That afternoon, as if he had been told about the whole affair – maybe by Naruto and Sasuke, or even Kurenai herself – Kakashi arrived alone on the training ground. Like a lot of people around Hitomi, he had witnessed a few sweet moments between the two girls but, unlike a lot of other adults, he was versed enough in clan politics to know this relationship was doomed before it even started. Hitomi and Hinata wouldn't have been able to hide their relationship much longer and, as a member of the Sōke, Hinata had the duty to produce children. Hiashi was cruel, but maybe he would have been softer on the girls if the Hyūga Council hadn't been watching him like a hawk.
"Hitomi-chan, come here. I have a technique to teach you, I think you'll really like it."
Her sensei's voice helped the teenage girl shake off her furious torpor. Her feet in the river, she had gone through all the Water Release techniques she knew again and again, imagining more than once what she would do to Hiashi once she caught him alone. As if she stood a chance… The village's archives had told her he was a Jōnin, and had been one for years. He was probably in Kakashi's league in terms of power, or maybe a bit lower.
Slowly, begrudgingly, she left her attack stance and left the river, one step after the other. She was still shaking with rage, chakra and whispers of vengeance seething silently under her skin as she tried to clear her mind. The air around her was almost unbreathable, her killing intent so tight and thick it was driving all the animals away, but Kakashi didn't seem affected one bit. It wasn't surprising: no matter how good that skill of hers was, Hitomi was just a Genin. She lacked the years of cruel experience, of terror and powerlessness beyond words, to be able to form an intent potent enough to affect a veteran such as him.
"Come on, I swear it's gonna be interesting," Kakashi cajoled in a tone that was almost too soft compared to what she was used to from him.
One breath after the other, Hitomi managed to push back the storm that was building up inside her, and finally her eyes were lucid enough for the Copy Nin to pull his hand away from the pocket of his jacket where he stored his ninja wire. He didn't like the idea of forcing one of his cute little students to listen to him by tying her up to the nearest pole or tree, but he had received that treatment from Minato enough times after his father's and then teammates' deaths to know how efficient it was.
When she stood in front of him, Kakashi gestured for her to sit on the ground and handed her a towel he had just pulled from a seal so she could dry her naked feet and put her shoes back on. She didn't need to take them off, usually, to train with Water Release techniques. That she had needed to today only showed how angry she had been, how upset she had felt. He was worried they were only in the eye of the storm, but what could he offer her besides knowledge to distract her, to make her feel better?
"Alright," he said when she was done, "the technique I want to teach you today is a bit peculiar, you could say. In some parts of the world, people clench and tense in fright just by hearing its name. That means you'll have to be careful when you use it, be sure to master it before calling upon it in battle. Do you understand?"
The girl nodded, docile and focused. Her sensei's deep voice had managed to wake inside her a spark of interest that was smothering, as well as it could, the rush of anger drilling holes in her mind. Oh, it was still there, pernicious, well-hidden under the surface of her drive to learn, in the shadow of eyes clear and sharp once more, only waiting for a new occasion to hit – and to do it cruelly, again and again.
"This technique is called the Water Whip. Have you heard of it?" When she shook her head, the sensei continued. "It's part of a trio of techniques that force water to take the shape of a weapon you can use in close combat. You will learn all three of them, but that one comes first for you, since it's better suited to your fighting style. Watch, those are the hand seals you'll have to use. Your chakra will have to go through your Gate of Limit, then turn to water affinity and take the shape of a whip. Wanna try?"
Relieved to find a diversion to her unprecedented anger, Hitomi dived deep into the exercise. After an hour, she only managed to form the vague shape of a whip that fell with a splash to her feet after a mere second, and her hands were aching with the repeated rush of chakra in her meridians. Kakashi had already suggested a break, but she had refused in a dry, stubborn tone. She wanted to master this fucking technique.
And then her will won the battle. She was breathless, her spasming fingers wrapped around the handle of a whip, its point dancing at her feet. She gestured to hit the Earth Clone Kakashi had created for her, and the weapon responded instantly – but hit the air far above the clone's head. She frowned, thought about what she could possibly have done wrong and tried again. This time, she was closer. Once more and she hit her target, the clone dissipating in a pile of dirt and mud.
"Congratulations! Well, it's enough for today. I wouldn't be happy if you managed to injure yourself the day before our big mission…"
"A mission? What mission?"
