dans les morceaux

(in the pieces) we find a healer's gift

a fanfiction written by dreamsofdestiny and moonmagicks in a collaborative work in which the characters used belong to masashi kishimoto, shonen jump, and respective copyright owners. this is a work of fandom and hence has no materialistic benefit towards it. moreso, there will be wild and unbelievable pairings and scenarios in which the collaborated authors wish to say will include sexual innuendo, incestuous themes, physical and mental torture, and of course crude/vulgar humor. please beware and note the rating is there for a reason.

6

"What do you mean you can't sense Sasuke's chakra anymore?" Suigetsu was furious, that playful bastard of a shark had very nearly shaved off his left arm and leg. While Suigetsu did escape the worst of the Samehada, he had quite the ripped skin on his left rib to show for it. Cursing again as he wiped off the Demon's Blade from more dirt than blood, Karin began to screech and rant.

"I mean it's gone you moron! Kabam! Poof! It just winked out as if it never existed in the first place!" Karin tugged on the smooth side of her hair worridly; what if Sasuke was dead?

"How is that fucking possible?"

"There's only two ways for him not to be sensed anymore, either he's hiding or he's dead!"

"Which of the two do you think he's doing, retard?" Suigetsu sneered.

"You're the retard, you sonofabitch!" Karin raged, punching the water-shifter straight through a tree in her fury.

Juugo sighed; it looked like he needed to play peacemaker once more...

"What if we go in the direction Sasuke went?" he reasoned, "After all, since that guy isn't guarding it anymore, it is our only lead..."

"See, Karin?" Suigetsu taunted, "Juugo always had a perfectly good plan to save your dear Sasuke, no need to get your hair all frizzled up!" And here, the sensitive sharp-teethed boy was rewarded with a glare that could boil water by a furious girl.

"Fuck off!" She grumbled, stalking on ahead. Juugo followed. Suigetsu grumbled off-handedly about stupid schoolgirl-crushes before reluctantly dragging his feet along the dirt road in the direction of the hideout.

5

As soon as the crows noticed Hinata's prescence within the room, they simply flapped away, not bothering to land upon her or give her any sort of explanation. So she was left alone in the throne room, save for the boy whose shaking and shivering was now reduced to harsh intakes of air.

It had been long, long, long ago when Hinata met another human being. Someone besides Itachi or his crows or his blue-skinned partner. So it was only natural that she simply had no idea what to do when she finally came in contact with someone else. Someone who was gasping and panting, hanging on for dear life. Someone whose hair was black, like Itachi's.

All she could do was stare at him.

Kneeling down to be closer to him, she found his breathing to have quieted down noticably. Hinata smiled; it was good to be in the company of someone.

She continued to stare at him aimlessly for a while, taking in his physical characteristics. He was dressed in a black coat of corts with a white and blue robe underneath. He looked like a foreigner, what with his clothing and his hairstyle. Finally, her curious gaze rested on the bandages wrapped around both his arms. Hinata could remember their use, and suddenly realized this meant he was an sickly person.

Suddenly, everything pieced together: the beforehand gasps and the current bandages; how he was keeled over the floor, almost in a dog-like huddle. Something inside her stirred. It wasn't out compassion or anything silly of the sort. Itachi had long before made it clear that emotions were troublesome and the only things that mattered to him were the facts. She didn't know when that unspoken rule first appeared. Whether it was in the first couple months when she came to estate, not sad in the sense of the word, but feeling lost nonetheless. Maybe it was when she tripped on a lovely kimono down the stairs and felt like dying of shame because of the way Itachi had looked at her. Or was it the time when she had confessed to him that she was a bit bored and he begrudged her a couple lessons?

Soemwhere inbetween all those little moments between them, Hinata had come to the conclusion that Itachi was better.

He didn't feel a need to belittle her for her mistakes. He did not find it necessary to glare at her when she messed up on her gentle fist positioning. He didn't even require her to practice at all. He was...better than everyone else she could remember. Maybe he was perfection, maybe he wasn't.

But it didn't really matter much because he was the one person in her life nowadays--

A rough, hacking cough cut her away from her thoughts.

The boy was now coughing desperately. It was as if there wasn't any air in his lungs. Hinata was completely at loss here, unable to think of what to do. The coughs were growing more harsh with each desperate choke of the lungs. His eyes were clenched shut, completely different from the peaceful slumber she was observing him in just minutes prior. Blood was being ejected into the air, and Hinata tried her best not to vomit at the coppery smell of it.

