Chapter 1: Behind the Mask
Part of being an ANBU unit commander was attending the trials for new recruits. It was interesting, actually, Hayate thought, despite the fact that he was essentially sitting around all day. He had a little sheaf of files on the candidates, and he studied the more interesting ones as they came up for review. They had already had a battery of tests to demonstrate their judgment, their leadership abilities, their creativity. Their fundamental knowledge as shinobi was certainly not in any question by this point in their careers.
What he was watching now was the individual sparring. Experienced ANBU were pitted against the candidates, under the watchful eyes of the squad commanders. Any who really stood out would pass next into the squad leaders' hands, and Hayate was carefully scanning for the ones he wanted to test against his katana. There was a tall, heavy-set young man--an Akimichi--who moved with the kind of terrifying speed the really skilled members of his clan had. His card got a flick from Hayate's pen.
And there was a woman. She had long, deep violet hair, which whipped around mesmerizingly as she leapt and tumbled with her sparring partner. She was clearly a taijutsu specialist, and damn good at it, too. Hayate couldn't help wondering if her hair was a liability in combat. So easily grabbed. But somehow, even with her opponent's best efforts, she seemed able to evade his grasp, and return every lunge with a sick-sounding thwack as her foot met the ANBU's armor.
She was good.
Good looking, too, a little voice at the back of Hayate's head insisted. He dismissed it with a soft sniff, and pulled up her card. Uzuki Yuugao. She was one he'd like to test further. Definitely. The pen in his left hand left a sharp little tick in the box next to the words, "Advance to trial with Gekkou Hayate, Unit Six."
That was a match he was definitely looking forward to.
The match ended as Yuugao had known it would, from the first time her armored opponent didn't quite dodge her kick. He was strong, but his strength couldn't help him when he couldn't catch her. Her speed and agility left him panting in her wake, and when the proctor finally called time, the ANBU groaned and reached for his ribs. Yuugao bit back her triumphant grin as she bowed to him and left the ring. And he'd swaggered so confidently when he first saw he'd be facing a woman...
Still, her clear victory here didn't mean she could gather any confidence. She tried to remind herself of that, as she splashed her hot face at the fountain and caught her breath. If she'd done well enough here, she'd advance to face one of the squad commanders, and the best she could hope for there was a non-humiliating defeat. Her style was fast and flowing and flashy, but her stamina was less than average, and she was tired already.
She'd make it. She had to. Overconfidence wasn't an option, but neither was failure.
Yuugao took one last drink, tossed her hair back over her shoulder, and froze.
There was a man standing behind her. An ANBU veteran, in black and grey and blue-and-black-and-white mask framed by straight brown hair. No surprise, really--this was a public fountain in the training yards; people were free to drink from it as they choose--but she hadn't sensed him. Hadn't heard him, hadn't felt his chakra, hadn't known he was there at all.
And she'd thought she was good enough to join their ranks.
"Excuse me, ANBU-san," she said quietly. "Forgive me for the wait." She stepped aside, and hoped against hope that she hadn't just failed their most important test.
"Uzuki-san," Hayate said, and pushed his mask off his face to take a drink himself. He put it back in place before turning to face the woman. She was taller than he'd thought, now that he looked at her up close. Only five centimeters or so shorter than he was himself. The man she'd sparred against, Inoue, was tall, so she'd seemed slight in comparison.
"You did well against your opponent. Are you enjoying your day here with us?"
He wondered how she'd answer. To his eyes, she was indeed enjoying herself. Probably feeling pretty good about having bested a veteran ANBU. He was sure Inoue was feeling anything but good right now, getting his ribs taped and iced by one of the compound medics.
He had to be mocking her. Smirking behind the mask, perhaps; was there any other reason for him to have pulled it back on, when she'd already glimpsed his face as he drank? A thin face, almost delicate, with dark eyes and a straight nose and a gentle mouth. It was hard to imagine that mouth laughing at her behind his mask, though. Perhaps it was pity in his voice, not mockery.
"I fought too hard," she said, pushing her sweat-dampened hair back from her forehead again. A few tendrils had been caught in the spray of the water as she splashed her face, and they clung damply to her cheeks and neck. "I shouldn't have wasted so much energy on him." You saw that, surely, she wanted to add. If she'd been less tired, less thirsty, she'd have noticed his approach.
