Blame It All on Me. Part 1

Chapter 18. One Step Forward

Arina opened her mouth slightly, but almost immediately pierced her lips together again. She hadn't seen him for over a month – just about since she discovered his role in her 'sustenance'. In a way, it was for the best, as she never had the chance to express her opinion about it to him.

By now, the former passions had already settled down, and after a fleeting outburst of indignation, she suddenly wanted to embrace him like never before. However, she sharply rebuked herself.

"Are you... are you all right?" Kakashi was the first to break the silence. "Did someone hurt you?" His face began to darken rapidly, promising nothing good for the offender.

"No, no," Arina hastened to assure him, "nobody did anything bad to me... But... but you?.." After taking a closer look at him, it was her turn to look at Kakashi with concern, bordering closely with horror: there were numerous abrasions on his body, his uniform was stained and torn in some places, his left shoulder bandaged, and unmistakable brownish marks appeared through the stale bandage. The deep shadows under his eyes indicated that he had not had a proper rest in a long time. "What about you?"

"Oh, what could possibly happen to me?" Kakashi shrugged his shoulders deliberately carelessly, covering a particularly spectacular slit in the abdomen area with his palm. "And yet... you're obviously upset about something. What happened?"

"It's more of what will not happen..." Arina spoke with bitterness and hurried to bite her lip, feeling tears welling up again – her self-control was hanging by a thread. "Sorry, I need to go..."

It was obvious that Kakashi wanted to say or do something: his hand even twitched as if he wanted to touch her. But as his attention shifted to how filthy his palm was, Arina hurriedly slipped past him, lightly brushing him with her shoulder, and rushed down the corridor, leaving him looking after her in distress. When she disappeared out of sight completely, he glanced at the Hokage's office door, sighed, walked over to it and knocked.

☙ ❦ ❧

The working day came to an end, and Arina, who had completed all imaginable tasks, had no choice but to go home.

She was walking down the stairs that encircled the building on the outside, offering a view of the courtyard, and suddenly stopped dead in her tracks: not far away, almost with his back to the building, stood Kakashi. Apparently, in the meantime he had already managed to change clothes and more or less readjust himself and, possibly, had been to the medics. He was no longer wearing some of his usual gear, and nothing in his appearance, apart from a few patches and a fresh bandage on his shoulder, indicated how challenging his most recent mission had been.

He wasn't alone – in fact, that was what made Arina freeze: there was a strikingly beautiful girl with him. Judging by the uniform, also from the Anbu. The girl suddenly leaned forward impulsively and grabbed Kakashi by the neck, literally hanging on him. Kakashi seemed taken aback for a moment, but then he hugged her back, patting her lightly on the head.

Hastily averting her gaze, Arina dragged herself further downstairs.

Despite a certain temptation, she did not want to go back to the hotel. Still fresh were the memories of how she did not stick her nose out of there for several days: until Hiruzen, having waited in vain for his new employee, sent over a boy, aged ten or so, to help her get accustomed a little. The boy turned out to be already familiar to her, although he himself did not remember Arina – golden-haired, with piercing blue eyes and an equally piercing voice. Naruto.

At home, on Earth, Arina had siblings, twins – a brother and a sister – just his age, and she would never have believed that it was exactly a fidget like her brother Roma who would have been able to stir her up and make her crawl out of her shell. Oddly enough, she even liked it: the boy chatted away, not paying too much attention to her crestfallen state. And Arina, as if in the rays of the spring sun, was gradually thawing.