"You know what annoys me most about him? His stupid mask," Uchiha Obito complained, letting himself collapse onto Harune's bed.
Harune simply grunted in acknowledgement of her cousin's distaste for his teammate, Hatake Kakashi, unwilling to take her eyes off her katana, which she was diligently cleaning. Much unlike her cousin, the 9 year old never really had any problems with the son of the formerly esteemed White Fang of Konoha, and, as a result, didn't care much for his rivalry against him.
"What the hell is he hiding under there anyway?" he continued. "Maybe he's really ugly or something…"
Harune wasn't looking at him, but Obito sounded much too pleased with the possibility of his rival being less than a sight for sore eyes.
"What do you think, Harune?"
Sighing, the dark haired kunoichi prodigy resheathed her katana and shrugged, shooting her cousin an exasperated look before standing up to get dressed for their daily training.
"I honestly don't know, Obito, I've never given it much thought, and quite frankly, I don't really care," she said, slightly annoyed by her older cousin's petty musings.
The first part of this declaration was true, while she had known Kakashi for the better part of her life, it had never occurred to Harune to question why the chunin two years her senior sported a mask all the time. The latter half, she realized, was quite a lie, now that she thought about it. Obito's curiosity had piqued her own, and while the youngest member of the Kamineko clan tried to push such a trivial thought to the back of her mind, she couldn't.
The young chunin pulled her on her gloves and slung her katana across her back before motioning to Obito to come with her to train. He sulked behind her, disappointed that she didn't share his interest in exposing their silver-haired comrade.
Harune and Obito met up with Rin and Kakashi at the edge of Konoha's designated training grounds. While she did have her own team that she trained with regularly, Kushina-sensei had suggested that Harune hone her skills a little more with Minato-sensei's team, since they were older, more experienced, and more challenging for Sharingan-blessed Kamineko clan member.
"Ohayo!" Rin greeted the cousins happily upon their arrival. Harune had to hold back her laughter at Obito's blushing when his crush jumped to give him a hug.
"Yo," Kakashi greeted them a little less enthusiastically, arms crossed. Harune liked to consider Kakashi to be one of her closest friends, but the way he treated them sometimes made her question otherwise.
However, it was not the last Hatake's total indifference to anything that concerned the 9 year old at the moment, rather, it was the mask and what mysteries it concealed. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't keep her mind off what Kakashi looked like unmasked. And apparently neither could Obito.
"Ok, why don't we split you guys up into pairs and spar?" Minato-sensei suggested when he joined the group a few minutes later.
"Guys versus girls!" Harune suggested on her own part, and Rin and Obito agreed happily. Naturally, Kakashi had to find something wrong with this idea, and snorted.
"What?" Harune snapped.
"It's just that, you're never going to encounter an enemy who calls out 'Wait! Let's fight this out guys versus girls!' It's so juvenile," Kakashi drawled.
"Well you wanna hear me out before you criticize me?" Harune crossed her arms defensively. Minato-sensei watched the little exchange in the background, amused by the dark-haired kunoichi's hot-headedness. She reminded him much of his wife, and ironically enough, her own team's sensei, Kushina. It was in fact he who had suggested the overpowered 9 year old train with his own team from time to time so that she could truly expand her skillset to its full potential.
"You're right, no opponent is gonna give us a fair fight, which is why I think it only makes sense that we put ourselves in a situation where we need to fight girl to guy and guy to girl, because if we only ever get used to me fighting Rin and you fighting Obito, then we're never going to learn how to adapt when we need to," the youngest chunin cocked an eyebrow, inwardly congratulating herself on having shut her sassy senior down.
"Yeah and who knows, maybe the enemy will just be able to take your mask off just like that, so you're gonna need to learn how to fight without out it!" Obito chimed in, making everyone turn to face him for a moment. Rin shook her head at Obito and placed a hand on his shoulder to silence him, not quite understanding how he, so awkward and clumsy, could be related to Harune, so clever and smooth.
"Anyway," Minato-sensei jumped in, breaking the awkward silence that had fallen over the group, "guys versus girls sounds like a good idea, Harune. Your goal, girls, will be to rescue me, a helpless civilian, and bring me back to my village safely, which will be represented by the next clearing north east from this one. Boys, you are the enemy, and you're trying to assassinate me. You have two minutes to work out a game plan, starting… Now!"
"Oh fuck. Fucking shit," Harune cursed under her breath as she leaned her back against the wide base of a tree, praying that it would conceal her well enough for the time being. The rustling of branches overhead caused her to tense, but seeing that it was only Kakashi, who lowered himself to sit next to her, made her relax slightly. The 18 year old's relief was short-lived, however, when she realized he was bleeding heavily from the base of his neck down to his chest.