"You fought well," Hayate repeated, a little amused at her defensiveness. "Your opponent is a very skilled ANBU. If you hadn't fought hard against him you would be the one seeing the medic right now, not he."
He stepped back into an easy, relaxed posture, holding his files in his right hand, leaving the left free. He had to stifle an urge to reach out and brush that hair off her cheek. What is it about this woman and her hair? he asked himself, and bit his lip. Good thing the mask hid his face from her, or she'd have seen how his eyes traced the way her hair spiraled down to spill over the curve of her shoulder. The way his glance couldn't help traveling a little further to the smallish, rounded breasts, picked out in delicate relief by the black fishnet shirt she wore under a high-collared white top.
A tiny breath of breeze fluttered between them, riffling the papers in his hand, and he pulled them closer to his armored chest. Maybe it was the hot, late-spring sun making Hayate feel so unaccountably unprofessional. He turned away from her and got another drink at the fountain, hoping the cold water would clear his head a little. He was evaluating this woman as a potential subordinate, after all.
She was still standing there when he turned back to her, masked again. "Well, Uzuki-san, I hope your next opponent proves equally satisfying."
"I...hope so as well," she murmured, eyes flicking down once more to the papers he still held against his chest. A proctor? That meant he probably knew exactly whom she would be facing in the next rounds. He could still be mocking her, of course...
But somehow a little of her first defensive edge had faded away. His praise, perhaps (and gods, it was almost frightening how good those few words were to hear), or his obvious attempt at small talk. Or even the way he'd pushed his mask up when he drank, as though he was no happier about wearing the mask in this late-spring heat than she was about the way her shirt clung sweatily to her chest. He looked younger than she'd first thought. No more than a few years older than her, perhaps. Much better, of course, since he was proctoring these rounds, but... Kind, despite that.
Perhaps she hadn't failed after all.
"Thank you," she said, a little more clearly, and ducked her head in a polite bow. "I hope you take as much satisfaction from observing it."
"I'm sure I will," Hayate answered her with a trace of humor in his voice. Then he vanished. Literally vanished. It was a jutsu, of course, but one only the fastest could manage, disappearing without even a telltale little swirl of leaves or mist to mark the going. And if Hayate was showing off just a little for this woman--well, who could blame him? She was pretty. Very pretty. Big, brown eyes that flashed with a liveliness rare in a kunoichi. Softly rounded cheeks. Pouting lips.
While Gekkou Hayate, ANBU squad commander, was interested in her for her prowess as a ninja, Gekkou Hayate, twenty-one-year-old young man, was definitely interested in her for much more carnal reasons.
Of course, he told himself, as he prepared to face her in his match with her, he needed to get those thoughts altogether out of his mind. She was a candidate. A pretty candidate, but a candidate. If he and the other commanders agreed, she would be a colleague in a mask and armor of her own. A subordinate. Probably not a direct one--no, that would be asking for trouble, to have a woman on your own squad whom you found attractive. But still, a subordinate. Someone he'd likely have to order into situations he doubted she'd return from.
Best not to think about her as anything but a soldier.
He stopped in the men's room to relieve himself, washed his face with a few handfuls of water from the sink, then glanced up at his reflection in the mirror. "Time to go, Gekkou," he told himself, and pulled the rabbit-faced mask over his own. Then he strode out, down the hall, and into the brilliant afternoon sun heating the arena. He reached up with his left hand to release the catch on his katana, then stood at easy attention, waiting for the woman.
She'd had a little time, after the ANBU left (with what she had to admit was an impressive jutsu; she rather liked that subtly dramatic flare), to stretch out and re-limber her muscles and try to ignore the growing nervousness in the pit of her stomach. The handful of congratulations she received from passing shinobi--other candidates and ANBU alike--didn't help much, either. By the time a proctor called her name, she was as tense and taut as steel wire. She could feel her pulse pounding in her throat. This was it, the last exam. She'd prove her worth here, or not at all.
But when she stepped into the ring again and recognized the mask that faced her, that 'not at all' almost began to sound like a viable option.
The proctors didn't waste any time on introductions. Almost before Yuugao's heart had picked up its skipped beat, the man at the edge of the ring had slapped his clipboard against his leg. "You have five minutes," he barked. "Begin!"
