Temari and Gaara walked silently. It had been fifteen minutes since they had stopped to rest, but it felt like hours. Walking, they found, was a much more beneficial way to travel. They could see tons of wildlife and unusual trees that they would've never noticed had they ran.
Besides being able to see the woods, the walk was slightly awkward. The silence was unbearable, and the trio found themselves struggling to find something to say.
Gaara was trying to figure out why he was acting so strange, and why he blushed when he looked at Temari. It was as if he was finding himself deep within his heart.
Temari also found the silence strange, but she had nothing to say that could end it. Kankuro was quietly humming in the net and wondered when they would break into conversation. Five minutes passed and he couldn't take it anymore. He had to break the ice.
"We shouldn't have stopped." He said in his carefree sort of way.
"What?" Temari snapped.
"I mean, we're already late enough right? I wouldn't be surprised if they're at Yoshino already." He said playfully.
"Thank you, Kankuro, your optimism is amazing." She said sarcastically. Then she looked over at her other brother. "So, Gaara, when are you gonna become Kazekage again? Was it six months?"
"Yeah, six months. I need to wait for all the paper work to be signed and the officials to complete something important, I forgot." He replied.
"Oh, ok." She said with slight sadness in her voice.
Gaara soon realized he needed to say something nice about her. All they've been talking about so far was Kazekage and Yoshino. "I think," she began. "I think you'll make a great Kazekage."
His eyes widened in surprise. He hadn't heard such kind words since he met Naruto, and that was two years ago. Whenever someone complimented him it felt as if his damaged heart was repairing itself. He rarely heard nice things about himself, Gaara of the sand, Shukaku's vessel.
Hinata was about to collapse. Neji weighed more than it looked, and she had been carrying him for at least a mile. She wondered if the antidote had fully healed him yet and she could walk without him on her back. His head was resting on her shoulder and he looked extremely bored.
"Are we there yet?" He wined.
"No." She replied.
"Are we there yet?" He repeated.
"No." She said angrily.
"Are we there now?" He yawned.
"YES!" She cried.
Hinata had caught a glimpse of the cabin and a sparkle from the sun hitting the river water, and at that moment she felt as if she had stepped into heavens gates.
She threw him off her and ran full force to the cabin. She stood in front of the small wooden house and gazed at its porch and door and garden. She fell to the ground and sat staring at what she was going to live in for the next two weeks.
"Heellloo?" Neji called. "I can't walk!"
She turned around and picked him up and placed him on the steps of the cabin. They sat there gazing into the water and watching fish hop out of the water. Neji looked over at Hinata and smiled. "So should we go inside?" He asked.
"No." She said firmly. "I want to stay out here for a little while longer." Then she leaned over and rested her head on his shoulder. His face turned red and he tried to move away but the poison still paralyzed him.
After a while Hinata came back into reality and realized she was leaning against Neji. She flew back and screamed causing her to fall off the steps. She laid there, face first into the dirt. And if the dirt wasn't there here face would be red not light brown.
She got up and brushed the dirt off of her body and her face. Soon after Neji heard a rustling in the bushes. "They're back." He said. "Hide now!"
Hinata simply smiled. "I'm sorry Neji." She said quietly. "Huh?" But before he could say anything more Temari had come out of the bush. "Hinata! You got here before we did?"
Neji stared wide-eyed with his jaw down at Temari. Temari ran over to Hinata and they had their greetings. Gaara and Kankuro quickly came out of the bushes and stared at the cabin. "Whoa." Kankuro said. "I'm gonna live in here for two weeks? Awesome!"
Gaara untied the net wrapped around Kankuro and freed him. "He's paralyzed, Gaara. So he won't struggle." Hinata said. Gaara nodded and placed the net around Neji and tied it again. "Hinata what the hell is going on?" He cried. Hinata smiled. "You're going to live with Temari and Gaara for two weeks while I stay here with Kankuro." She answered.
"You bitch!" He cried.
Hinata smiled at Temari, and she smiled back. "Take good care of him." Hinata said.
"Good luck with Kankuro." She replied meaningfully.
"Good luck with Neji." Hinata replied. "You'll need it."
"Heh. So sure are you?" She joked. "Anyway you brought your cell phone with you right?"
Hinata hung her head. "No. I didn't think to bring it."
Temari laughed a little and handed her a dark blue cell phone. "Here," she said. "Use it for emergencies, ok? It's only halfway charged and if something happened you'd be in deep shit without it."
Hinata nodded. She knew full well what would happen, but she didn't want to think about this vacation as a negative thing.
And with that, the trio left into the forest. Hinata turned around a looked at Kankuro, who was sitting on the steps scratching his head. She didn't know what to do. It seemed fine when they were just talking about it, but now she was going to be living with a guy she hardly knew for two weeks!
"So what do you want to do?" He asked.
She thought a little. The thought had never crossed her mind before. "Let's go explore the area!" She said finally.
Kankuro got up and walked with Hinata down the river bank. It was actually a great idea. They got to know each other a little bit better and had a great idea of what they were going to be living in. Paradise.