"Kuso, Kakashi-kun!" she immediately tried to patch her best friend up, but one hand held both of hers away with one swipe.
"Not… now…" he breathed heavily, checking behind them for more attackers. They had been ambushed, and the other two members of their squad hadn't made it.
"Kakashi-kun," Harune insisted, moving his hand gently away. Kakashi was surprised by her uncharacteristic delicateness, but focused on keeping an eye out for enemies. He felt his jonin counterpart's hands rest on his wound, transferring chakra from her body into his own. They were warm, or maybe it was the blood that was continuously being drained from his body. He wasn't in pain, but the silver-haired ANBU agent knew that he was running solely on adrenaline, and that he'd be in a world of hurt in a couple of hours.
Harune patched him up as well as she could under the circumstances. She knew that they wouldn't be able to hang around for very much longer before their attackers found them again, and she needed to get Kakashi back to Konoha to seek proper medical care as soon as possible.
"Let's go," the dark haired kunoichi tugged lightly at her friend's vest, careful not to make any movements that could potentially reopen the wound she had crudely cauterized. The pair ran as fast as they could through the dense forest, not even bothering to check behind them for signs of danger.
It was way past sundown when Harune decided that they needed to stop for the night.
"Kakashi-kun," she called out apprehensively. It was much too dark in the forest for the young jonin to see her comrade, and she was having a difficult time sensing his chakra signature. She was beginning to panic when a single "yo" came from directly behind her.
"We should stop for the night," she sighed in relief, halting on a sturdy branch wide enough to accommodate what was left of their ANBU squad. The sound of Kakashi landing next to her comforted the Kamineko much more than it should have, and she forced herself to stay alert. "If they were still after us, they would've caught us by now, kuso."
"You swear too much," Konoha's copy-nin noted, and slid down to sit on the branch, a lot more ungracefully than he would have liked. He was honestly very grateful that his best friend had decided to take a break; he had been having trouble keeping up with her. His wound felt as though it was throbbing and he felt light-headed. But, being a shinobi, he was stubborn, and refused to show any signs of weakness by letting Harune know.
Harune wasn't a girl to fuss over things, a trait Kakashi appreciated a great deal. She, being one herself, recognized that a ninja's need to maintain their independence stemmed from their innate sense of pride, and that fussing over and taking care of them would simply hurt that. But that didn't stop her from picking up on subtleties and not-so-subtleties, like how Kakashi nearly toppled over in the process of trying to sit himself down.
"How's your chest?" she said, propping herself up against the wide tree trunk and next to her teammate. The self-trained medic-nin discreetly analyzed his chakra signature and masked her own to keep him from sensing her ever-growing distress. She felt his shoulders move up and down in a weak shrug.
"S'all right," the last Hatake lied pathetically. He could feel himself slipping out of consciousness, and he wanted nothing right now than to be held in Harune's arms and lulled to sleep.
"Kakashi-kun, let me take a look at it," Harune said sternly, realizing that this whole time, Kakashi had been suffering from extreme blood loss. She inwardly cursed herself for pushing him to go as far as they had. His body was relaxing beside hers, and, fighting to control the sense of panic that was overwhelming her, she straddled him to gain better access to his wound.
"Stay awake, kuso!" she hissed. Removing his vest, she felt that his shirt was drenched in blood. Kakashi breathed heavily, not entirely aware of what exactly was happening. The 20 year old felt the weight of the last Kamineko clan member on his lap, her calloused hands trying to work on the wound through the tear in his shirt.
"A pretty girl like you shouldn't swear so much," Kakashi muttered, his head leaning back on the tree trunk.
"A handsome guy like you shouldn't wear a mask all the time," is what Harune wanted to say, but she settled for a scoff. She scolded herself for thinking of Obito and his slight obsession with Kakashi's real face at such a moment, when Kakashi required her undivided attention. In fact, she wasn't sure if it was this thought that led to her following actions, but she convinced herself that they would be imperative to saving his life.
The injured Kakashi felt Harune's hand hook into his mask, and impulsively grabbed her wrist, effectively stopping her from going further. Harune winced in pain; even in his current state, the silver-haired jonin was still incredibly strong.
"Kuso, Kakashi-kun, I can't properly access your wound. You gotta let me take this off," Harune said sternly. "And I can't work if you break my wrist," she added.
The moonlight shone straight down onto the pair, and Kakashi caught a glimpse of Harune's face. Her dark skin was beaded with sweat, and she looked pissed, or maybe it was just how she looked when she was concentrating — sometimes Kakashi had a hard time differentiating her expressions — and although her hands had been working steadily and decisively the entire time, her eyes were giving her ever-growing sense of stress and exhaustion away.