"Hinata." Itachi appeared behind her, it was still a wonder how he managed to appear so suddenly at a whim.

"Y-Yes?" She meekly replied. Itachi blinked; the girl had not stuttered in a long while.

"Leave him be." This was the first time in a long while Itachi had directly commanded her to do something. Hinata turned towards the pale, sickly boy, wondering if Itachi was going to leave him to die. She looked at Itachi again, and he was aware of that gaze. It was the same as the time he had taken her away and she had so many questions on the tip of her tongue.

Hinata responded much as she did the previous time, closing her mouth and turning away; going back to her room.

Itachi, for his part, looked at neither the girl nor the boy as he strode away, and out of the building, Kisame in tote.

4

It was night. The sole girl of the manor tossed and turned in her bed, her mind returning to the previous hour. She didn't want to admit it aloud (there's no one to listen anyways...), but it bothered her. If Itachi were here, he would probably look at her as her...as someone long ago had looked at her: weak. But keeping your lips tight meant your mind had all the more room to wander off.

You're no better than a murderer.

There's someone coughing themselves' to death less than fourty feet away, and here you sit, trying to ignore their pleas.

Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.

Normally, Hinata's mind swarmed with unnecessary thoughts anyways, but never before had they accused her of murder. It was weak to care about someone she didn't know. It was weak to argue with yourself in the middle of the night. It was weak, weak, weak to be her. Hinata felt the bile rising in her throat at her own self-disgust. It was weak. She was pitiful.

A disappointment. A failure.

It's even worse to be a servant, no a slave to Itachi. Hanging on to his every order.

"Shut up...!" Hinata whispered hoarsely, even though she knew it would do no good. A chant of 'murderer, murderer, murderer...' repeated in her mind. Clenching her teeth to avoid biting her tongue, she balled her fists, making certain that nothing would be broken in her temporary tantrum. Maybe a fit of fury would relieve her of these unnecessary thoughts.

A pound on the pillow.

Traitor.

A kick towards the bedside.

Weakling.

A desperate flinging onto the bed led to an ominous, final click.

Murderer.

Hinata, for the life of her, couldn't tell if the click came from the hallway, or if it came from the recesses of her betraying mind. The final shard of her humanity falling into the darkness. The final piece of insanity inserted into her mind, which would unquestionably spell out her doom. Trying her hardest not to think (because it hurts so badly, too badly to do so. but it hurts even more to not...), Hinata released her fingers, unclenched her teeth, and curled up in a sweating ball of fear and guilt and shame on her bed. Her body wanted to go to sleep ever so badly, but her mind was resisting to the point where her eyes were still wide open.

She stayed in that eerie, unblinking position for a while, noting somewhere that it was strangely silent, devoid of any coughs or other--

A bloodcurdling scream caused her to bolt up like lightning and dash to the boy.

3

Sasuke knew he had lost. It was always like this, even when he was five: he would charge at his older brother, holding absolutely nothing back. And Itachi would grin some sort of damned smirk and dodge away at the last second, the projectile, fist, or whatever else Sasuke was using missing the weasle by a couple feet.

The bastard didn't even try to make it look like Sasuke's efforts were worth anything...

Wait. He wasn't five years old. Itachi wasn't ten. He didn't live in the Uchiha Manor anymore. That was all the past. That was all a dream. Yes, a dream. A dream. If it was a dream, he needed to wake up. Now.

Sasuke growled in an annoyed fashion before cracking open his eyes.

It took a while before he was able to adjust his vision to fit the semi-darkness. There were three candles lighting the room he was in. He tried to remember what came before. Oh right, I was fighting Itachi... Logically, he was still alive (he pinched himself just to make sure) and still in one part. Taking in his entire environment now, he noticed he was on a rather comfortable bed. And he was covered with sheets which were thick and warm. He noted that this didn't seem to be any sort of hospital so there was only one option...

His thoughts were interrupted by his sudden realization that he was not alone.

A warm lump to the left side of his bed stirred.

Sasuke's heart was ramming against the side of his ribs as if he were running a marathon. Slowly, regretfully, he lifted the bedsheet...

And relaxed exponentially. It was merely a black bird.

Said bird opened one eye, then fluttered off. Sasuke raised an eyebrow. This place he was in was suspicious; he needed to get out and train harder, not waste time sleeping in the same bed as birds. Muttering to himself, he provided to get off the bed and--

"Wha!" His calm and composed demeanor was completely shattered as his foot was retracted with lightning speed. Sasuke's eyes went egg-shaped as the squishy thing he stepped on proceeded to rise from the floor, and he found himself at eye-level with Hinata Hyuuga.

