Chapter Three: Ignoring the Past - Kaile's POV
I jerked up with a scream.
The dream was always the same, and usually I woke in darkness, like now. But something was different from the last few times I could remember waking up from this dream.
A vaguely familiar voice was reaching through the after-dream haze, and I felt a soothing rubbing motion on my arms. I was quivering, not just from the dream, I realized. Something was very different. It felt almost wrong, but the rubbing sensation felt so soothing, how could it be wrong?
I tried to piece everything together. I thought about where I was, but I could remember nothing but the dream. I thought for a moment, and then remembered who had been in my dream. Kakashi Hatake. It had been near to ten years that I had last seen him, yet he was always in my dreams in one way or another.
My throat stiffened as I tried to hold back the tears. Suddenly the voice that had been murmuring my name broke through my daze, and my eyes brimmed with tears. I recognized his voice; it was the same as the one in the dream. I blinked and a tear spilled over onto my cheek. But he came into focus. I had to say his name, make sure that this was real; make sure that this was not just a horrible, cruel continuing of the dream I had just woken from; that I was not still caught in its unrelenting, merciless clutches.
"Kakashi?" I was sure that I hadn't even said it, but he responded. I could see his mouth move beneath his black mask.
"Hey, Kaile." He said. He said my name in such a matter of fact way that it completely broke though my hard, emotionless shell that I had spent so long on building. The way he spoke made it seem as though I had never left my life in the Hidden Leaf Village.
The next thing I knew, I was sobbing into his shoulder, our arms entangled about each other, one of his hands stroking my hair in that familiar way. That simple, soothing touch brought back so many memories of my childhood in Konoha that I began to cry even harder. I buried my face in his neck and held him as tightly as I could. I could never let Kakashi go, not now that I had found him again. A black hole in my heart seemed to heal easily in the few minutes that he held me, one that I hadn't even know was there. I felt whole again, and not embarrassed about crying in front of him as I had before I had left. I leaned back to look at him, my lips trembling through my smile. He looked exactly as I remembered him.
From beneath his mask I could see his replying grin, his uncovered eye alight with a happiness that echoed my own. I reached up with my hand to cup his face.
"Oh, Kakashi," I murmured, my voice catching on his name, "How I've missed you."
His arms tightened around me and he made as if to pull me close again, when a voice behind me said, "What the hell is going on?!"
I turned around, still holding onto Kakashi, and was astounded by the sight of three children staring at Kakashi and I.
Kakashi cleared his throat and stood up with me still in his arms, giving me no choice but to stand up with him. He turned me to face the kids.
"Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke," Kakashi's warm breath tickled my ear, "This is Kaile Ikari. Kaile, these are my ninja students."
I stared in wonder at the children. Kakashi's....students. Oh. So much has changed....
There were two boys and a girl. The gangly boy closest to Kakashi and I had black hair and eyes as dark as the shadows in my dream. Kakashi gestured him closer and I shivered.
"Kaile, this is Sasuke Uchiha," my eyes bugged out at his last name. The last true Uchiha besides Itachi?! I shuddered slightly, but managed to smile at the boy and shake his hand warmly.
The girl was next. She had pale pink hair, large green eyes and a rather large forehead that she apparently tried to hide with her bangs. "Sakura Haruno," Kakashi said, and I shook her hand too with a smile.
The last child was a blond boy with large blue eyes. He was staring open-mouthed at me, his eyes looking as though they might fall out any moment now. Three strange lines marked his cheeks like whiskers. "And this is Naruto Uzumaki," Kakashi announced, sounding rather like a proud parent. I raised an eyebrow at him. He gave me a 'What?' sort of look in return. I smirked to myself before shaking the boy's hand and giving him a smile as well. He was the one who had said, "What the hell is going on," and I smirked at him.
By now, Kakashi had let go of me, although he still hovered beside me as though he thought I might keel over any moment. I tilted my head to look up at him. Despite Kakashi's being a year older than me, we had remained at similar heights through our childhood, having growing spurts at nearly the same times. Our friends and my foster father had joked about it, 'Synchronized spurting,' was the term they coined for us. Even now, with both of us well past puberty, we were close to the same height. Only a few inches separated us from looking directly into each other's eyes.
"I'm not going to faint, Kakashi-kun," I said teasingly. Sure enough, he flushed and stuttered.
"I-I wasn't....ergh...I-gh-" Kakashi rubbed the back of his head in the same gesture I had known growing up with him. I laughed, a clear, bell-like sound, and quickly stopped when I heard myself. I hadn't truly laughed like that in so many years that I had startled myself. I looked at Kakashi, my fingertips to my lips, my eyes probably as wide as Naruto's had been.
"Kaile-kun?" Kakashi's voice was worried. Yep, my eyes were probably as wide as Naruto's. I giggled to myself.
I spun around in a circle before facing him. He laughed and I pulled out my patented deadpan stare. Kakashi laughed harder. My guess was correct. He remembered it. I had used this expression all the time on my foster father and our friends - especially Iruka. I returned my attention to the doubled up jounin in front of me. I skipped forward and knelt beside him, feeling my old self peeking her head out of her hiding place. I felt strange, but the strangeness felt normal - like my normal for the past ten years had been all wrong. Perhaps it was.