And then the adrenaline was back, and the pride, and the fierce determination to wipe away that hidden smile that had to be there, after all. He must have been laughing at her the whole time. Well, she'd lose this bout; that much was clear, from the hand on his katana and the easy confidence in his stance. He was a squad captain, after all, and she was--
She was Uzuki Yuugao, and she had all the world to prove.
She didn't shout. No jutsu name, no taijutsu yell, no scream of frustration and fury. Just the slap of a sandal against packed dirt, and the whistle of wind as her blinding kick sliced for the ANBU's masked head.
Ah, she's fast, Hayate thought appreciatively and dodged under her kick, bringing his katana around in an elegant sweep towards the knee of the leg she'd balanced on. She was already evading though, adjusting her stance when her kick failed to connect, readying a second blow. Her shoe scuffed against Hayate's right shoulder as he propelled himself backwards, circling around her to dart in from the left with another blow aimed at knocking her off her feet. He stopped with the sword bare millimeters from her thigh.
"Point, Uzuki-san."
A flicker of motion and he was away again, readying his next attack.
Damn, his arm was definitely going to be bruised.
She was good.
Yuugao's lips thinned briefly as the ANBU retreated. She'd hit him, but not well enough; he was fast enough to dodge her first kick and take only bruising damage from her second, and that katana would have sliced through her leg if he hadn't pulled the blow. She couldn't count on his shoulder hindering him, either, not unless she managed to crush a nerve or crack his collarbone. He was better, faster, fresher; he'd seen her fight, and he knew her moves.
But not all of them.
She had the advantage in being bare-handed, and even a Sharingan-user would have been hard-pressed to match the speed of her seals. "Raiton: Ko-shuurai no jutsu," she murmured, as four blue-white balls of crackling energy gathered at the tips of her fingers. With a flick of her fingers they were gone, whirring angrily through the air after the nearest chakra source. After the ANBU.
Yuugao flashed through another few seals, and two Bunshin--and the real woman--followed them.
Nice jutsu, Hayate thought, and quickly popped up a couple of bunshin of his own to attempt a diversion. The glowing, crackling balls of plasma, though, maintained their unerring course for him. Chakra seekers! he realized, and flickered away with only centimeters to spare, using a repeat of the translocation jutsu Yuugao had seen at the fountain. He dispersed his bunshin, replacing them with a trio of kage bunshin, which by virtue of containing fragments of Hayate's chakra, became instant targets. It was a little like the Dance of the Crescent Moon, in that suddenly there were four Hayate's with silvery katana skimming through the air. He deflected one of the balls of lightning with his sword, while two of his bunshin took their hits, arcing backward in convulsions that looked like agony, then fragmenting into vapor with a clap.
There was one more lightning ball bearing down on him, and a trio of kunoichi soaring through the air with their violet hair flying behind them like satin ribbons. It was breathtaking.
He turned, ducked, then flipped in the air, crossing paths with his own clone and aiming a blow with the flat side of his blade for one of the women's necks. He hoped he'd targeted the right one. His clone intercepted one of hers, both exploding as the lightning hit its target. His katana arced down and through, slicing through illusion, and in that moment, with his back to the real woman, he realized with a sick thrill, he was vulnerable.
He dealt with the ko-shuurai and the bunshin equally easily, but that wasn't the point. That moment of distraction was enough for Yuugao to translocate behind him; she couldn't manage it nearly as neatly as he had, but with his attention focused on her bunshin, her best was enough.
And her best was a smashing kick aimed directly at his left shoulder. She pulled it a little, of course; she didn't intend to drive the broken ends of his collarbone down into his lungs. But when her heel connected with the shoulder-strap of his grey ANBU armor, it was hard enough for her to feel the shock up to her teeth.
She dropped to the ground behind him in a three-point crouch, panting, reaching for a handful of shuriken. But she didn't throw them quite yet. If he meant to go on, even with his left arm unusable--and she'd felt that little crack beneath her heel--she'd take all the breathing space she could get.
He might tap out, of course. Another left-handed swordsman, unable now to use his left hand at all, probably would. But somehow, Yuugao didn't think this ANBU captain was just any swordsman.
The moment of impact played out in stunning clarity--a powerful, sharp shock that drove Hayate to his knees. The sound and sensation of his collarbone fracturing traveled up his spine and down his arm in reverberating waves. It was agony. His katana fell from his grasp, and he clutched at his left arm with his right with a gasping cry.
