Oh, about titles (Japanese) and why I mostly don’t use them in this story: I don’t speak Japanese, and I have never studied it. I don’t always include titles, mostly for the flow of the story, and also for developing Kakashi and Hinata’s relationship. If you see any blatant errors, please don’t hesitate to tell me. Thank you!