A/N: I know a lot of you were angry at me for not showing Satsuki's actual reaction to Naruto performing mouth-to-mouth on her in the water prison, but you'll get that this chapter. No worries
Also: I think a lot of you are misreading what Haku being female means. I'll just say this: There will not be any love triangles in this fic. I hate them, and I will not write them.
Time for Chapter 8
Enjoy!
Naruto laced his fingers behind his head as he stared straight up at a ceiling that was not his own. The day had been long, confusing, perilous, and stressful. He and the entirety of Team Seven had more than earned a night's rest in a fully heated and sheltered home. There was also the promise of breakfast the following morning from Tazuna's daughter, who was the mother of a young child whom the group had yet to see for more than a few moments in passing. A sigh escaped the blonde as he pondered all that had happened just hours ago.
'If that hunter hadn't shown up, we'd be dead right now. Drowning sucked.' he thought to himself. To have been at the mercy of pure chance and luck was an unsettling and difficult pill to swallow, but one that he accepted all the same. They were green, shakeable, and unprepared. It was hardly even their fault. They were a ragtag group of genin performing a task meant for Jonin. If they survived at all, it would be a statistical upset.
'At least we made it out of the worst part. There's no way things could get more dangerous than a rogue Jonin.' he assured himself to calm the nerves that were threatening to ruin his calm mood. Another aspect of the experience then returned to Naruto, causing him to shudder a bit.
'Kakashi-sensei was going life-and-death with Zabuza, and then some hunter just offed the guy with a few needles. That's...scary. There are some freaks out here.' he thought somewhat nervously. Hunter Ninja, from what limited knowledge he possessed of the class, were entirely harmless to those not registered in the international bingo book, but the ease with which the one Team Seven had encountered ended Zabuza's life was still chilling.
'I think Shikamaru said that the hunter had a girl's voice. Apparently it sounded young, too. No way to be sure, but the idea that people our age are that strong is super weird to think about.' he recalled. Before he could delve any deeper into the odd reality of just how behind the curve he truly was in terms of strength, the sliding door to his guest room dragged open. Standing on the other side in the hall just outside the room was Satsuki.
For a moment or two, she simply stared at him through the open door, but she soon stepped through and closed the sliding door behind her, causing the room to become relatively dark due to the absence of the sun or any artificial lighting. Once inside, she folded her arms across his chest and stood over him from a few feet away. Naruto propped himself up on his elbows and rose to a sitting position.
"You look sorta mad. What's wrong?" he asked skeptically. The raven-haired girl responded by kneeling down in front of him to level herself with him and make direct eye contact.
"So, what made you think you could get away with putting your mouth all over me?" she questioned, irritation noticeably creeping into her tone with each word. Naruto's face immediately flushed red at the question, as he was well aware of what she was referring to. Taking a few seconds to gather himself, the blonde held her icy glare with his own eyes.
"It was only for a few seconds, and if I hadn't, you'd have drowned. I was saving your life." he countered. Satsuki scoffed and maintained her indignant expression and demeanor.
"I'd have been just fine. You were just looking for an excuse to get close and touch me. You're just as gross as the rest of them." she said in a stabbing tone. At this, Naruto's temper flared.
"You swallowed water and started choking on it. You wouldn't have lasted another thirty seconds. If I didn't do something, you would be dead right now. You know that as well as I do." he said with barely restrained anger. The Uchiha girl scowled and seized the front of his shirt.
"Get it through your skull that I don't need your help. I would have found a way on my own. You know it too. You just wanted to feel like a hero, which you aren't." she said coldly. She then interrupted her teammate as he tried to respond.
"Oh, and let's get something straight. If your reason for doing what you did was because I'm your teammate, then keep your mouth shut. The only reason we're on the same team is for balance. They put this team together the way they did to make sure they didn't stack things too much." she said. Naruto frowned.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he questioned. Satsuki tightened her grip on his shirt and stood to her feet abruptly, causing him to stumble up to a standing position as well.
"You're only here for inclusion. Shikamaru and I are the ones who have a future, and they know it. They put you on the team to make the system look generous. So, don't go thinking that you've got the right to help me out or feel even with me." she continued cuttingly. The fact that they were at close proximity, and standing up straight accentuated the fact that Satsuki was, in fact, an inch or two taller than he was. For a time, the pair simply stood silently.
After nearly a full thirty seconds, Naruto finally spoke. Taking hold of her wrist, the blonde pried it from his shirt and returned it to her side despite her efforts to keep a hold on him.
"So, that's what you think of me, huh? Somebody saves your life, and you tell them they aren't worth your time? Says a hell of a lot about you." he said in a surprisingly calm tone. He then gave her a light shove on the shoulders that sent her back a few feet.