"A C-ranked mission in the Land of Waves. Ensui-san didn't take you there, right?"
"No… No, we didn't go there." Hitomi's voice had turned thoughtful, her impassive features hiding her sudden, sharp interest perfectly. She had had doubts about this whole arc of the story when another C-ranked mission had first been assigned to her team – but apparently the Land of Waves still needed help. Fortunately, she had prepared for this years ago. Her plans were ready, as were their variations in case of problems.
"Since you worked so well today, let me take you to the tea house. I'll use that time to brief you on the mission so you can repeat the information to your brothers."
In the end, she indeed had to pay, Kakashi having shunshined away just before the bill came, but at least he had stuck to his word and given her all the necessary intel concerning the Land of Waves and the goal of their mission. It followed what she had read in the canon a lifetime ago. She was still disturbed by an unanswered question: how had Hiruzen been fooled to that point on the mission's parameters? None of the hypotheses she had made were really reassuring.
The first one, the obvious one, was that he didn't know anything about the real situation in the Land of Waves. In that case, either Danzō had to hold a considerable power on the intel that reached the Hokage's desk, or the old man had stopped listening to his spies – stopped listening to Jiraiya. Her second hypothesis supposed that Hiruzen knew what was really happening in the Land of Waves and had still chosen to send Team Seven there. And, in that case, he had to have a goal by picking them for that dangerous mission. Could he want Naruto to open himself to the Kyūbi's power?
None of those ideas were comforting to Hitomi, but she didn't have any choice. She had to put this question aside for the moment. It wasn't time yet to go after the Third, and even less so to go after the Councilman hidden in his shadow. She still had a whole universe of progress to make before she had even the slightest chance of overcoming either of them. But she wouldn't forget. She couldn't forget any harm they had and would cause to her loved ones. She didn't care about their reasons; she would make them pay one day. The monstrous genocide they had organised was only their largest offense. They had a lot more blood on their hands, and she would make them pay for every drop of it.
When she came home, the sun was setting behind the horizon, and the mood in the living room was quite subdued. Naruto and Sasuke were whispering in a corner while Kurenai was sharpening a stack of kunai. Hinata had left soon after the breakup; Hitomi had walked her to Kiba's house on the Inuzuka lands before going to the training ground. She was sure Tsume and Hana would be a great help to her ex-girlfriend. Thinking about her in those terms hurt.
Hitomi didn't even think she had been in love with Hinata. She had felt for her a tenderness far greater than what she felt for any of her friends, that at least she was certain of. It was the reason why she was so angry: this relationship hadn't even had the time to bloom that it was already a thing of the past, buried under political games far above them. It was unfair, and they were powerless against it.
"Boys, we have a big mission starting tomorrow and Kakashi-sensei told me to brief you and help you prepare." She knew she had interrupted their talk, but she lacked patience and delicateness today. Everything that could have softened her seemed far below the surface of her mind, unable to reach her conscious actions and thoughts. She knew it was distress speaking, that she still had in her the ability to be sweet, kind, attentive, but she just wanted to drown in the fire of her anger. In a voice that was probably stiff and distant, she started listing the parameters of the mission, her perfect memory taking over where her dull fury made her want to scream wordlessly.
She spent the evening helping Naruto and Sasuke prepare for the trip. She crafted them several storage seals, replacing the ones they had overused. The repetitive dance of paintbrush against parchment and the smell of ink helped her reach a state of fragile peace, probably too precarious to fool anyone. Of course, the boys knew what had happened with Hinata, the reasons for her dark mood, and reacted in more or less subtle ways: Naruto was sitting so close to her he kept brushing against her, and Sasuke's eyes didn't leave her for a moment.
That night, she had a nightmare about the Land of Waves, dreaming of a little motor boat attacked in the middle of an estuary, then jumped awake – just to find Kakashi crouching on the frame of her open window. She reacted without thinking, throwing the kunai she kept under her pillow to him. He simply made himself smaller, the weapon whistling just next to his ear. Usually, he would have smiled at this attempt at self-defence. The fact that he didn't made a chill of unease run down Hitomi's spine.
"Dress up, Hitomi-chan. The Hokage ordered that I take you with me for a quick mission before leaving tomorrow."