The proctor stepped in immediately, intending to end the match, but Hayate barked, "Back off, this match continues!" at him, and picked up the sword in his right hand. Eying the woman, crouched and defensive, he put the hilt of his katana between his teeth, raised his right hand in a seal and enveloped them in a thick, foul-smelling smog. While he was temporarily screened from her, he used his right hand to pull his left close to his body, tucking his hand under the shoulder strap next to the broken clavicle. He couldn't help the pained grunt the move forced out of him, but then hiding in the mist wasn't his long term plan in any event.
Returning the sword to his right hand, now that his left was at least secured from flapping around uselessly and damaging the shoulder further, Hayate honed in on the woman's presence. She had a chakra that felt like the brush of heated velvet against his skin, and she was right. Over. There.
He materialized behind her, swinging his sword in an arc that whistled over her head.
She'd dodged.
Damn, she was good.
Yuugao's resentment was draining away with her energy, though exhaustion replaced the one and admiration the other. Perhaps he'd been laughing at her, but by now she was fairly well convinced that he had a right to. Any man who could take that injury, bind up his arm, and keep going with only the slightest decrease in speed and power-- Well, she didn't think she'd regret this loss.
Not that she was quite prepared to accept it yet, of course. He was slower now, dulled by pain and the loss of his lead arm, and with his only usable hand taken up by his sword, he shouldn't be able to use jutsu. She slipped away from his strike, running through the foul-smelling shreds of the fading mist, and spun around again when she'd put a good five meters between them. Shuriken glinted as her hand whipped out, four bright little stars slicing through the air. No lightning balls, this time. Her already-depleted chakra was running dangerously low with her fatigue. She could make it to the five-minute limit, though.
Maybe.
Hayate weaved around the flying blades, feeling one slice a groove along his arm guard, another leave a stinging scratch across his cheek. They were just a distraction, one he paid little attention to as they clanged to the hard-packed earthen floor behind him. No, his target was Uzuki. She was starting to show fatigue--not surprising, given how hard she'd been worked at these trials. Hayate had every intention of using it against her.
He raced to close the distance between then, moving with nearly as much speed as he had at the start. He could see her eyes widen just a little as he rushed her, and he grinned behind his mask. The katana came down in a steep, straight cut, then flashed away just before it would have hit, and swept to the side. She was still trying to evade the blow that didn't land on her shoulder when the blade cut into her thigh.
It was a shallow cut, Hayate made sure of that. He didn't want to permanently disable her. Putting a stop to her flight, though, that was perfectly acceptable. She twisted towards him and he blinked away, translocating to her other side to hold the bloodied sword blade at her throat.
"My win, Uzuki-san," he said, panting hard and feeling satisfied.
Oh yes, he was definitely lobbying for this woman's inclusion in the ANBU elite.
"Time," the proctor called, breaking the frozen moment, and Hayate lowered his sword.
Yuugao didn't quite muffle a sharp gasp as she dodged into the blade she'd thought she was dodging away from. The katana's razor edge slid into her thigh, slid out again, brushed her throat, and she was left standing there with muscles tense as taut wire and blood slowly seeping down her thigh. Her hands were trembling.
But his chest was heaving, too, and his voice was harsh with panting as he claimed his win. And his left hand was still tucked in under the narrow shoulder-strap of his vest, though evidently he hadn't needed it to beat her. Still--she hadn't acquitted herself badly.
She'd lost, as she'd known she would. But she'd fought her best, tired and drained as she was. He'd been holding back, of course--holding back more than she was, but that was to be expected; he was the captain, she only a candidate--but even so she'd hurt him. Even so, there was sweat sleeking his shoulders and dampening his hair, and his left shoulder, bared by the sleeveless shirt, was already beginning to bruise and swell.
Yuugao averted her eyes quickly, and looked up into the dark eye-holes of the mask.
"You were wrong," she said, quietly enough that only he could hear. "My next opponent wasn't equally satisfying." And just for a moment, her bitten lips fleeted into a smile.
"No?" Hayate asked, and raised his hand to push his mask off his face, revealing a broad, friendly smile. "I'm so terribly sorry to have disappointed you, Uzuki-san." He wiped the inside of his gloved forearm across his sweaty brow, then carefully resheathed his katana with an awkward twist. It was clearly designed to be used left-handed. Getting it to go in from the right was a challenge that forced Hayate into a pained contortion.
