Mending The Past To A Better Future

Chp.14 Lucky Eleven {Part-2}

October tenth is absolutely the shittiest day of the year, is what Naruto thinks as she's making her way to Training Ground Seven. Or, correction. She was making her way to Training Ground Seven.

Now, she's dangling upside down by her ankle, the feeling all too reminiscent of her first edition bell test - and it's as humiliating as it was the first time if not worse. This must be karma for that whole pocky thing, the previous day.

It must be, she thinks as she stares above her, blood rushing to her head so fast she think's her brain might implode on itself. Eleven is off to a wonderful start. (Again).

It's going to get even better when she tracks Obito down and murders him with his goggles - she doesn't know how she's going to do it, but it's going to happen, and the weapon of choice will be those orange tinted eye pieces.

He deserves it, Naruto rations in her head. He's the one who set up this trap anyways - she remembers it because he'd told her he was planning on catching their Sensei with it.

Obito is going to -

"Naruto?" there's a bland voice from underneath her, and Naruto thinks not for the first time that October tenth is the shittiest day of the year. She can hear his voice, she knows who it is, but the final nail in the coffin is hammered in with a freaking sledgehammer when a mop of silver, untamable hair comes into view, the owner of said hair hovering directly under the trap. "What are you doing up there?"

Naruto resists the urge to make a snarky comeback. Because, yes, she'd definitely walked into that trap under her own volition.

"You know. Just hanging," she shrugged casually, willing herself to fight back the flush of embarrassment that was threatening to crawl up her cheeks. Of all the people who could've found her like this, it'd had to be Kakashi.

"Oh." He looked up at her, a sort of blank look in his eyes. "Happy birthday," he said, with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

"Thanks," she replies, pretending she doesn't see the way he fumbles to shove a perfectly wrapped present in his weapons pouch, the orange bow oddly glittery. There's an awkward pause, where they just stare at each other, and Naruto wonders how her life has come to this. And then she decides that it's future Obito's fault, and that both present day Obito and future Obito will suffer when she gets her hands on them.

Sighing, because clearly he wasn't going to make the first move, she asks, "Can you throw a kunai up? I need to cut the rope."

Without replying, he shoots a straight shot, slicing the rope right in half, and Naruto uses her (if she does say so herself) excellent ninja skills to vault in the air, landing nicely on her feet besides Kakashi.

The tense silence returns now that she's back on solid ground, and they stare at each other for a moment longer. It's so awkward. Naruto wishes she could kamui the fuck out of there. And she just has to say something before the awkwardness of it all straight up sends her six feet under.

"I just-"

"Look, I-"

They stare sheepishly at each other before Naruto is gesturing for him to go first. And really, this conversation reminds her of that one time she dropped a sandwich into a puddle of water, and the bread turned super soggy and super gross.

He turns stiff, and sweeps a silver lock out of his face. "I'm sorry. For what I said." Naruto doesn't say anything, but that's mainly because she's trying not look like a flopping fish - she's flabbergasted that he'd apologized.

"I - uh..." she says intelligently, failing horribly at her goal.

And then Kakashi's rushing on with his explanation, his pitch going up an octave, and if she weren't so surprised, she'd probably be laughing. "I know what I said was wrong when I said it - I didn't really mean it, you know. I was trying to say something else but it just came out... really..."