As she obeyed his instructions and dressed in a whisper of fabric against skin, Hitomi glanced at her alarm clock, on the bedside table. One in the morning… A mission that took less than nine hours to be accomplished didn't bode well, especially when it involved an elite Konohajin Jōnin fetching one of his students from her bed.
"It's an assassination mission. Around midnight, a member of the Encryption and Decoding department turned rogue. We have to find him before he reaches the border. Your role will be to follow my every move – you are not allowed to intervene in any way or to make your presence known. Understood?"
She nodded, struggling to keep an impassive face as a wave of ice took over her heart. Why her? She was only a Genin, why… The realisation made her want to vomit. Hiruzen could have two objectives by sending her so young on such a mission. Either he wanted to divert her from a shinobi career, or he wanted to prepare her to accomplish such missions once she would be promoted to Jōnin. Even though neither of those hypotheses sounded pleasing, she still hoped for the second one and found it more probable as well. After all, the skills she was developing were fitting for the Assassination Brigade.
"Let's get going," Kakashi ordered softly.
Without a word, Hitomi followed as her teacher took off, her frail shadow perfectly melting into the darkness of the night. The new moon had risen two days ago, so the only light came from the distant stare of the stars, and a silver crescent so thin it was barely visible. A bit of focus, a mild rush of chakra, and Hitomi's eyes adjusted to night vision. She learnt that trick in sixth year, during one of the last survival exercises Iruka had assigned to her class. She couldn't have imagined using it in such a situation, not so soon.
After running for an hour, the teenage girls started to have a hard time following. In normal conditions, she would have kept going far longer, but she had spent hours training earlier in the day, and Kakashi pushed her to a far more demanding pace than what she was used to. A pale fire lit up in her flanks, spreading in dull beats each time she breathed in. She refused to give in or slow down – it would be too much of a failure for her liking, really too much. Since she didn't have a satisfying way out, she just ignored that alert signal, focusing on the tenuous and regular sound of her feet against the tree branches. That way she could ignore the pain.
Kakashi attracted her attention after thirty more minutes. In sign language, he ordered her to hide in a bush and observe. He himself stopped at the border of a clearing, his chakra barely muffled. Did he want to give a fighting chance to the target? Hitomi didn't know, but she obeyed his commands to a T, hiding her chakra to the best of her capabilities as her body faded into the shadow of the bush that would give her the best view of the clearing.
And of this view she didn't miss a thing. The man, the deserter, had brown hair and a small frame, the lower half of his face flecked with scars that looked like shrapnel or sparks. He looked out of breath, frightened, his widening eyes searching for an escape route. He wouldn't find one. He wore a Chūnin vest – and didn't stand a chance against the Copy Nin anyway. Kakashi stepped in the clearing, stoic and vaguely threatening. Killing intent slowly formed on his skin, a sun to Hitomi's candle flame. If this intent had been targeted towards her, the Yūhi girl wouldn't even have been able to breathe.
Kakashi stood as a rampart in front of his target, indisputably strong, gifted with a crushing presence, thin and streamlined as the hound that had once given him his code name in the ANBU. He got a kunai from his back pouch then took a fighting stance under Hitomi's stare and attacked. In other circumstances, maybe he would have offered the man a chance to surrender, but people from the Encryption and Decoding department weren't given such opportunities. They were supposed to be tailed by ANBU if they took even a step outside the village; their mere existence was at the same time essential and a terrifying threat for a Hidden Village. In their memory laid secrets of the village and the key to access much more. A traitor from that department… Death was the only possible way out of service for him.
Hitomi realised she was hyperventilating when Kakashi formed the hand seals for the Chidori technique and the blue pale light appeared in the clearing, followed by the thousands of bird's chirping that gave it its other name. Curled up in a ball under the damp leaves of her bush, Hitomi tried to calm down but had to bite her fist hard enough to draw blood to muffle the little panicked whimpers that were escaping her throat. Never, during the past few weeks, had she considered Kakashi as what he really was: a merciless killer, so good in that field it was almost laughable. Never had she thought about the blood staining his hands or the blood that would one day stain hers, not with such acuity, not having under her very eyes the proof that it was indeed what she had been taught to do.