He winced and a little grunt sounded in his throat, then he straightened and let gravity pull the sword down into its sheath.
"For my part, Uzuki-san, it was quite a treat. Although I'll admit I wish you hadn't had to break my shoulder." He reached up now to cradle his left elbow with his right arm, holding the injured arm even more securely in place.
"Will you accompany me to the medic to get your leg looked at?" he asked. "You should feel quite pleased. You are a very capable ninja."
"I didn't mean that," Yuugao began to protest, but bit it back; perhaps he knew what she'd meant after all. That friendly smile didn't look much like the smirk she'd imagined, and he had every right to tease back.
"I'm--sorry about that," she said instead, dark eyes flicking to his bruising collarbone just once before they returned to his face. He had very nice collarbones, even with the bruising. She hadn't noticed before.
As for her own injury...she glanced down for the first time, frowning at the neat edges of the long slice in the thigh of her dark violet capris. The blood was visible only as a faintly darker stain, but she could feel the warm liquid slipping down her skin, and the sharp pain as she shifted her weight. A flicker of that pain crossed her face, and a dusky blush of embarrassment followed it. His injury might merit a wince, but hers certainly shouldn't have. "I'd be pleased if I hadn't gotten myself injured," she said, and tried to ignore the little glowing ball of pride his compliment had lit beneath her breastbone.
"Ah, you're a perfectionist, I see," Hayate said, still smiling. He blew out a breath of air, puffing the dark hair that flopped over his eyes away for a moment. "I do apologize for injuring you, although as they say, all's fair in love, war, and an ANBU spar."
He didn't want to give too much away. He didn't have final say, of course. But he'd seen her scores coming into the combat rounds. If she wasn't made for the mask and armor, no-one was.
"Well, Uzuki Yuugao-san, it has definitely been my pleasure meeting you," he continued, bowing slightly. He winced when the movement made his shoulder stab with pain, and straightened with a regretful smile. "Forgive my poor manners. I'm Gekkou Hayate, commander of Unit Six. If you can walk without assistance, come with me." Nodding his head in the direction of one of the doors at the edge of the arena, he added, "Just don't let the ANBU medics scare you off from the service. They're all a bunch of softies at the core."
"If the medics are that alarming," Yuugao said drily, "I'd just have to make sure I never get any wounds worthy of their attention." She took half a step, decided her leg could bear her weight after all, and looked up at him again. Gekkou Hayate. That name would be easy enough to remember. The Gekkou were kenjutsu specialists, weren't they? No wonder he was so good. She squashed the flicker of envy without much of a second thought; after over eight years as a shinobi, she'd fought and worked with enough proud scions of prouder clans that she no longer really envied their Bloodline Limits or family training or--family at all, come to that. Beyond her father's name and his worn dogtags, what she had, she'd won for herself.
She could walk without wincing, she found after the first step. It hurt, but the painful surprise had worn away; she was ready for each little stab of pain now, and she could keep her face smooth. The man walking beside her seemed to be faring a little worse. Yuugao felt that little ball of pride dissolve into guilt.
"I'm sorry about your shoulder," she repeated, looking up at him again. There seemed to be no safe place to focus her eyes; his fingers, curled under the shoulder-strap of his armor, only reminded her of what she'd done, and the veiled pain in his face did the same. "I should have pulled back more--as you did." Guilt again. He could have incapacitated her with that first strike. Why hadn't he?
"Ah, no, please," Hayate said, and gave her a small smile. "Then I wouldn't have been evaluating your true abilities. It's much better for you that you fought all out and gave me and the other commanders such a clear demonstration of your skills." He bit his lip as a slight misstep jostled his shoulder, noticed her sympathetic wince and tried to project bland reassurance into his voice.
"I certainly knew the risks when I stepped into the arena, after watching your earlier spars. And I'm sure you'll find we won't be the only people seeing the medics after this round. Although I may take some ribbing from the other captains."
He laughed softly and offered Yuugao another smile. "You really can cheer up, Uzuki-san. You did well, and the day is over."
She opened her mouth to protest that she didn't need to cheer up (did she really look that gloomy?) and then shut it again, thoughtfully. "Ribbing because you got injured by a rookie, or because it was a woman?"