In the dim light, her eyes looked dull-gray. He noted the lack of pupils and made a mark of her being either a relative of Neji or Ino. He was aware of the girl doing the same to him, checking his eyes and commenting off-handedly to herself...

"Just like Ita--"

He never allowed her to finish her sentence as in a burst of rage, he pinned her neck to the wall, raising her feet a couple inches above the ground. His Sharingan was probably activated, but he didn't give a damn. The sudden close proximity to the candlelight made him see the true colour her eyes were: lavendar-white. His own eyes widened; what the hell was a relative of Neji doing here? But he shoved those thoughts aside for now, choosing to make the distance between them even smaller, his lips a mere inch away from her earlobe.

"Never, ever compare me to that person," he hissed, tightening the grip on her neck momentarily. "Understand?" A slight loosening of his hand to allow her to nod in a barely discernable manner. She wasn't shaking from his rough treatment, and all that revealed her weakness was the flinching of her eyes when he pulled back and let go of her completely, dropping her to the floor.

Wordlessly, she got up and attempted to leave the room.

"Wait." She stopped, and turned. Curiousity was written over her eyes, but nowhere else.

There were so many questions he wanted to ask, but he started with the most obvious.

"How did I get here?" She hesitated slightly, fiddling with the hem of her ornate attire (he off-handedly wondered who would wear a kimono this time of year)'s sleeve before replying quietly.

"I dragged you here."

"Where was I before?"

"In the throne room..." she sullenly replied, looking like a child that did something wrong. Sasuke felt shock barrel into him once again.

He. Was. Still. In. Itachi's manor.

He was still in Itachi's manor.

The horror of the situation was dawning on him. Hinata cocked her head sideways in confusion as horror overwhelmed the boy's pale features, quickly fading into burning hate...directed at her. She let out a small gasp as her eyes watched him draw his katana, the blade catching the glint of the candlelight. Hinata was terrified; for the second time in less than a minute, she was in a heart attack-inducing situation. Sasuke's eyes were cold as he quickly flash-stepped behind her, positioning his blade at the junction of her head and neck, ready to slice it off at any minute.

Hinata bit back a whimper; his prescence was so unsettling to her...

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you," Sasuke said in monotone. The girl whose life was currently in his hands bit down on her tongue. There were a couple good reasons, ranging from her saving his life to him stepping on her chest. But Hinata was if nothing but demure and simply trembled, awaiting certain death.

Sasuke, for all his previous actions, had never murdered a person who was simply shaking in unadultered fear. Never had he killed in cold blood. Oh, how his mind yearned for her to at least try to attack, to defend herself somehow. That way, he would have some reason for killing her. But all she did was stand still and shake like an autumn tree. His guilty conscience nagged him to at least ask why she was here.

Maybe she was a prisoner like him...?

"Are you here against your will?"

"...No..." She hesitatingly replied, starting to nervously finger the hem of her sleeve again.

She was annoying. He wanted so badly to kill her. She was weak too, not to mention. He'd probably be doing her a favour killing her off.

She hasn't done anything to you yet.

Who knew? She might have violated him, for all he knew!

Liar. You of all people should know how important life is.

In the end, his conscience won out. He had killed many people, in the name of avenging his clan, in the name of training, in the name of bettering himself. However, he had never killed an innocent bystander (But isn't she with Itachi?) yet. And he most certainly didn't want to make her his first "careless" kill. The irony would be too thick: on Itachi's ground, no less.

"Che..." he muttered, sheathing his sword.

Hinata exhaled hesitatingly.

2

Kisame had been with Itachi for almost a decade, and knew the boy-murderer better than his own parents. But still, the varying moods always seemed to throw him off-course. Especially since Itachi wasn't resting his eyes in his own house; choosing to don a henge and rendezvous in far-away Amegakure, in a small inn. It was perplexing, needless to say, and Kisame knew better than to tread on suicidal waters. However, watching his partner slowly recuperate (he himself had suffered a couple scratches due to Mangetsu's kid brother) while the hours ticked by in utter silence was too much, even for an Akatsuki member.

"Itachi-san." The name was spoken without a shadow of a question, moreso of a statement. But Itachi knows Kisame as well.

