1A/N - Based slightly on that idea of 'women and war' in one of the stories from The Things They Carried - The book is a must read, definitely.
Four of Five - 1338
Things certainly hadn't gone as planned.
Monkey, Bear, Boar and Wolf were all dead, leaving her with the scroll and a mission to fulfill. Her body sunk deeper into the wet filth of a marsh as the sound of leaves rustled overhead. Hinata wasn't used to being alone, (since her youth she'd had constant companionship, boys mostly) but understood it was inevitable when one became a Black Op. She just wished it hadn't occurred so soon.
Her heart slammed in her throat at a menacing chuckle and the sound of quiet voices. It's now or never, the braver part of her mind admonished, and she sucked in a shaky yet calming breath. She would survive this, just as she'd survived her cousin, Naruto, and the entire Hyuuga clan.
If Hinata was anything, it was a woman of quiet enduring, and where a man might waver she had always pressed on (tooth and nail, if necessary).
The voices drifted further away, and after silently engaging the Byakugan she located their exact position. Her chakra had waned after the month long assignment, tapped mostly by the week she'd spent hiding amongst the marsh, her teammates getting picked off one by one. Each time they met for damage reports and tried to come up with a plan of escape, Hinata noticed one more missing.
Until there was only her.
She swallowed over the heavy lump in her throat. In a sudden moment of weakness, she tried to hold back the tears for Junko (or Monkey, which she'd always found a good fit) as the woman had been gushing for days about her wedding in July. No Ninjas! She'd enthused, rambling about how he was a farmer and the gentlest man she'd ever met, and how they were going to have six kids. Hinata bit her lip, thinking it unfair such a pretty Shinobi died like that, and wished for a second it could've been her instead.
Then she thought of her cousin, his angry Byakugan burning holes through her skin, and decided it was even more cruel to give up the life she'd been granted. A sick bark of laughter made her flesh crawl, and anger start to congeal and slide bitterly across her gut. No, she wouldn't die with them or take their place, but she would damn well avenge them.
Survival mode kicked in.
...o0o...
Hinata stripped to her underwear and short tank, knowing the heavy issue clothes would only slow her down. Her fingers dug into the muddy and no doubt shitty earth, smearing it across her body and down her face. It was basic Nin tactics (using strategy based specifically to the Leaf Village) to blend into her surroundings without the use of Genjitsu, as well as muting her scent in case of a summon.
Byakugan was the only chakra absorbing thing she'd be doing for awhile.
Her eyes cast across the dense undergrowth of the forest, parting fog, following a bird for a time before settling on her first target. He was crouched in a tree, picking idly at his teeth, two of her teammates headbands tied around his belt loop.
One of Twenty-two, she thought savagely, before melting into the foliage.
She could still remember Junko's muffled scream.
By the end of her bloody work, Hinata's mind had fragmented and she finally understood this was her true initiation into the Black Ops - not some silly physical tests and psych profiles. She'd cut out some of their hearts, or ripped open their throats, had taken eyes from one of the blood-traited Nins and stuffed them into a bag.
She'd left all of them gored where they fell.
Hinata had spent an extra week barely able to move from her spot by the river, never touching, never cleaning, only watching a girl with blood and shit soaked legs mouthing words to her. She wished she'd remembered what the girl said.
"So you're the one who's causing so much trouble in my team." The memory had come potent and nauseatingly funny while she'd sat, a man crushing her little body into the ground as she'd stared up at him with blood soaked hair sticking to her forehead. Hinata recalled his heavily scarred face, one amused purple eye glaring back at her. He'd held a kunai to her throat and it frightened her that she hadn't been scared, even a little.
He must've been unnerved too, because the man had endeavored to force something out of her, when he should've just shoved the thing through her neck.
It had taken only two moves. She'd cracked her head against his, before shoving her own kunai with an exploding tag into his gut.
The twitches had annoyed her at first but then she'd gotten over it. Perhaps, Hinata had thought after a moment, the enemy figured her a ghost in the trees.
It was only when a pretty silver fish had broken the surface of that smooth lake that she remembered she had places to go and people to see. People that needed to see her - friends and comrades, family even. Hinata needed to visit a nice man at the edge of the village who ploughed fields through the summer and spring and fall.
She had to give him his fiance's headband.
Like a good Nin, Hinata had burned her comrades bodies, melted all evidence into a pile of bone chips and ashes. She'd left before the smoke attracted anyone else.
...o0o...
Within two nights she'd run her way home, bloody and half naked, her hair short again. Hinata remembered looking at it sadly, a token of girl hood and the effort to attract the one she wanted swimming in her heart, before she'd taken her tanto and cleaved it in one stroke.
The strands were buried somewhere in the forest, along with the rest of her innocence.
"C-come away Shiro, let's go, we have to meet your father."
Hinata barely heard the worried murmurs, noticed the sorry or curious eyes, only knowing she didn't have enough chakra to transport to the tower or even her home. Her feet hurt so much, bloody and raw from running across trees and over wetland.
Still, even when a familiar face or two came up to offer help, tried to take her hand, she'd only shied away, stumbling and cursing before hurrying forward. Most of them understood, Shino and Kiba understood, because many Nin came back worse than half naked and covered in dried crap and blood. They came back with pieces missing, babbling nonsense or so silent, forever silent, because it'd been to much to process and they simply went somewhere else. Not everyone was made for it, but Hinata knew she was, because she was here, and she was alive.
She'd survived without anyone's help.
Soft brown eyes looked at her, the rest of the woman's deceivingly young face pressed in a mask of blankness. She understood too, but as Hokage could not offer the quiet condolences or show of concern because her interest was always for the mission.
Tsunade knew she'd earned a Black Op.
Hinata knew she'd earned a place in adult hood with all its angry bruises and welts. She calmly placed the scroll (brownish-red and torn in places) along with a soppy bag on her desk. The Hokage's assistant (Shizune, if she remembered correctly) hurried forward to offer her help to the Medic facilities, but Hinata turned and looked right through her, a confused line between her brows. She didn't need help, nor wanted it, and continued forward without an answer.
When Hinata finally stepped out onto the street again, the sun burned her eyes and she felt the weight of four headbands in the small pouch tied across her back.
Yes, now she really was an adult, because four names she knew would be added to the stone.