Disclaimer: see first chapter.
AN: I'm so sorry for the long wait! But I couldn't find a good place to cut off, so this chapter was a little longer than I anticipated. But no worries, it's done now (albeit a little rough) and posted for your enjoyment.
Oh yeah, I'd like to thank some reviewers for pointing out an error in the previous chapters (you know who you are, but I don't really remember)…I spelled Sandaime wrong. So I went back and corrected that. :D
Chapter Five: Reencounter
After Gai's visit, during which Kakashi had conveniently fallen asleep due to the 'fatigue of recuperation' which only elicited more declarations of appreciation for his 'cool' and 'hip' attitude (Kakashi was thankful that the green-clad jonin did not find the teddy bear; the consequences would have been horrific, even by ANBU standards), the silver-haired teenager stared at the cream-colored ceiling. He was, ironically enough, unable to sleep; the young face of a blue-eyed boy haunted his thoughts.
His name is Naruto.
It was clear what he had to do—it had been clear ever since the Hokage had refused his request to join the search for the boy. There was no way Kakashi could calmly rest in the hospital when he knew Naruto was somewhere in the forests of Konoha known for being fraught with peril. Screw the Hokage's orders, I'll find him myself if I have to.
He extracted himself from the swathe of white hospital blankets and swung his legs around so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed. Then, careful not to jar his injured arm so much, he slid off the bed, landing on his feet silently, with all the stealth of a…well, a ninja.
On the way out, he grabbed the white teddy bear (which had been stuffed under his pillow when a certain green-clad, youthful friend had come to visit), his ANBU cloak (to hide his hospital clothes), and his mask (because he really felt out of place without it). As an afterthought, he left a decoy in his place, just in case—the hospital staff usually did not take it kindly when they found that their patients had disappeared overnight.
Then he slipped out the window, silent as a hunting wolf despite his broken arm, and disappeared over the rooftops.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It did not take long for Kakashi to find the site of his encounter with Naruto; the metallic tang of his blood (a smell that made him uncomfortable, even though it was a scent he knew too well) still lingered, though the bodies and bloodstains had long been disposed of by ANBU (their policy of leave no evidence).
The clearing where he had met the boy was charred (the only way to remove the bloody stains he had created) and he wrinkled his nose slightly at the burnt scent (way too remindful of the fire jutsu that had given him the bandages on his side).
There was, however, no sign of the boy.
Kakashi frowned, realizing all of a sudden that he had no idea where to start looking; finding the boy had been the only thing on his mind, so he had come without a plan for this situation. In retrospect, it was an uncharacteristic oversight that he should have avoided.
He sighed, knowing he would have to use a technique he would rather not, as it would consume more chakra than he could comfortably spare. Still, there was no turning back now, unless he wanted to face another agonizing day of hospital care. He brought his thumb to his mouth, biting down on it hard enough to break skin and draw blood, the taste sweet and salty on his tongue. Drops of crimson beaded on the surface of the small wound, and as he smeared his thumb on the ground, it left a dark streak in the burnt grass.
For a second, there was no reaction, the ground remained cold and hard. Then, as suddenly as the first stirrings of spring, he felt the warm energy pulse, even as the chakra was drawn from him through his fingers and entering the complex seal that bloomed beneath his touch like a spiderweb of dark-lined symbols.
A puff of smoke materialized above his hand, accompanied by a wave of dizziness caused by the sudden loss of the greater portion of his remaining chakra. For a moment Kakashi was afraid that he might pass out, and he struggled to break free of the dark spots on the edges of his vision. But the dizziness passed quickly, and soon he found himself staring into the concerned face of a brown pug.
"Long time no see, pup." Pakkun greeted, raising a paw in greeting. There was a look of disapproval on his furry face, "What have you done to yourself this time?"
"It's nothing. I was…careless." Kakashi answered dismissively, though he knew that they both knew he was not fooling anyone, "But I need you to find someone for me." The quick change of subject did not go unnoticed (Pakkun raised a doggy eyebrow), but he did not mention it.
"Of course." The pug snorted, "What is it this time?"
Wordlessly, Kakashi held out the grayish white blob of a teddy-bear. The surprise was evident on Pakkun's face, "What are you doing with that, pup? I knew you had a deprived childhood but-"
Kakashi coughed pointedly, "It's not mine." He explained quickly, "I just need you to track the scent on this."