In the 15 years that the ANBU operatives had known each other, Harune had never seen Kakashi unmasked, and the copy-nin had always found it somewhat odd that the girl who had grown to become his best friend had never shown even the slightest bit of curiosity as to what he was concealing. Harune had suffered all the same pain as Kakashi alongside him, from losing Obito, to Rin, to her parents and her sensei. He knew that if he were to trust anyone, it would be her without a doubt, and even he found it embarrassingly stupid that he still hesitated to let her remove his mask, to save his damn life.
Kakashi removed his grip from his teammate's wrist, and she immediately got to work. He watched the 18 year old the entire time, and noticed that she didn't linger on his face, let alone even glance at it as she removed the mask. Harune was focusing all her attention and efforts into the task at hand, as always.
"Kuso, it's fucking deep," Harune grimaced, and pulled a thin string of chakra out of her index finger, threading it through the base of the wound on his chest. Kakashi had always been impressed with the jutsus the young Kamineko had developed on her own. Back when she trained with his former team, Rin had taught her some of the medical ninjutsu she knew, but it wasn't enough to make Harune a competent medic-nin. Deciding that it was essential skill on the battlefield, Harune had taken it upon herself to train herself to become one, but because she hadn't had a proper sensei, she had to rely on her own intuition and ideas to create effective jutsus.
It helps that she has incredible chakra control, otherwise something like this would've been impossible, Kakashi thought to himself, watching the girl finish up the final sutures.
"I'm almost done," Harune said, not looking up from the wound even after she had tied the final stitch. While she was known for having stamina that had the potential to surpass even the Sandaime, the young jonin was suffering from extreme exhaustion, and she had used the better part of her chakra in concealing themselves from their enemies, whom she had noticed had caught up to them and were hanging around the area since she had started stitching Kakashi up. It didn't surprise her that he hadn't noticed them though, especially since he had already lost more than too much blood, and was practically on the verge of delirium.
"Are you okay, Harune-chan?" Kakashi asked, his voice filling with concern when the dark-haired kunoichi lost her balance on his lap and had barely caught herself in time from falling off the tree limb.
Frustrated, Harune pushed her loose hair out of her dirt-stained face, and nodded, placing both hands back on Kakashi's now cauterized gash. She transferred what was left of her chakra into the wound, stimulating his cells to regenerate and heal him completely.
"You can put your mask back on, you're good to go," Harune sighed when she was done, still not looking at him directly. "Stay quiet though, they're back," she whispered, ready to let go of the genjutsu covering both of them. "Conceal your chakra signature."
She moved to get off Kakashi and sit next to him, but he held her in place and sat her between his legs, wrapping his arms around her.
"What the hell are you doing, kuso," she hissed, hanging onto the genjutsu desperately. She squirmed to get out of his grasp, but she was much too weak to be able to effectively escape. Kakashi was feeling a great deal stronger, and he knew that Harune had intentionally transferred more chakra into him than was required to simply heal the wound. The renowned copy-nin could now not only sense their enemies nearby, but his teammate's dangerously low chakra levels.
"Rest, I've got us covered for the rest of the night," Kakashi said, somewhat relishing in his turn to boss the pushy and dominating Kamineko around. Harune decided it was best not to argue, and dropped her genjutsu, allowing Kakashi to put up his own. He could feel her body relax against his, and their breathing fell in sync. It was only when Harune felt Kakashi's stubble brush up lightly against the back of her neck as he looked around for signs of danger that she realized he hadn't put his mask back on.
"So, you're Inuzuka, eh?" she said suddenly, remembering the distinct red markings of the renowned clan on her friend's cheeks. Kakashi stiffened, and Harune instinctively scanned the perimeter for enemies until she realized he was reacting to what she had said. He was trying to figure out how Harune could have sneaked a peak at his face when he had been watching her the entire time, and not once seen her look at him unmasked.
"It's called peripheral vision, Kakashi-kun," Harune said as-a-matter-of-factly, as though she had been reading his thoughts this entire time. Kakashi frowned, she had the uncanny ability to be able to read him perfectly, even without explicitly seeing him.
"I don't remember her; she died when I was still an infant," the Hatake began quietly, absentmindedly playing with Harune's disheveled braid, arms still around her. Harune didn't need context to know he was referring to his mother. Kakashi was a very guarded man, so for him to be confiding in her something as personal as the story of the mother he never knew honoured the young jonin, even if the pair were nearly inseparable friends. "She was a member of the Inuzuka clan, yes."
"That explains a lot, actually," Harune chuckled fondly, thinking about Pakkun and the rest of Kakashi's ninken pack. The nineko user had always wondered how Kakashi had come to be a dog summoner, because while his father, Sakumo, had been known as Konoha's White Fang, the Hatakes were not a clan known for the use of ninken, but the Inuzuka were.
