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Sakura sighed, flipping back her sheets and reaching for the oil lamp on the bedside table, still half-asleep. The telltale rustling in the next room was quiet enough not to startle her, but frantic enough to make her forgo her night’s rest.
She quietly walked barefoot to the living room, stopping short when she saw silvery spikes of hair shining in the moonlight.
It was him. She rolled her eyes. Of course, it was him.
“You could have at least closed the door behind you,” she griped, ignoring his slumped over position in favour of kicking her front door shut. An angry snarl on the other side had her stopping short.
She turned toward her late-night visitor, eyebrow raised as his companion continued to growl on her stoop. His teeth glittered with his wolfish grin.
“You know how they can be,” he said, shrugging casually for a man who looked like he’d been maimed by a bear. Served him right. “Aren’t you going to help me?” he prompted after she’d stood stoic for longer than he deemed appropriate.
“I don’t know why you come here,” she grumbled, dropping her lamp to the table and taking up a seat beside him to help clean his wounds before beginning the healing process. “There are about a hundred other healers on this side of the river, yet, somehow, you always manage to bleed on my furniture.”
Once upon a time, her cottage had been furnished quite nicely. Warm, cozy, inviting. As a new healer, she thought that it was what would make people feel comfortable in her care. Not six months later, she realized that fine furniture and reckless creatures did not mix well. Now, this one bleeding arm was just one of the many wounds that had tainted her home.
She’d be lying if she said it bothered her. The truth was, every blemish on her home was testament to her skill, and the trust the beings of this forest had in her.
“You’re my favourite healer,” he said, his teeth bared by his crooked smile. She imagined that smile unnerved a lot of others. Maybe that was the real reason he always sought her out. She didn’t mind the pointed teeth, or that he sometimes still had a smudge of blood across his canines when he sought her care.
His manners, however, were more than a little grating.
“This is going to sting,” she murmured, giving him only half a second’s warning before pouring the solution over his mangled flesh.
He hissed loudly in pain, his lips twitching angrily as he glared at her, but it was the scratching and growling at her door that made her pause.
“Do not scratch up my porch!” she called out. “I warned him. It's not my fault he can’t handle a little disinfectant.”
His companion huffed unhappily outside, but stopped its scratching.
“I’ve met harpies with kinder tongues than you,” he grumbled.
“Then you should break into their homes and see how well they treat your wounds,” she suggested with a sickly sweet smile.
“I already told you, you’re my favourite,” he said, leaning in close so she could get a good look at his sharp teeth. She wondered if he meant to intimidate her. All it did was remind her that he’d been hunting all night.
She reached into the drawer of herbs and plucked a few mint leaves, forcing them between his lips. He chewed them, a small, amused smile still playing at his lips, though his teeth were now tucked away behind them.
“Are you telling me you don’t miss me when I’m gone?” he continued, arrogant as always, even as she patched up yet another one of his gruesome injuries.
“Hard to say. You’re never gone for long enough,” she mumbled as she pieced his skin and muscle back together, tutting in disapproval. “What was it this time?”
“Hm?” he hummed vaguely, as if forgetting that he had nearly lost his arm. “Ah, a rogue druid. A well-travelled one, at that. I’ve never really been a fan of cats, and it turns out, that includes big cats.”
“Shifted into a cougar?” she guessed.
“Tiger.”
Sakura paused, startled. He seemed pleased at finally managing to surprise her with one of his conquests. She ducked her head and forced past it, pretending not to notice his smug smile.
In these parts, Hatake Kakashi and his kind were heralded as the strongest, fiercest warriors. It sent a trickle of uneasiness to think that that was not the case everywhere. To think that he might wander somewhere where stronger, fiercer beings prowled.
“Rogue druids are rare,” she mused, changing the subject. “They’re usually quite devout. Very secretive folk.”
She supposed that’s why they’d hired a bounty hunter. Kakashi was the best, to be sure. And he had the ego to go with it.
He hummed in agreement as she began sealing his patchwork arm back together again, mumbling incantations, drawing her power from the forest around them. She felt the energy course through her, millennia old nature magic flowing through her veins and out of her hands, sewing his skin back together and filling in the empty spaces.
A hand on her cheek startled her into opening her eyes. His pale skin and hair was tinted green from her glowing hands, and he was watching her in rapture. Usually, her patients closed their eyes while she healed them. Elven magic was sacred and powerful, but often unnerving to behold.
Not to Kakashi, though.
“And you wonder why I always come to you,” he said softly, his hand brushing her hair back behind her pointed ear, fingers twirling in the ends, and lingering against her neck.
“No one else would put up with you, Hatake,” she quipped lightly, moving away to disguise her suddenly racing pulse.
He chuckled softly, breathily while she busied her hands with tidying up. She heard the telltale clinking of coins hitting her table. He always left something to thank her. Usually, it wasn’t money, but she supposed he’d just earned himself a hefty reward. She could already hear the buzz that would surround him once word got out.
The tiger slayer. She shook her head to herself. As if he needed an even bigger head.
She heard him pulling her door open, revealing his astonishingly large wolf companion. The wolf huffed haughtily in Sakura’s direction. Sakura glared at her. Kakashi seemed to find the exchange amusing.
“Don’t miss me too much,” he teased.
“Stop coming back, and maybe I will,” she snipped.
He lingered in her doorway, eyeing her with an annoyingly knowing look, though it didn’t vex her as much as it ought to have.
“Farewell, elf,” he said, the softness leaving his eyes as he flashed those canines at her once more.
“Lycan,” she replied, nodding in goodbye. She watched him disappear into the trees around her little cottage without a glance back at her.
With a hefty sigh, she closed her door, only once he was well out of sight. A moment later, a long, indulgent howl echoed through the night, somehow managing to make her roll her eyes and smile at the same time.