Title: A Likeness
Chapter: One
Author's Note: none
----
She thinks, to love Sasuke, is to accept everything that he is... everything that he selfishly hoards, everything that he willingly shares, and every little thing that he has ever done up until now.
It's crazy the way that time changes people. It's makes even less sense when she considers how she wound up in this particular circumstance. Loving him the same way she thinks Naruto once did. Living with him like it was some commonplace thing for two strangers who didn't really know each other but were well onto working through that little complication together.
Hinata came of her own free will.
No one made her, he didn't ask her. She just showed up one fine afternoon, her small suitcase of personal effects in hand and he moved out of the open doorway to let her in. There were no questions asked, he didn't look at her in any other manner besides boredom, and maybe one comical expression of why she hadn't done this sooner.
But she had done it hadn't she? She was here now, and the reasons as to why or how she'd gotten here played little to no role in their lives. It just simply was and that was how it was going to be.
--
Sometime after Naruto's rather abrupt and now long since passed disappearance could have been the start of things, she's not particularly sure. But she does remember the day Sasuke came back. And of course it was only ironic that her once beloved's best friend come trotting back into town only weeks after he was no longer there.
No one knew what had caused Naruto to up and leave the village he spent his entire adolescence willing to protect. The place of his birth and his heritage, the strong burning fire any shinobi from Konoha held dear; Hinata had no words.
It was horribly cliché to say he was perfectly fine one day and the next he was marked as a missing nin, but that's just how it'd gone. She remembered every available soldier, every capable man and woman called to the Hokage's Tower to receive a briefing of his last known whereabouts, his behavior at the time, and lastly of his sentence.
If he were not to be found within the further utmost reaches of the Fire Country's surrounding borders, then he was to be considered a traitor and a possible threat to everyone else's safety. He was dangerous, not a kid anymore. His leaving without warning, without reason, but especially without permission was not allowed.
Tsunade's eyes had been hard when she explained the news to her shinobi. Hinata knew her heart was breaking.
But the immediate response teams had found nothing, no trace and no sign. Forty-eight hours went by and still nothing. Either he had fled or he didn't want to be found. The first was more obvious as there were no freak accidents or any useless casualties among the search squads.
Hinata's chest had ached the entire time, deeply praying this was some kind of bad dream but secretly hoping in her wildest fantasies that she would eventually return from her hunt to find him cooped up in the Hokage's Tower receiving an earful about his childish behavior.
It would be mediocre punishments, to suspend him from missions for a month or keep him under house arrest and possible constant surveillance. Everyone would eventually come to forgive him and life would continue on as it always had.
No such luck.
Two weeks went by unnoticed and still no word. The searching became more sporadic and less and less until no one else was sent on these fruitless missions to find the village's number one loud and surprising ninja.
His name was stricken from the record and placed on the S-Class criminal's list. Hinata knew that if this wasn't as serious as it was being made out to be, Naruto would have been flattered he was ranked right up there with the former Akatsuki members and...
Uchiha Sasuke.
One page in front, last name beginning with the same character, and just three months older.
In the days that passed before his unannounced arrival, Hinata had been assigned gate guard duty. The often-coveted position by the lazy yet hated assignment for the hyperactive. She had spent three late afternoons sitting in a fold up plastic chair with a roster of names pinned to a clipboard in front of her.
From noon till night, nothing had been out of the ordinary. Genin teams returning from out of the village low rank missions, an occasional anbu member here and there, flashing their brand and flipping her a permissive scroll.
Nothing special. Nothing at all.
So on Wednesday, when the sun was high, and the heat was sweltering, and her little electric fan was doing nothing to cool her outside of her light weight jacket, she barely thought twice asking for the stranger's name as he walked right by.
His shadow was thin and long, completely stretched by the midday's sun.
"Name and purpose?" she vaguely recalled asking, tone polite and demure as she fanned herself with a scrap piece of paper.
He did not respond, his long hair weeping down his back, thick and black and all unkempt.
"Name and purpose please?" she asked one more time, sitting straighter in her chair for some reason, her wrist suddenly stopping. He wore awfully dark colors for such warm weather.
His shoulders squared, and she heard him release a breath.
"Uchiha..."
She dropped her homemade fan and stood faster than she meant to, completely toppling her chair.
"Uchiha Sasuke," he coolly said, a slight crane in his neck as he eyed her over his left shoulder.
"Welcome back..." she heard herself say, the same line to greet any returning Konoha ninja.
----
end chapter one.