Kakashi's relation to the Inuzukas also helped explain his more feral traits. They hadn't been as prominent when they were young, but in the past year since Harune's return to Konoha after 3 years under Orochimaru's control, Kakashi had the tendency to possessively guard the Kamineko, and wouldn't allow her to be assigned on missions without him. Not only that, but Harune noticed a new habit of him having to restrain himself from attacking anyone that came near her, especially other males. Initially, the feline summoner tried to brush it off as result of him being wary of others like Orochimaru, but as of late, Kakashi's dominating behaviour was beginning to concern her.
"What it doesn't explain is how you and I get along so well," Kakashi mused, and he had a point. The Kamineko clan, during their glory days, had been known as the great feline summoners, and had naturally butted heads with the Inuzuka clan. This was something Harune, being the last member of the clan, couldn't understand, seeing as though it would only make sense that clans who mutually relied on animals as partners on the battlefield should be more likely ally themselves with one another.
"Maybe we're special cases, after all, we do have our own defining traits as ninja," Orochimaru's former experiment thought aloud. "Whatever the case may be, I'm really happy that we're friends, Kakashi-kun," she yawned, and relaxed completely against her teammate. Kakashi was happy that Harune was resting; she had once again strained her body too much and had almost killed herself trying to save him.
He scanned the area, but this time he couldn't sense the enemy. He considered asking Harune to use her Byakugan to double-check, but he doubted she had enough chakra for even such a simple feat. The silver-haired jonin decided to keep the genjutsu up, and rested his head on Harune's, keeping guard for the rest of the night.
The pair got back to Konoha late the following afternoon. After reporting what had happened to Sandaime-sama, he ordered them to seek medical attention at the hospital. Kakashi tried to carry Harune there, but the stubborn kunoichi wouldn't allow it.
"I'm a grown ass woman, Kakashi-kun," she argued, even though it took her a great deal of effort to do so.
As Harune had expected, Kakashi had to repeatedly keep himself from viciously protecting her from anyone that tried to come near her, nurses and doctors alike. He stayed by her side the entire time, and it was only when she was discharged the next morning, healthy and energized, that he relaxed, and returned to his outwardly aloof and apathetic self.
The funeral for the ninja killed in action would be held that afternoon.
"Kakashi-kun, I'm gonna head home and wash up before the ceremony," Harune said quietly, thinking about her deceased comrades, Orokone Dairo and Tereme Mitarani. Both had been honorable shinobi, and since her return to Konoha, had become dear friends. A familiar wave of survivor's guilt flushed over her, and the young jonin looked at the ground.
"I'll see you later then," Kakashi said, and placed a kiss on Harune's cheek. Before she could react, he shunshined off. The dark haired kunoichi stared blankly at where he had been just a moment ago.
"Kuso," she hissed, and shunshined home.
"Hey, Obito-nii chan, Rin-nee chan," Harune greeted the monument marked with the names of all the shinobi who had died in action. The ANBU operative had decided to pay a visit to her old friends before the funeral. "I'm sorry, I know it's been a while, maybe too long, but Sandaime-sama has been loading me with missions lately. But because of the outcome of my latest mission, he's decided to give me a couple days off," Harune spoke to the stone, hoping that somewhere, somehow, Obito and Rin could in fact hear her and were listening.
"I lost two squad members. Again," tears began to well up in the Kamineko girl's eyes, feeling sorrow for all her friends she lost in battle. "It's horrible, it's like I carry death around with me," she fell to the ground, beginning to shake uncontrollably. "Sometimes I find myself thinking, 'Thank the kami it wasn't me, or worse, Kakashi-kun', but how could I favour the death of others over ours! It's sickening."
Tears were flowing freely from Harune's white eyes, and she stayed like that, kneeling on the ground, crying for all the lives of her companions, for a good while.
When she regained control of herself, she roughly wiped the tears from her face, and memories of the pact she had made with her Uchiha cousin flooded her mind.
"Oh, Obito-nii chan, I finally saw Kakashi-kun's face," she paused, suddenly remembering she was in very open and public territory, and scanned the area for any eavesdroppers. Satisfied when she found none, Harune continued, "He's Inuzuka, so he's got the red markings like the rest of them." When she said relayed this information to the monument, she spoke rapidly and hushed, as though delivering top-secret intel to the Sandaime Hokage.
"When we were kids, we swore that we'd tell the other everything if we ever caught him unmasked. Well, now we know," Harune said, a little more cheery this time. "And it just so happens you get to be in on it too now, Rin-nee chan," she said fondly.
"Kuso, I have to go now, sayonara Obito-nii chan, Rin-nee chan, I'll see you guys soon," the last Kamineko promised, and hurried off to say a final goodbye to two more of her dear friends.