She'd noticed, in the last few days of intensive testing, that though nearly thirty jounin and special jounin candidates had entered the exams with her, no more than five of those had been women. Unsurprising, really. Yuugao knew well enough the pressure that a kunoichi's family and friends--and even, occasionally, her superiors--placed on her to serve Konoha for a few years, retire, marry, and spend the rest of her life serving Konoha through her sons. ANBU certainly didn't figure into those plans for most clans' daughters. Even among those few women who'd chosen to dedicate their lives to kunai and jutsu, ANBU wasn't a popular choice. It was a man's world, her old genin sensei had told her. ANBU were the best of the best, but they were men.
Well, she was a woman--or a kunoichi, at least--and she wasn't backing down. Not at the beginning of the exams, when she'd arrived early to find herself the only female in a check-in line of fifteen men. Not during the exams, when she'd fought men older and stronger and far more experienced than her. And certainly not now.
Hayate looked thoughtfully at her for a moment, before answering, "Both. But I don't care. You're good. That's what matters. Just because there aren't a lot of kunoichi in ANBU doesn't mean there aren't any, or that women aren't welcome."
He stopped at the door and waited a moment, before coloring slightly and looking at Yuugao. "Since we're discussing role reversal and a woman's place... Would you mind opening the door for me?" He gave a slight nod of his head towards his injured shoulder, accompanying it with a soft, pained sound. "I don't really want to let go of it with my good hand. Although I suppose pain is just pain. Not like it's going to hurt me or anything."
He glanced at her leg, and the dark splotch now staining much of her right thigh. "I imagine that must hurt, too, after all."
The little glow of pride had lit again beneath her breastbone at his first words--a little ridiculously, she thought. Like a cigarette lighter or something, flaring at the briefest word of praise. At least she could cover her own faint blush in a hasty reach for the door. "Just pain," she said, as flippantly as she could manage. "I've had worse." Not recently; but then, she hadn't fought anyone as good as this Gekkou ANBU, recently. Even if this cut scarred, though, it still wouldn't match the long, puckered scar on the inside of her left thigh. That one was her worst, and probably her worst memory as well.
She shook her head just the slightest bit, shoving that memory back into the darkness where it belonged, and stepped back to hold the door wide open. The air of the corridor beyond was cool, and she closed her eyes for a moment, leaning her forehead against the edge of the metal door and letting the soft breeze of the air conditioning dry the sweat that dampened her shirt and hair. Gods. If she stood here long enough, she could easily fall asleep.
When she failed to follow him through the door, Hayate stopped and looked back, alarmed to see her sagging against the heavy door. "Uzuki-san? Are you alright?" he asked, letting go of his injured arm to reach out to touch her shoulder. She was trembling, he realized. How hard had she worked out there, and how close to her limits had she come?
"Do you need to sit down? I'll summon a medic." He looked up the empty hall, wondering if it would be better to go get someone to help her, or stay with her and wait for a passerby.
Yuugao straightened instantly; sore muscles protested, and her leg screamed silently. His hand still on her shoulder seemed far more worthy of her attention, though. Gods, she hadn't thought he'd noticed; she'd worked so hard, and to think that a moment of weakness now could destroy it all--
"I'm fine," she said, too quickly. The lie had to be obvious, but she wasn't going to acknowledge it if she could help it. "Just a little worn-out. You needn't worry about me."
He'd let go of his arm to reach out to her, and his face was pale with the pain. Somehow, that made her feel even worse.
"Of course I'm worried about you," he said, letting go when she straightened up, although he didn't resume cradling his own arm. "What kind of a commander would I be if I worked a candidate to the point of exhaustion and then let them fall down somewhere alone? Are you sure you can make it to the infirmary with me? It's another several hundred meters down this way." Hayate used his eyes to indicate the direction, keeping his upper body as still as he could, despite his hand still loose to grab her should she sway or start to fall.
"Perhaps you need something to drink. It's unseasonably hot today, and we've been working out quite hard."
Actually, something to drink was appealing to him too, he thought, feeling a trickle of sweat slide down his temple. Something to drink and a couple of those little yellow pills the medics would have. He hoped they'd be able to set his shoulder easily. And this would probably mean a week off from missions. Of course, with the candidate trials and Rookie orientation to do, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Someone had to stay in ANBU HQ and do the paperwork. Usually it was whoever was both high-ranking enough to handle it and injured enough to be grounded.
He held his right arm out to her a little stiffly. "Take my arm, Uzuki-san? I'd prefer you not faint and strike your head."
