A Hole in One's Village [Kakashi Hatake]

Chapter 12: And I Plummeted

Several hours passed in easy silence as we ran at a gentle pace. Despite my initial assumptions, Kemuri had turned out to be a rather pleasant companion. Perhaps it was the injury that had made him a bit standoffish at first; over my years as a medic-nin, I had found that it was not uncommon among ninja, especially men, to get overly defensive when vulnerable.

Really, in some ways Kakashi was a perfect epitome of this phenomena. The mask, the aloof attitude, the keeping almost everyone at an arm's distance because, for him, forming any sort of emotional bond must make him feel very vulnerable, like he was opening himself up to tragedy once more. Perhaps this was why he hadn't formed any sort of romantic attachment before I bulldozed my way past his carefully constructed defense mechanisms. Perhaps, I thought with no small amount of self-loathing, that this was why two people whose total romantic experience equaled a few awkward dinners and porn books should not be in relationship together. Especially with the slew of traumatic emotional baggage we both brought to the table.

Falling in love had been so easy; why did no one ever talk about how hard it was to be in love?

Maybe it wasn't hard for other people. Maybe it was just me.

Rubbing my temples, I examined the spot that Kemuri had picked for us to stop. The dune rose above the desert, providing an excellent vantage in case anything or anyone approached. There was something beautiful about the stark emptiness.

While it was still late spring, it was already starting to become unbearably hot as the sun beat down on us from above. Deciding to make our break a bit more pleasant, I took out my camping gear from my small mission pack, staking the light tent poles in the ground and stretching the tent (basically a glorified tarp for rainy nights) across them to make a low pavilion, just tall enough to sit beneath.

"Kemuri," I called out to the ANBU as he finished placing a few protection jutsu around us, "come and join me in the shade. You don't want to get heat stroke."

Instantly, he was there next to me, arms and legs carefully tucked in so that no part of him was in the sun.

"Very clever," he muttered, looking at how I had manipulated the components of my tent to create a sunshade. "I didn't know that you were an engineer as well."

Shaking my head, I laughed. "Oh no. Just a chemist. Differential calculous beat the crap out of me; I wasn't good enough at higher level math to become an engineer."

He raised a brow in question, "What?"

"Don't ask. I couldn't explain what it is to you if I tried; that class was the worst grades I got in all of college."

"If you say so..."

Sighing, I ran my fingers through the sand beside me. "You would think that after five years, I would be able to hold a conversation with someone without making them confused with references to my old world. Although, you guys do have advanced mathematics here too. It's just taught in civilian schooling."

"You're lucky that your childhood hadn't been in this world. What does it say about ninja that we stop teaching our children at just twelve? You don't need math or science to hold a kunai and die for your country."

"Kakashi and I actually had a similar conversation recently." I began to toss one grain of sand at time a few feet in front of me, a silly fiddly motion. "I had discovered how a toxin functioned, but no matter how I explained it, he just could not get it. And not for any lack of intelligence, obviously. Just a lack of education. When I confronted him on this, he said, 'I was just trying not to die before my tenth birthday.' I cannot even imagine what that must have been like."