"You're my teammate. I didn't want you to die. I still don't. I wasn't enjoying giving you CPR. It was gross, and your mouth tasted like blood, but I did it because you were drowning. Don't try to pin this on me being a pervert, because I'm not. Get over yourself." he continued a bit more tensely. Oddly, Satsuki did not react with further venom. Instead, she pursed her lips into a thin line.
"I didn't need your help." she insisted. Naruto gave a heavy sigh and laid back down on the makeshift futon that had been provided to him.
"If things go wild again, which they probably will, I guess it's good to know that you aren't gonna be there for me. Thanks for the heads up." he said tiredly, rolling over onto his side as he spoke. Silence stretched on for a number of moments, but was soon ended by the sound of Satsuki exiting his room and forcefully closing the door. Once she was gone, Naruto rolled onto his back again.
'And that's all you're ever gonna be to these people.'
Kakashi raised an eyebrow as Satsuki stomped her way through the living area of Tazuna's house. She was clearly and obviously on edge, and seemed in no mood to talk. Before he could even begin to ask questions, she exited the building and slammed the door behind her. Tazuna, who was sitting on a chair to Kakashi's left, frowned.
"What's up with her, do you think?" he asked. The silver-haired Jonin shrugged and weakly shifted on the couch he was laying on.
"Could be a lot of things, really. She doesn't exactly get along with her teammates. Especially Naruto. It probably has something to do with him, actually. I thought I heard them yelling a few minutes back." he replied. Tazuna took a sip from his small cup of sake and shook his head.
"All that infighting can't be good for them all the way out here. They're in too deep to turn back now, from what I've gathered." he commented. Kakashi strained himself to turn into a sitting posture, but settled for an awkward position in between.
"It's about what I expected when I saw the roster. They're a brand new cell, and it definitely shows. They've never seen real action before. I've got half a mind to blame you for it all, since you did lie to us, but at this point, I don't have the energy to care who's fault it is." he said wearily. Tazuna exhaled through his nose and offered the bottle from which he had been drinking to Kakashi, which the Jonin declined.
"What are they like as a group? Personality-wise, I mean." he asked curiously. Kakashi thought for a moment as he made brief mental assessments of each of his assigned genin. When he reached satisfactory conclusions on them, he spoke.
"Naruto means well for the most part, but he's a little slow on the uptake sometimes. He's a good kid, but he has a huge amount to learn. Shikamaru is smarter than both of them put together, but he's indecisive as all hell, and he's probably the most selfish of them underneath his shell." he began, drawing a raised eyebrow from Tazuna.
"Selfish? I didn't get that impression from him at all, to be honest. What makes you say that?" he pressed skeptically. Kakashi stared off into the window, where the night was setting in with all its chills and blanketing darkness.
"He's the type to do his best to stop a fire from starting, but leave the people to burn if he can't kill the blaze in time. Something of a passive observer, if that makes sense." he explained. The bridge builder nodded intently.
"I suppose that fits with what I know of him. More of a watcher than a doer, so to speak. I'd never really thought of that stance as selfish, but now that I think about it a bit harder, it really is, isn't it?" he pondered. The Jonin nodded and scratched the side of his face. He then moved on to the final of his genin.
"Satsuki is...justifiably bitter. Her family was slaughtered by her older brother, and she just so happened to walk in on it. Apparently, she was actually a fairly sweet kid before the massacre. Now, not so much. She's egotistical, mean, and confrontational. I understand why she is the way she is, but it doesn't change how hard it makes my job." he said. Tazuna's eyes widened to saucers.
"By her own brother, you say? That's horrifying. She can't be older than seventeen. How old was she when this happened?" he asked carefully. Kakashi kept his gaze fixed out into the nature beyond the windowsill.
"She'd just turned nine according to the official report. A kid that young should never have to see their own family dead at their feet. Not that it isn't more common than it should be these days." he said. A pained laugh then escaped him.
"Our society isn't built to support long lives. I would know. I walked in on my own father hanging from our overhead light when I was six. Naruto never even had a family. It's a cruel, cruel world we live in, and those three are learning exactly why." he said. Tazuna once again offered him the alcohol.
"Sounds to me like you need this more than I do, Kakashi." he said. Though he hesitated a moment, the silver-haired Ninja relented and took the bottle. He slowly poured himself a small glass.
"I shouldn't let myself be bitter. It's been a while since I have, honestly. Maybe seeing kids so young be put through the ringer is winding me up." he muttered as he took a sip of the unpleasantly soothing liquid. Tazuna chuckled a bit.
"So, that's what you look like without that mask. I'm guessing that very few have seen your real face, right?" he said in reference to the fact that Kakashi had uncovered the lower half of his face to drink. The now-barefaced Jonin shrugged his shoulders.
"No reason for me to take it off much. I take after my father, and the older folks knew him well. I'd...rather avoid the comparisons." he said. Tazuna nodded in understanding.