"I'm not going to faint!" Yuugao said, outraged. "You're the one with a broken collar-bone. I'm just--"
Exhausted, nearly chakra-drained, still losing blood, and far too proud to admit it. If she couldn't manage this, how was she expected to run ANBU missions?
"Besides," she said, more reasonably, "you need to support your shoulder. You need a sling, really." Which the empty corridor certainly wasn't going to provide. It didn't look like either of them had any spare fabric on them, although...
She fingered the high, mandarin collar of her white shirt irresolutely. She did have the fishnet beneath it, and breast-bindings, and it wasn't like many kunoichi didn't run around wearing much less. (Anko, for example. She never bothered with the breast-bindings.) Whether he would accept it was another issue altogether, though.
Hayate almost choked when he realized what she must be thinking. "No, I'm fine, I can just hold it for the few meters between me and the infirmary, really." Good gods, would she really consider taking her shirt off to make a sling for a three-hundred-meter walk? He tried not to think of how enticing she would look, stripped of the high-collared blouse, wearing only the fishnet and whatever undergarments she might have underneath.
Get a hold of yourself, Gekkou, he told himself sternly. Your candidate here is bleeding and shaking, and you're injured too, and you're fantasizing about her? Gods it must be sunstroke. Please, let it be sunstroke. It was either that, or the rumor that lack of female companionship could addle a man's brain if unremedied over time was true.
He bit hard on the inside of his lip and forced his eyes to meet hers, and stray away from her long, sensuous violet hair... Such nice hair... Another nip at his lip, which surely must be bleeding by now.
"Uzuki-san. I think it would be best if we continued to the infirmary, if you think you can manage."
Math was truly an amazing thing, condensing "several hundred" meters into just a "few." That, and the slightly strangled look on his face...
Perhaps the last few days of constant strain had something to do with it, or her exhaustion, or even her bloodloss (though the light-headedness was nothing more than she could manage). Whatever it was, her beginning smile cracked into a full laugh. She dropped her hand from her collar and pressed it casually against her leg, where hopefully he wouldn't notice the blood slowly welling between her fingers.
"I can manage, I think," she said. "I'm sorry for startling you, Gekkou-san." But oh gods, the look on his face...
Of course, it was entirely possible that he wasn't inclined her way at all; she'd heard that was fairly common, in the almost exclusively-male ANBU. It was still funny, though.
She was laughing. Was that a pain reaction? Or no--she was laughing at him, wasn't she? At his awkwardness. Right, well, way to impress a chick, right? Hayate really wondered what the hell he thought he was doing.
Of course he noticed her leg. Not just because she had her hand on it, either. He'd inflicted the wound, after all, and she seemed to be more seriously injured than he'd intended. "Uzuki-san. Your leg..." Hayate said, and reached into a pocket to extract a handkerchief. He held it out to her, and gritted his teeth. His shoulder was throbbing now, with every beat of his pulse, and he could feel the swelling starting to push at his vest. He desperately wanted to take his hand down, but that would mean he'd have to hold his left arm in his right, and he still wasn't convinced he wasn't going to need to catch Yuugao on her way to the floor.
"I really must insist you come with me to the medics now, Uzuki-san."
Since when had men begun carrying handkerchiefs?
Since he did, apparently; somehow it didn't surprise her that Hayate was the sort of man to produce a handkerchief whenever it was needed. It surprised her a little more that she'd so easily begun thinking of him as Hayate, rather than Gekkou-san or even that ANBU commander, but... Well, as long as she didn't say it aloud, there shouldn't be a problem.
"Thank you," she said gratefully, accepting the handkerchief and refolding it neatly before pressing the pad against her leg. She should have brought bandages with her. Stupid, really, but with an infirmary on-site, she hadn't thought she'd need them, and she hadn't wanted anything that could weigh her down...
Handkerchief in place, she forced herself to begin walking again at last. It wasn't so bad, now, with the blood seeping into the makeshift bandage rather than trickling down her leg; the pain was easy enough to ignore as long as she had something else to concentrate on. She chose the clean lines of Hayate's profile, set with pain and still, a little, with worry.
"May I ask--how long have you served in ANBU?"