I had become a different person after I left Konoha. I had become an emotionless, hard person, doing what I was told in a robotic sort of way. But in just a few minutes around Kakashi, I had felt a strange sort of life flowing through my veins. I felt alive like I never remembered feeling before.
Kakashi was holding his stomach, laughing and occasionally snorting. The three children stared. I winked at them, and then bent down to look at his face.
"Are you remembering the with the banner?" I asked, making a reference to a summer when I had used my pokerfaced stare nearly everyday. I could hear the laughter in my voice.
Kakashi sat up. He pulled down his mask to wipe his eyes free of the happy tears that had accumulated from his laughing fit. He shook his head, still chortling.
"No?! Well....is it the summer when we went to the hot springs?" Kakashi shook his head, but started laughing like a crazy person again. I couldn't keep my face straight. Within moments, we were both lying on the forest floor, laughing our heads off like the two ridiculous people that we were.
Eventually me and Kakashi sat back up, gasping and snickering weakly. My stomach hurt because of laughing so hard. He wiped his Sharingan eye and then made to pull his mask back up to cover it, and I grabbed his hand.
"Kakashi-" I said, an earnest expression on my face. He stared at me.
I cleared my throat. "Don't cover up your face....please? I've missed seeing you so much-" My throat constricted and my voice hitched.
Kakashi held my hand in both of his. "Alright, Kaile."
I smiled happily. As I looked at him I noticed several changes that had been hidden by the mask. Kakashi had traces of frown lines on his face, and his face was thinner that I remembered - but then I realized that I was remembering Kakashi from his gangly puberty stages. I chuckled to myself.
From where the kids were standing, the unmistakable sound of a stomach rumbling could clearly be heard. Kakashi turned to his students and I looked over his shoulder, steadying myself with a hand on his back.
Naruto was blushing, so I automatically assumed it had been his stomach. I giggled. Sasuke rolled his eyes, and Sakura looked primly at her hands.
I reached into the kunai pouch on my hip for a piece of jerky and threw it to Naruto. It landed on his lap and he stared at it.
"Huh?" I rolled my eyes. Children are SO dense! I thought.
"It's meat. Eat it." I explained patiently.
Sasuke stared at the slice of meat in Naruto's hands and then looked at me, anger, suspicion and......fear? in his eyes.
Oh, crap, I thought. The only jerky I had with me was an Uchiha specialty that only someone living in the Uchiha village would have ever encountered, and only an Uchiha would have known how to make. The strange honey-comb shape was its distinguishing feature, and there was definitely no mistaking it. I tried to divert his attention, or at least make it seem as if it wasn't what he thought it was.
"So, Kakashi, what's been going on? How's Iruka and every one?" I said, turning to my friend nonchalantly.
He smirked at me. He knew exactly what I was doing and why.
Shit! Please, Kakashi, work with me here! I've fought so hard to erase Uchiha from my past! I prayed he would go along with my pretense.
"Iruka's fine. He makes ramen for Naruto when we're in Konoha, and he helps me keep my spirit up." He winked at me, and I blushed for some reason.
I sat there, trying to figure out why Kakashi's winking at me had made me feel butterflies in my belly and also made me blush. When I looked back up, it was because I smelled a soup being made over the fire. Kakashi was adding rice to a small pot over the fire and Naruto and Sakura were kneeling close by, watching him avidly. Sasuke was sitting not too far away from them, watching Kakashi too, but his gaze kept flickering to me.
Naruto's stomach snarled and Kakashi laughed. "Not too long, Uzumaki."
I scooted over to Kakashi on my butt until I was sitting beside him. "Why'd you call him by his last name?" I asked.
"Erm....I don't....know...." Kakashi fidgeted and almost spilled the soup he was stirring as he trailed off. He stared at me, both eyes wide. We both blushed and his lips twitched into a smile ever so slightly. He looked away first, and as he continued cooking, I studied his profile.
Every now and then his gaze flickered to me, and each time he blushed slightly. To say that his reaction was confusing would be an understatement. I would have to look in a mirror - something that I hadn't done in about four years - to get what Kakashi was seeing. Maybe I had become pretty in some random turn of events; not that there had been a shortage of random incidents in my life away from Konoha; but it seem highly unlikely that any of them had made me good-looking.
A little voice spoke at the back of my head. You know, you might have been good-looking all along, just never realized it, Missy Tomboy, huh?
Shut up! I told myself. I was NOT pretty, I had NEVER been pretty, and nothing that happened would change that.
So there!! I said to that annoying voice.
"Dinner," said Kakashi. He handed me a bowl from a pocket on the inside of his jounin jacket. I smiled my thanks, and then served the children their soup, leaning over Kakashi. As I sat back down, my own bowl in my lap, I shot a glance at Kakashi and flashed a smile at him when our eyes met. I blushed yet again as I looked down.
Why does he keep staring at me?