"You have things to explain, young lady."
Obedient as ever, Hitomi went to sit in the chair in front of Ensui, not at all fooled by his playful, light tone. It was the first time they had a true suite, with its own bathroom, a bedroom for each and a living room. Hitomi wasn't used to that kind of luxury, but she knew that any Jōnin worth their title could pay for something like this. Ensui had chosen such a place because they were going to spend four long weeks in Sunagakure. They had never spent more than three days in the same place since the week lost at the Konohajin inn, at the very beginning of their journey.
"First of all… The Kazekage's son? Of all the kids you could pick as a friend, you chose the Kazekage's youngest?" She nodded, not even trying to deny she had targeted the war chief's son on purpose. Since Ensui didn't look like he wanted to tear her a new one, she explained.
"I heard other kids talking about him. Brats, really. I knew who he was when I met him, but I didn't tell him that. I don't want him to think I'm nice with him because he's someone important here."
"But you are, a little bit at least, right?"
She shrugged. "It's not the only reason. We talked a lot, today. He's really kind, as nice as any Akimichi at least, and yet everyone hates him and is afraid of him. It's not his fault if Shukaku is acting up…"
"Wait, Shukaku? As in Shukaku, the One-Tailed Beast?"
"I know, right? I had a hard time believing it when he told me. He explained when I asked where his powers were coming from. The demon is really mean to him, you know. He doesn't even let him sleep at all."
Ensui went limp in his chair. "From all the kids in the fucking Elemental Nations, you're the only one who would dare… Well, what is done is done."
"Exactly what I thought, shishou."
The man didn't answer right away, standing up to serve them both glasses of water infused with his chakra as he wrapped his mind around the whole thing. It was so easy to get dehydrated here in the Desert, and the public sources of water weren't the healthiest ones. Even if Water Release wasn't his main affinity, he preferred giving her water he knew was pure.
"Well," he sighed as he sat back, "there's no harm in letting you spend time with the boy, I guess. But, please, don't tell your mother or your uncle that I let you anywhere near a foreign jinchūriki. I'd like to keep my head on my shoulders, not buried in Kurenai's garden."
"So, I guess I can be friends with Uzumaki Naruto too when we get back?" she chirped. Living isolated inside the Nara land hadn't stopped her from hearing about the Nine Tail and his young host. She had developed a talent for being exactly at the right place and time to collect intel.
"Hitomi, you're not supposed to know that!"
She raised an eyebrow and looked at him. "Really, shishou. It's the worst kept secret in the whole village."
He at least had the gracefulness to appear embarrassed, rubbing his neck with an uneasy smile. She would be embarrassed too if her Jōnin colleagues had been unable to keep a secret. Ninjas were always the worst gossips.
Adult and child talked for a while until it was time to go to sleep. She woke up startled in the middle of the night; her meridians sensitivity was back with a vengeance. She felt like she was drowning in lava and had to spend hours in her Library fixing the problem. Ensui was right: the quiet times between her oversensitivity coming back were getting longer and longer. She could even start to summon this sense as will without getting overwhelmed. It wasn't a complete success yet, but still a really good start.
In the following days, she got herself into a comfortable routine. In the morning, Gaara brought them some breakfast, something special they would only find in the village. A few mouthfuls provided enough energy for a whole morning of hard work. After that, they went to the training room in the basement of the hotel and Hitomi greeted the sun with Gaara, who had learned the moves by watching her.
Once she was properly warmed up, she worked on the skill Ensui had chosen for the day, often fighting. She wasn't ready to spar with a real adult partner, so he made her do it against a shadow clone he transformed into a copy of his student with strawberry blonde hair. It was weird to fight against herself, but incredibly efficient: the clone, with Ensui's taijutsu skills, was impossible to hit at her level, so she could never manage to dissipate it.
From time to time, Ensui asked Gaara to give him a hand in shuriken practice; the little boy was delighted to help by creating targets she had to hit with her weapons. It was hard sometimes, the targets hidden or too high for her to reach easily. Ensui told her he didn't care how she hit them as long as she did, so she had to put her mind to it. After a really good training session, he even told her he wanted to teach her how to use senbon, the long needles that could be so precise and deadly. Before that, though, she had to master shuriken properly.
After a short break around noon, Hitomi had three hours of free time she always spent with Gaara. He showed her the sights of the city, the places he really loved and the ones that were important to him. She carefully stored each memory she built with him away in her Library. It was easy to entertain Gaara, who always looked at her with stars in his eyes. She was the stranger in this village, but it was ten times easier for her to communicate with adults and get what she wanted – be it ice creams or a pair of cinema tickets. Mentor and apprentice didn't talk about it, but she was under the impression that Ensui always had his eyes on them.
At four in the afternoon, she came back to the suite, alone most of the time. Gaara was always sad when she had to go, but Ensui had explained to the boy that she didn't have a powerful demon for protection and that she needed to learn new things, secret things, so she'd have alternatives if she needed such a weapon one day. Hitomi found him really good with special kids. Her, first, then Gaara. It couldn't be just a coincidence. She wondered why he'd never helmed a Genin team. He would make a wonderful teacher.