"Hn." And responds as he would with any vocal intonation at all. Kisame swallows, knowing the ground he's walking on is filled with landmines, but he's too bored out of his fucking mind to care.

"Why aren't we at your house?" Neither of them care at the implications the statement could have led to. They are gentlemen, if nothing else.

Itachi pauses for a moment, before giving an answer that is no answer at all.

"It is not necessary."

Being a professional killer, Kisame knows his partner well enough to know the effeminate boy-killer doesn't mean to grind people's nerves like that. He's simply emotionally (and mentally and relationshiply) challenged and cannot empathize with his partner. However, it does nothing to ease the staggering weight of the silence in the room and Kisame cannot refrain from grinding his teeth together in irritation. Itachi takes no heed of this. For while they may be cold-blooded murderers who can decapitate a person in the blink of an eye, they are also gentlemen through and through. And gentlemen know when to speak, and more importantly, when to not.

1

It was...awkward, to say the least. Hinata really didn't want this person in her room, but she was too shy to tell him that this was her room. If he wasn't the one asking all the questions, she probably could have asked a couple of her own at this point in time. But she was Hinata: shy, polite, and sweet, if absolutely nothing else.

"Why are you with Itachi?"

"Itachi...he brought me here a couple winters back." Hinata started fidgeting with the hem of her sleeve once again, remembering that talking to this boy was against Itachi's orders. Sasuke, on the other hand, noted that the girl in front of him referred to his elder brother as "Itachi," no "-san" or "-kun" or "-sama" attached. It was strange to him.

"Why did he bring you here?"

"I...don't know." Sasuke wasn't stupid. He knew there was a reason, whether the girl was lying or not wasn't much of his concern.

"How old are you?"

"I...don't know." Hinata realized that the last birthday party she had was when she was ten. That was so far away. So long ago. She certainly couldn't still be ten, could she? Sasuke, in an aggravating manner, ran a hand through his hair; was there anything she did know?

With the sunlight streaming through the uncurtained window, Sasuke took a moment to fully observe the girl before him. She was dressed in a lightly-flowered kimono, that seemed more fit for a summer festival than within the walls of the abandoned Uchiha hideout. Her odd indigo-black hair pooled to small of her back, and it was lightly layered.

Most importantly, her eyes were pearl-white.

"Are you a Hyuuga?"

For the first time since meeting him, a strange expression flashed against her face. Annoyance. She dropped her head, shielding her eyes from his probing stare, murmuring a reluctant affirmative in response.

It was odd, he knew. That out here in the ruins of the never-flourishing Uchiha hideout (which Itachi now had full rein over), hidden behind miles and miles of forest, that he could be talking to a Hyuuga girl who looked to be about his age. It was even odder the way she acted, in fact, she seemed more comfortable talking about his cold-hearted bastard of an older brother than herself.

She was...weird. Intriguing, yes; but strange nonetheless.

"Who...are you?" he murmured, unaware that his fists were clenching.

"Hinata..." she breathed, happy to finally be able to give an easy answer.

"Hinata." he repeated, "I've asked enough," he snorted in disgust, "I'm leaving."

"Um..." there was a quick gap of silence as she twiddled her fingers, uncertain as to whether or not she should tell him..."Um...!"

But he had already proceeded towards the throne room, which in turn, led to the main gate. As soon as he neared the door, out of nowhere, a flock of crows attacked him. Blockading the exit as well as pecking at his skin. He had been trained to endure pain ten times worse than this, but when one bird aimed too close to his eyes...

THUMP.

It fell down with a deadly thud.

Hinata gasped; that boy...he had just murdered a helpless crow! Her eyes heightened immediately into the activated Byakugan, and Sasuke knew what was going to happen next. Prepared to easily dodge aside (and out the door as well), his attempt at killing two birds with one stone failed. Due to the distraction caused by the damned crows, he didn't realize it was a clone he was guarding until too late.

By then, she had already slowed down his heart rate to a sleeping pace, and was holding back tears from the death of a bird.

Mercy is a sign of weakness.

Someone had said that to her long, long ago. She didn't remember who, but curled up in a little ball while regretting she saved a half-dying boy from the clenches of death certainly made Hinata feel very weak.

It must be fatigue, she thought before passing out next to Sasuke.

Two fatigued children, covered in a sea of black feathers, one of them clutching a dead crow, mere inches away from the door.

This was certainly not the sight Itachi expected to see upon arriving at the hideout.

0

end of the second chapter.