Pakkun laughed, a deep laugh that sounded more like a bark (he could scent the slight blush and embarrassment that heated up the young human-master's face), "Chill, pup. I'll get to it." You've been so distant these days, it's a relief to finally get some kind of reaction from you. Pakkun took a few whiffs of the teddy bear, isolating the scent that Kakashi wanted him to track.
Strange, it smells like a young human, and a skinny, dirty one too. Who exactly does this bear belong to? But Pakkun did not voice his misgivings (he trusted his master knew what he was doing), and started to search the area for that particular scent.
He found it, fairly recent, in a small clump of shrubbery. "This way!" he instructed curtly, looking back only to make sure that Kakashi hadn't collapsed or anything, before running off on the trail of the teddy-bear scent, leading the silver-haired ANBU deeper into the forest, towards the one who would, though they did not know it then, change their lives.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
The boy sensed their arrival from the sudden quiet of the forest, the inexplicable chill that he felt, a premonition he was too young to ignore. And then there were the voices, three different people that he recognized, and with them came the cold feeling of fear in his stomach, clenching his heart like an inescapable hand.
"Why the hell are we still here? The brat is probably long dead by now! There's no way anything can survive in this place!"
A distant memory resurfaced in the boy's mind of the same voice that filled him with dread ("Where is that demon?"), just as a second voice sounded.
"We can't take that chance. Letting it escape in the first place was a mistake, one that we must correct now."
("Just keep looking. That monster is impossible to miss.")
The boy moved quietly (never make too much noise because then they'll find you, the wolves, bears and people who try to hurt you), crouched down quietly, deeper in the bushes where he hoped (desperately, hopelessly) that they would not find him.
"We've been looking for half a year already, so maybe-" The third voice, a nervous tenor, piped up and was promptly ignored.
"You saw that pack of wolves! They probably ate it a long time ago! We're just wasting our time!"
"Just shut up and look. The sooner we find it and get rid of it for good, the sooner we can go back."
The boy hunched down lower in his hiding spot, trying to make himself smaller (so small that they can't find him, that he might disappear, that no one can ever, ever hurt him). The voices, and the now audible footsteps, drew closer, nearing the clump of undergrowth where he hid.
"He's got to be here somewhere…" one of the searchers muttered, kicking a bush.
("We're doing the village a favor by getting rid of this monster.")
The boy squeezed his eyes shut, his hands clutching something so tightly he was afraid it might break. It was, he realized, the white painted mask that the stranger left behind (snarling wolf, bone-colored porcelain). And though it looked so fine it might break with too much pressure, the mask held firm in his white-knuckled grasp, giving the boy the illusion that it was indestructible, so he gripped it as if letting go would be to stop breathing.
But the footsteps came closer, inevitably towards him. Panic fluttered in his chest like a trapped bird, there was no place to hide anymore, he would be found if he stayed…
(Run, monster. There's no one here to help you.)
Silver hair and a dark lonely eye. The image appeared in the boy's mind like a beacon, a guide, a light in the darkness. He is different from them, he is like me. He will help. He knew what to do now, but still he was scared, overwhelmed by the paralyzing fear that was, like a snake, strangling the small amount of courage he had gathered.
The porcelain in his hands was warm to the touch.
With a deep breath to escape the inevitable, he burst forward from his hiding place, feet grappling for ground, hands holding tight his salvation.
And he ran.
(He is running, aching, fleeing.)
The voices behind him turned from surprised exclamations to angry shouts.
(Behind him, their voices are harsh, angry, full of bloodlust.)
He knew that he had been on the path before, and he knew how the story would end, but this time there was a light in the darkness, (hair the color of the splinters of moonlight) and hope in his hands, so he ran again and knew that this time things might be different.
There was a flash of color in front of him that was not the deep green or bark brown of the forests, (silvery, beautiful, almost within reach). The boy ran for it, dodging the branches that tried to grab him, leaping over the roots that tried to trip him.
It was the stranger.
The stranger had a thousand words in his eye, but there was no time for all of them, and as the boy hid behind him (in the way that he had seen other children hide behind their parents but had never done himself), the thousand words compressed into a single word and escaped his lips, "Naruto…"
"Hey! Get back here you little-" three angry shinobi burst through the foliage, their voices and their anger making the boy cringe from his hiding spot behind the stranger's legs but not run.
The sight of the silver-haired stranger stopped the three shinboi in their tracks, skidding to a halt with confusion on their faces. Kakashi, who had noticed their hateful expressions and the trembling, blonde bundle behind his legs, had a pretty good idea of what was going on.