They pointed when they saw a fish or a squirrel, and jumped on the huge rocks that outlined the river bed. Kankuro crouched down to look at a fish and it spit water in his face, which caused Hinata to laugh. They walked down a little and found a hot spring. Then past that they found a waterfall.
After they found everything there was to find and saw everything there was to see outside, they decided to look inside the cabin. Kankuro opened the sliding door and gasped at what he saw. The living room was right in front of them. It had two couches sitting side by side by the fireplace and two chairs sat on the other side by the kitchen. There was a brown rug underneath the couches and a small table by the chairs. The table had a light blue cloth and a small yellow lamp on top of it.
They walked into the kitchen which had light gray tile on the floor and a white rug in front of the sink. There was a white stove on the left side and a white refrigerator on the right. It wasn't too special. Kankuro walked towards the fridge and swung open the door. He groaned and pulled open the freezer door. It got the same reaction.
"Oh great what the hell are we gonna eat now?" He said.
"Yeah you're right," Hinata replied. "I never thought of bringing anything to the cabin, and my cousin tried one of the berries and got poisoned."
There was a long awkward pause. They both knew what they had to do, but they just didn't know how they were gonna do. Hinata was the first to speak up.
"The fish." She said quietly.
"In the river." He finished.
They turned their heads to look at each other, both with expressions of worry on their faces. Hinata knew how to cook, and she had cooked tons of things for her family in the past. The only problem was they were never that good and everybody had to pretend to like it, except for Hiashi. All he had to do was throw it out and beat Hinata for her failure. She would never impress him.
Plus, Kankuro wasn't the best fisher. All of his reflexes were incredibly slow and lacking, and he couldn't use Karasu either. All the puppets bolts and screw would rust, and the wood would swell. They were doomed.
But they decided they would worry about their little predicament later and continue to explore their house. And by the end of the day they had chosen their rooms and unpacked everything they brought with them. The only problem was the food.
"Ugh I'm starved." Kankuro groaned.
"Me too." Hinata groaned back. "We should probably try to get some fish or try to find some edible plant."
"We could eat insects." He suggested. "Or we could kill some birds."
"Without Shino we wouldn't know what insect is poisonous or not, and I'm not too fond of bird killers." She replied.
"Okay, first thing's first, who the hell is Shino, and since when do you have a fondness for birds?" He said.
"Shino is my partner who specializes in bug use," She answered. "And I happen to love birds thank you very much."
Kankuro raised his brow. This wasn't the shy little helpless girl he had known from the Chuunin exam. In fact, she was the exact opposite. He held his hands in the air defensively. "All right, all right I'll get some damn fish." He groaned.
Hinata sighed. "And I guess I'll heat up the stove." She said.
"But I doubt that there'll be any fish out this late." He said. "And I doubt that stove will actually work it looks pretty old."
"Did I ever tell you that you could win a Nobel Prize for optimism?" She replied sarcastically.
"That's the second optimism joke I've gotten today." He mumbled.
Hinata watched as he walked out the door and stretched. She wondered how he was going to catch anything with his normal cloths on, and then she realized what she was thinking and blushed.
Kankuro twisted his neck once or twice. He looked behind him and saw Hinata turning on of the knobs of the stove in the window. He saw her happy expression when a small fire started of the stove, and then saw her panicked, yet hilarious, expression when the fire got too big and set the metal pot ablaze. He laughed a little and took off his hat.
He threw off his shirt and it landed on the same rock his hat landed on. He took off his shoes and rubbed off his makeup. He sighed and jumped into the water. Hinata caught a glimpse of his head popping out of the water. She was curious to see what he looked like without the makeup, but she could only see the back of his head, and his wet brown hair.
Hinata soon realized she was staring at Kankuro and felt her face turn red with embarrassment. She didn't know how much of this she could take, and it had only been hours since she left Neji in her friends care. Then she wondered how they were doing, and if Neji was still swearing at her.
"Damn Hinata." Neji said.
The trio had been walking in the forest for almost an hour now, and Neji was still complaining. Temari couldn't' take it anymore, she had to tell him to shut up or she would die.
"Ugh, Neji dear god if I had known you'd be this annoying I would've left you at Yoshino!" Temari said.
Neji crossed his arms inside the net and frowned. "I wish you would've left me at Yoshino." He said. "I barely know you people!"
"What do you mean 'you people'?" Gaara said fiercely.
"I mean you and your sister." Neji said. "Who else?"
"He meant," Temari growled. "That you're referring to the Sand as a bunch of Indians."
Neji sighed. "That's not what I meant at all. Look, we're getting off at a bad start. Let's try to get along."
"Hmph." Both sand ninjas said, and they continued their journey in silence. The two siblings no longer pointed when they saw something amazing or unusual, even when there were a lot of new things in the afternoon. Neji worried if they thought of him as some kind of whiney brat, and that wasn't him.