All the panic and terror rushing through her veins did nothing to change the outcome of the fight, the way the hand surrounded by lightning dove into the deserter's torso and existed through his back, shattering his shoulder blade. At least the man died instantly – a meagre comfort for Hitomi, who left, despite her sickly shivers, the bush where she had been hiding to enter the clearing. She only took two trembling steps over the treeline before falling to her knees, her breathing still shallow and painful, blood slowly dripping from the bites she had inflicted on her fingers in the hope of forcing herself to silence.
Kakashi didn't turn to her right away. First, he unrolled a storage scroll specially conceived to hold corpses and activated it after putting the paper over the dead shinobi's body. He only left a stain of blood on the ground where a bleeding corpse had been a moment before; at any other time, this would have fascinated Hitomi, she would have begged to examine the scroll. Then, Kakashi took a cloth in one of his pockets and used it to wipe out the blood on his hands, face and torso, his cautious and meticulous gestures erasing the liquid as well as they possibly could.
Only then did he turn to her, look at her, his hands about as clean as they could and his eyes acute and full of sorrow. She couldn't help but stiffen, even though she knew he wouldn't ever raise a hand against her. She wasn't a deserter, didn't intent on ever turning rogue – except maybe if she couldn't stop Danzō from taking power. It was irrational, she knew it was; knowing so didn't help her manage the unstoppable fear running deep inside her.
Hitomi needed a few moments to register her sensei's arms around her, his embrace, his large, powerful hand turned soft and comforting against her back, his deep, soothing voice whispering senseless promises of safety in her ear. Several minutes later, she realised he was apologising, explaining that he had had to follow orders, that he had tried to make Hiruzen understand she wasn't ready but the war chief hadn't listened to him. He was sorry that he had made her see that, sorry to know that, one day not long from now, it would be her turn to do it.
When Hitomi calmed down, the man relaxed his embrace but didn't let go of her. His two hands, warm and sturdy, enveloped the one she had wounded by trying to stay quiet. She perceived the caress of his chakra against her skin and, when she saw her fingers again, they were intact, the small bite marks erased like bad memories. This gesture, maybe, comforted her more efficiently than the hug had, for a reason she couldn't quite grasp.
He took her by the shoulder and led her out of the clearing, then lifted her in his arms as if she weighed nothing – and it was probably not so far from truth for him – before walking back towards Konoha. He was so much faster now that he didn't have to worry about her being able to follow. Despite that, his every movements were fluid, precise, free. It was the gait of a man who had been everywhere in the world without his legs ever going weak. Almost without noticing, Hitomi closed her eyes.
She dozed off during the journey back, her anxiety muffled now that adrenalin had stopped enhancing it. She would have probably fallen asleep properly if the memory of the very moment her teacher had killed that nukenin hadn't played on repeat in her mind. Kakashi seemed to understand: each time she tensed, his arms went tighter around her, and a deep, soft sound rose from his throat, soothing her again.
When he put his student in bed, Kakashi decided he couldn't leave her alone. He had been in her place once, and loneliness had been the hardest part of it after seeing his first corpse. The fact it had been his own father had only made things worse, but Kakashi didn't think about those very painful memories if he could avoid it. Still, he knew how that kind of silence and isolation hurt, and the way a psychological wound could become infected, how it gangrened the mind day after day, year after year.
He wasn't the person Hitomi could talk to about her trauma and the many more to come – the ones a ninja could only escape by dying prematurely. He had learned all too well to accept his own wounds, something he didn't want for any of his students. That night, in the privacy of his mind, the Copy Nin lost a bit of the respect he had always held for Hokage the Third, linked to him by a chain of masters and students, once so great and now so far sunk in his mistakes. "I'm gonna leave you with Pakkun tonight, alright?" he whispered in as soothing a tone as he could manage. "He'll wake you up and take you to the Gates in a few hours. See you tomorrow, Hitomi-chan."
He didn't wish her a good night or pleasant dreams, because he knew she would probably stare at her ceiling for a good part of the several hours of rest she still had before going back on a mission. Hiruzen was crazy to have ordered him to take the girl with him so close before her first real, long mission, the first outside the village – as if he had forgotten the damages this first encounter with death caused to a young mind, or the time it needed to heal afterwards.
When the Copy Nin left her room, Hitomi opened her eyes on the silence that was slowly settling back around her. She couldn't close her eyelids anymore, despite Pakkun's warm and comforting weight against her side. Right at that moment, she felt like she couldn't do anything, anything at all.