"What the-who are you?" one of the new arrivals demanded of Kakashi. The ANBU captain swept his eye over the shinobi—a middle aged man with a pair of parallel scars running down his face.
"I don't care who the hell you are, just hand over the demon child and we'll let you live." His companion growled menacingly. Kakashi stared at him, unimpressed. Intimidation tactics never worked on someone who had seen more death and destruction in his seventeen years of life than most people had in a lifetime (and more often than not he was the cause of the death and destruction, descending with a bright flash of light and the sound of a thousand birds). The third and final person, a nervous-looking shinobi smaller than his two companions, did not speak, but lingered behind them like a shadow.
"I think not." Kakashi's voice was soft, yet it carried in still air, slicing through the tension that was building. The anger in his voice was subtle, but Pakkun felt his hackles rise almost unconsciously at the vehemence of the anger. He had not seen his master this angry in a long time…
The three shinobi seemed taken aback by his blunt refusal, and the scarred one who had first spoken tried a different tactic, "We're warning you, kid. That child is a monster, the Kyuubi brat. It doesn't deserve to live, so we're just doing everyone a favor by getting rid of it."
Something snapped inside Kakashi. It was not a visible change, but suddenly the three ninja felt as if they had been immersed in cold water, and the icy tendrils of fear clutched at their hearts. The look in Kakashi's eye was one of cold fury, and his hands clenched at his sides tight enough for his nails to draw blood.
His was the look of a killer. A second later, the murderous aura slammed into the three shinbi with the force of an unstoppable wall; it was the cold of a scythe cutting through their souls, the feeling of a being pierced by a thousand birds chirping angrily, the pain of being torn, ripped, shredded…this is what it must feel like to die. And there was no doubt in their minds that he could make it happen. The same dark thought passed through all of their minds, How can a kid have such a bloodthirsty aura?
"If you hadn't been Konoha shinobi," Kakashi growled, raising a hand to his face, "I would have killed you right then. As it is-" Slowly, deliberately, he pushed up his hitae-ate. Beneath it, the Sharingan spun lazily, blood-red and unmistakably deadly. "-you have ten seconds."
The three shinobi felt their breaths catch in their throats and their hearts skip a beat, because there was no mistaking the one who now stood before them. "S-sharingan no K-Kakashi…" the smallest one whimpered.
Everyone knew of Sharingan no Kakashi, the rising prodigy, the last Hatake (the White Fang's brat, unnatural child, possessor of Sharingan. No mere child should be this powerful).
"Ten." Kakashi started counting down coolly. In his left eye, the Sharingan gained speed, black and red swirling angrily.
The shinobi didn't wait for nine. They turned and ran as if the apocalypse was imminent, never looking back for fear of finding the death god on their heels, until they reached the gates of Konoha.
As soon as the sound of their stampede through the forest disappeared, Kakashi quickly pulled down his hitae-ate again with a sigh of relief; though he had not used his Sharingan, it still sapped his chakra. The uncontrollable anger he had felt was gone now, replaced with exhaustion, and he knew he would have to get back to Konoha quickly, before his strength ran out.
Suddenly, he felt small hands tugging on his pant leg, tentative but urgent. Instinctively, Kakashi stiffened, looking down. He was met with a pair of worried blue eyes the same hue as the cloudless autumn sky. Naruto was holding out something towards him, something the color of snow. Kakashi's eye widened slightly; it was his ANBU mask.
Kakashi stared at it for a moment, during which Naruto waited nervously (would he want it? Is he angry?), before plucking it gently from the boy's hands. His eye curved happily, and even though he was wearing a mask, it was clear he was smiling.
"…Thanks."
A strange feeling came over Naruto with this word and gesture (that buoyant feeling of ineffability, bursting from its long imprisonment, not relief, not acceptance, but happiness), leaving him warm inside. When he looked back up, the stranger (no, not a stranger any more), was rummaging through the pockets of his cloak. He removed something very familiar from it, holding it out for Naruto to take.
The warm glow inside the boy intensified, and his face broke into a bright smile (Kakashi felt his heart skip a beat, because it was the same smile that had greeted him on his first day out of the academy, a smile he thought he would never see again), and Kakashi was tempted to stop there and stare at it forever. But instead he bent down to take the boy's hand, leading the way back home.
"Come on," he said softly, looking in the direction of Konoha (the beautiful and unfeeling village that had once been, and would soon be again, home to both of them), "Let's go home."
TBC
I know, cheesy ending right? XP