He wondered if he was going to have any fun at Sunagakure, and he wondered why Temari wanted him over. Or was she just trying to hook Kankuro up with Hinata. He couldn't take it anymore. All these questions floated around in his head, it gave him a headache.
"Temari," Neji said. "Why did you want to trade me for Kankuro?"
Temari closed her eyes. She hated it when people asked her questions where she had to think up a safe answer without letting too much information go. "Kankuro seemed lonely ever since his old friend died." She said quietly. "So I thought Hinata would be the perfect person to break his loneliness."
Neji nodded, he knew it was true. Hinata wasn't the shy little girl she was three years ago. She had matured and now the only time when she got shy or twiddled her fingers was when she was talking about or to Naruto. "Yeah." He said. "But be warned," This caught Temari's attention, "She's one of the few girls who you grow to like in a short amount of time."
Temari smirked. "I know full well what you're talking about." She said. "She got the wrong number and called me on accident. We've been friends ever since."
Gaara chuckled. "It seems her klutzy side is what attracts people." He said, clearly amused.
Everybody started laughing. It was weird, even when Hinata wasn't there; she was still cheering everybody up. It seems she had been watching Naruto a little too much.
"Heh." Neji said. "I got on both of your good sides."
Temari instantly stopped walking. Gaara looked over at his older sister and smiled. "Here we go again."
She grabbed her fan and swung it around her, so it was completely folded out and the three dark blue circles facing her. She smirked and swung her fan again. "Ninpou Kamaitachi!" She cried.
Soon huge blades of wind shot at all the trees visible and cleared the area around them. She smirked again, clearly pleased with her work. "Ah that was fun!" She said. Neji stared at her confused and startled. Gaara chuckled once again.
"She does this to create time so she doesn't have to admit you're right." He said calmly. "Sometimes I think she's insane but then I just go and make a sandwich or something."
Neji stared dumbfounded at the two sand siblings. He didn't get either one of them. And now he was sort of happy about this switch. He knew it was going to be fun for both him, and Hinata.
"DAMMIT!" Hinata cried. She had cut her fingers at least five times now, and didn't have band-aids to put over them. She stopped cutting the fish for a second to lick the blood away from her index finger. "This has got to be the hundredth time I've done this! I'm such a spaz I swear!"
"You sure you don't want me to cut it." Kankuro said in his own little carefree way. "I'm sure I can help a little, but I'm not sure. Quite frankly I don't really care."
"I'm sure!" She replied. "It's ok you took all the time catching the fish I don't want you to do anything else."
He shrugged. "Fine have it your way."
A couple of minutes went by as Hinata cut the fish and Kankuro sat quietly on the couch watching the river water. It wasn't as great as she thought it would be, but then again it was only the first day. She knew tomorrow she'd have to go swimming, and possibly get him in the water as well.
"DAMMIT!" She cried once more. "Why is this fucking knife so sharp? God dammit I got blood in the fish! Now you can't eat it."
Kankuro threw a puzzled glance at her. "Why can't I eat it?" He asked. "Just because you got blood in it? Tch, the thing's already full of it, so how could it make a difference?"
"Yeah, but…" Hinata sighed. "It's just that my family won't eat it if I spilled anything in it."
"Hmph." He said, and stood up.
She finished licking her finger and picked up the knife, hoping she wouldn't cut herself this time. Kankuro walked into the kitchen and peered over her shoulder. "You little spaz no wonder you keep cutting yourself." He laughed. "You're holding the knife wrong. Here, this is how you do it."
He looked at the hand she was holding the knife in and held it softly. He moved her hand to the fish and pulled it down to slice through the fish. He continued to do this until the fish had over twenty vertical cuts in its side. "Now," He said. "You need to cut it horizontally. Hold it right this time."
Her face turned beet red. He held her hand, what the hell was he thinking? But she shook off her embarrassment and began cutting the fish. He was right, she hadn't cut herself at all after she used the knife holding technique he had shown her.
After about ten minutes the fish was successfully cut. Hinata jumped up and down in joy. Kankuro stood there smiling; he was able to get on her good side sooner than he had thought. Soon they cooked their fish and had a great dinner, both happy about how the switch was going so far.
"Yes!" Temari cried, almost out of breath. "We're here!"
Gaara and Neji both sighed. "You were about to pass out a second ago and now you're jumping around." Neji panted. "Where on earth do you get your energy?"
Temari turned her head towards the older Hyuuga sibling and smiled. "Natural sugars." She replied. "They can work wonders."
Neji laughed to himself, she was just like Hinata. He watched her stumble and wobble and finally saw her fall down to the ground. Gaara pulled out a kunai and sliced the net open, allowing the Hyuuga to move more freely, and walked toward his sister.
"Where are your natural sugars now?" He said while picking her up.
"Gone." She panted, and fell asleep in her brother's arms.
Gaara smiled, and walked toward the door. He stopped halfway and turned his head slightly, so Neji could see his face, but his hair covered his eyes. "You coming?" He asked. Neji understood immediately and walked toward the house he was going to live in, for what would seem like years.