"Not to change the topic, but, what's your plan? You said that you'd probably be stuck on the couch for the next week or so." he asked curiously. Kakashi finally made his way into an upright posture.
"I can probably still walk with some crutches, so I'm going to drill them. Shikamaru can probably do it already, but they'll be learning to walk up trees. That, and cliff sides if we can find one some time." he revealed. Tazuna sighed and shook his head.
"The things you Shinobi can do will never cease to baffle me." he said. Kakashi smirked and downed another glass.
"I could teach you a thing or two if I ever swing back around this area. I'm an alright teacher." he offered. Tazuna laughed a bit and held up a hand.
"No, I'm old and rigid. Set in my ways. I'd only get myself hurt." he said dismissively, to which Kakashi chuckled a bit more lightly than before.
"I'm dreading getting older. I'm not even thirty-five yet, and I already feel like a senior citizen."
Satsuki tightened her arms around her legs as she sat huddled against a tree in the night. She had been in the semi-fetal position deep in the forest for nearly a full hour, and the temperature was dropping. Despite it, and almost because of it, she did not wish to return to Team Seven's base of operations at Tazuna's household. She was frustrated, tired, and even a bit confused. To accommodate her conflicted psyche, she dug her nails into her shins.
"I guess it's good to know that you aren't gonna be there for me. Thanks for the heads up."
Her teammate's words had been bouncing around her skull endlessly over the past hour or so, and they only grew more potent each time they collided with her conscience. She had openly attacked him verbally, and she had expected him to snap back at her, but for whatever reason, his choice of words had done enough to force her to leave the room and retreat.
'I meant everything I said to him. All of it. Every word.' she thought to herself with very little firmness. A small prick of coldness then formed on the top of her head. Then another, and another. Taking a glance upward, Satsuki saw that it had slowly begun to rain overhead, and the trees were doing a poor job of keeping her dry. In direct scorn to the weather, the Uchiha girl stubbornly stayed seated under the tree and dug her feet into the damp ground.
"You've got some nerve telling me off. You've got nothing." she hissed to Naruto through the cold night. She utterly despised the way she was feeling, entirely because she was unsure of herself. On the one hand, she had felt genuinely embarrassed and weak at the fact that Naruto had indeed performed rushed mouth-to-mouth CPR on her without warning, but on the other, she knew deep down that his gall to do so was likely the only reason she still drew breath.
'Why can't I just...be angry about this? Why do I feel so guilty?' she thought to herself as she buried her face into her knees and let her hair be completely soaked by the rain.
"You're only here for inclusion. Shikamaru and I are the ones who have a future, and they know it. They put you on the team to make the system look generous."
As she recalled her own words, Satsuki clenched her teeth and gripped the sides of her head tightly. In the moment, she had almost been proud of just how venomous they were. But as she sat alone with time to stew over it all, she found herself being eaten alive by the regret of having said them at all. She knew of his horrid experiences day in and day out, she had heard story after story of just how raggedly he had worked himself to scrape by the entrance exam, and yet she had declared him a rejected wastrel.
"I'm not apologizing." she swore to herself under her breath. To have said so much with such a level of coldness, only to turn around and declare regret was an endeavor she wanted no part of. Slowly but surely, she raised her head up from her knees and turned her eyes to the moon, which seemed to shimmer in the rain.
"I'll never let you get one over on me, Naruto." she said softly, annunciating his name as intricately as she always did. She then swallowed the odd lump that had formed in her throat during her mental tirade.
"Not now, not ever." she added quietly. The rumble of thunder then drew a flinch from the girl. She had never particularly liked thunderstorms, and the weather seemed to be rapidly morphing into a fairly powerful one. As such, Satsuki rose to her feet and stretched. She then glanced back toward the house, the light of which could be just barely seen from her position nearly a half-mile away.
"It's gonna be muddy on the way back." she muttered to herself as she began to trudge toward the dwelling. As she walked along, she threw her head back to remove her hair from her face and shoulders.
'I'm chopping at least six inches off of it when we get back home.' she thought to herself. With that thought, she broke out into a jog to increase her rate of travel. Within the next three minutes, she reached the front door of the house, which now had its lights switched off unlike just minutes beforehand. Sighing heavily, Satsuki opened the door and slipped inside as quietly as she could.
Though she made it to her room without waking her contemporaries, she could do little to hide from her own repressed shame.
A/N: Lots to take in this chapter, but I wanted to make something clear about Satsuki in this chapter: She is a tad bit unstable emotionally. She has limited control of herself when faced with extreme feelings of positivity or negativity.
Also, even if you people don't like what I implied about what Haku may be involved in last chapter, I'm going through with it anyway. My story, my rules, and I hope you can accept that.
Tell me what you thought in a review
See you next chapter! Read and Review!