With her mentor, Hitomi was learning the subtle and incredibly difficult art of sealing. As he had thought, she was instinctually predisposed to understanding how they worked. The only thing she lacked was experience, the thousand repetitions of a stroke before it was truly perfect, the time to master complicated moves necessary to draw some of them. Of course, Ensui didn't allow her to use the special ink, only a simple one she could have bought at any store. She used stacks and stacks of paper scrolls. After a few days, her wrist was sore all throughout the day, and the ink stains didn't wash out anymore. It was a small price to pay, though, for a bit of progress in the field she was so passionate about.
She'd been at Sunagakure for ten days when Gaara asked a question she hadn't foreseen, his big turquoise eyes looking up to her as if she had an answer to all the mysteries of the universe. "Hitomi-nee, what does pain feel like?"
They had just left the cinema after seeing the most recent adventure movie. The girl wondered why her friend was asking such a question at this exact moment, then she realised that it had to have weighed on his mind for days, perhaps since the day they had met, and he had needed all this time to muster the courage to ask. He was the kind to swallow a feeling for days and days because he didn't know how to translate it into proper words. She had had to work on him for days to get him to open up slowly, to admit the crushing loneliness that haunted him at all times.
"It's… it's a bit hard to describe with words. You see, when you're in pain, it's your body telling your brain that there's danger and you have to back away as quickly as possible." She let out a big sigh, weighing her words carefully, then continued. "There are two main types of pain: physical or emotional. People sometimes think they're the same, but I strongly disagree. I'd prefer a physical pain lasting for years rather than an hour of emotional pain. Do you understand how they're different?"
He nodded but she knew he was only doing so to please her, and was still struggling to wrap his mind around the concepts she was introducing him to. After all, he had never felt any physical pain and lived his life under constant emotional pain without knowing it. Her hand around his, she opened the door to the suite, which was starting to permeate with traces of its inhabitants' personalities. Ensui didn't bother packing all his things when he left, for instance: he knew Hitomi wouldn't use them in a dangerous way.
"I know a way to make you feel physical pain despite your sand, Gaara, and in a safe way, but I have to warn you: it won't be pleasant at all, if you decide to follow my idea."
"But you always say that knowledge is a ninja's most important weapon…"
"I do, and it is. I think you should do it because you have to be prepared to face this sensation if, one day, an opponent manages to hurt you. If you know what it feels, you won't be caught off guard, you'll know how to react." She didn't say it, but she also wanted him to learn pain so he never became the monster she knew from the first part of the canon. She knew he could have empathy, but empathy came with experience and understanding. He couldn't see from other people's perspectives if he never knew similar torments to the ones they faced every day.
"I-I'll do it," he mumbled. He looked so frightened it prompted Hitomi to hug him, as softly and tenderly as she could. She breathed in the scent of the sun and sand on his red hair, realising how small he looked compared to her, who wasn't exactly a tall kid. She fully intended on taking advantage of this size difference when she still could, to deserve the suffix he'd used with her name for a few days now.
"You're very brave, Gaara. I'll be with you through this, I promise." Under his anxious stare, she went to Ensui's chemicals and looked for the one she needed. He had left them here for her to experiment, mostly on poisons. She didn't have permission to test them herself, of course, and hadn't asked what her mentor did to ensure her creations worked. She didn't want to know.
"I guess you've heard of poisons, since it's a Sunajin specialty. That's what I'm going to use to make you learn pain but don't worry, it will just last for a few minutes before I give you the antidote." She picked a pill in Ensui's poison kit then its counterpart. He had started desensitising her to common poisons, since she might use them in her fighting style. After pouring water in a glass, she dropped the pill in it and watched it dissolve and turn the liquid white. "You're sure you want to do this, Gaara?"
She looked him in the eyes until he nodded. He still looked afraid, but there was a new-found determination in his eyes. This would make him an incredible shinobi one day. With an encouraging smile, she gave him the glass and watched him as he drank it in a few fast sips.
A few minutes later, she had to help him lay down on her bed. He had grown excruciatingly pale, his face covered by a thin layer of sweat, his limbs shaking as he hugged his no doubt painful belly. Terrified little moans escaped his lips, tears rolling on his cheeks.
"Take this, put it under your tongue and let it melt," Hitomi whispered calmly. "It's the antidote. Everything is gonna be okay, Gaara. You've very brave."
He did as he was told and held Hitomi's hand in his own, clammy and shaky. She cradled it until it was over and his body was done fighting off the poison – she felt it, in the way he slowly relaxed in her embrace.
"Y-you should hate me," he mumbled, barely loud enough to be heard, his face drenched in tears hidden against her shoulder. She shifted away, just far enough to take his face between her hands and dried the wet paths on his cheeks.
"Why would I? I couldn't hate you even if my life depended on it, Gaara. I'm so incredibly proud of you, and proud to be your friend. Friends hurt each other sometimes, physically or emotionally. That doesn't mean they stop loving each other, and I still love you very much. Do you want to keep being my friend?"
With a hasty nod, he moved back in her arms, nuzzling against her like a tiny animal, and started sobbing uncontrollably. She let him cry, knowing full well how tears could set someone free. Her hands traced comforting circles on his back and did so until he fell asleep. An hour later, Ensui found them both sleeping, still hugging each other. He saw the glass, the traces of poison and disturbance of his bags, but didn't say anything. Sometimes, he preferred not to know.