"Two years," Hayate answered, leading her slowly through the corridors. Between her limp and his cautious attempts to minimize the jar of his footfalls, they were moving at a snail's pace. But moving was better than not. "I've been a commander for the last six months." It felt like longer. A lot longer. How had only six months passed since he agreed to take on the responsibilities of leading a team?
"What about you, Uzuki-san? I know you were asked the question in your application, but I don't recall your answer at the moment. Why ANBU? You seemed to notice already that there are few women here."
Just a few hallways more, he thought, and he'd have succeeded in this mission of delivering the two of them conscious and reparable to the medic's hands.
"That's one of the reasons, actually," she admitted. This hadn't gone on her application--but what was the harm? If she were going to screw things up, she'd already have done it far more effectively than a few words could manage. "They probably need more women. And I...had something to prove. ANBU seemed the best place to do it."
Her father had never served in the ANBU, but perhaps he might have, if he'd lived. Perhaps he would have given his permission for his daughter to join. Her mother would probably have rather died than see Yuugao with the spiral inked on her shoulder--but then, she already had. And that was just one more reason.
"Besides," she added, tossing her head to shake her hair off her forehead again, "if any young man who's good enough can join, why shouldn't any young woman?"
Hayate nodded. A tiny nod, because by now even that motion was hurting. "My mother would have liked you," he said, and stopped in front of a door marked with that universal symbol of infirmaries everywhere: a blood-red cross. He could feel the sweat beading on his forehead and starting to run down his face again. "She never made it beyond chuunin, but she was always one for that 'women can be anything men can be' way of thinking."
He swallowed dryly and looked at Yuugao, then at the door. She stepped forward to open this one without hesitating, and he gave her a pale smile.
Then he led her into what was, for all intents and purposes, a mini-hospital.
There was an older woman in a medic's uniform heading over to them almost immediately, making sounds of vague disapproval, looking between Hayate with his obviously broken collarbone and Yuugao with her bleeding leg.
"I take it you and your protégé here suffered a similar fate to Yamanaka-taichou and his candidate?" the woman clucked and reached for Yuugao, breezing past Hayate. "I know him, dear. What's your name and what's your injury? Is it just your leg?" She stopped to give Hayate a frown, then called over to one of her subordinates, "Get some ice on Gekkou-taichou's shoulder. He's obviously broken it."
Hayate was pretty sure he heard her mutter, "The damn fool" under her breath.
"He didn't break it," Yuugao protested, a little more sharply than perhaps she should have; the medic gave her a startled look. Yuugao took a deep breath. "I'm Uzuki Yuugao, Jounin, 012161. I broke Gekkou-taichou's collarbone, and he needs medical attention more than I do. The bleeding's mostly stopping."
Which wasn't quite true, but the blood flow did seem to be tapering off quite a bit with the application of pressure and Hayate's makeshift bandage.
"No I don't!" Hayate protested. "I mean yes, it's broken, but I'm concerned about Uzuki-san. I can wait with this. It's just..."
"Gekkou-taichou," the woman interrupted and glared up at him. She was probably in her fifties, and had been a shinobi medic longer than either Hayate or Yuugao had been alive. "You will go with Oda-sensei, who will be the one making the determination about your shoulder. Not you. You, dear boy, are obviously in pain and in no frame of mind to be making medical judgments best left to the actual medics."
Hayate started to protest, but another medic, this time a tall man with burly arms who looked like he spent more than a few hours working out in ANBU's gym or wrestling with uncooperative patients, stepped over and beckoned. "Please, come with me, Gekkou-taichou." He was unfailingly polite. He was also, clearly, not a man to be lightly disobeyed.
"Uzuki-san, please remember what I said about the medics," Hayate called as he was led behind a swinging curtain. "I'll look for you as soon as I am free."
They're all a bunch of softies at the core, he'd said, and she had to smile as she remembered it. She let the woman take her arm, but she held off the inevitable hustling-behind-another-curtain for just a moment. Just long enough to call after him: "Thank you, Gekkou-taichou."
And then she was gone, skinning out of her bloody trousers and hoisting herself onto a paper-covered table and wincing as the medic prodded her wound, and trying firmly to think of something other than the necessary stitches the medic was murmuring to herself about.
ANBU was good. Plans were good. Hayate had as much as said that she would make it in; hopefully her performance in the corridors hadn't damaged his confidence in that. If it hadn't...
Well, she didn't think she'd have any choice in the matter. But all the same, until she got her final team assignments, she could let herself hope.