Title; Innocence
Disclaimer; Nope I don't own any of the Naruto characters.
II.
It was the noise that kept her awake.
The silent woman had led her to this room, with its mismatched curtains, broken mirrors and empty portraits. She'd given her a sleeping dress just as soft and warm as the ones she'd owned in her father's manor but hidden beneath the sheets heavy and exhausted she still couldn't sleep as the noises began.
It wasn't the rain or the howling winds, nor the raging thunder and its dangerous companion's flashes. None of that bothered her. It was the creaking first, of old wood straining under pressure. Then the clapping, of a headboard against stone and of flesh on flesh. Finally the groans, one clearly masculine and almost angry and the other high and feminine and in equal parts frightened and excited.
They were loud enough she could have sworn they were in the room with her and every time she closed her eyes Hinata could see them. The dark mocking man ravaging the silent scarred woman beneath him, taking her roughly over and over again without pause. Again and again Hinata heard the groans, the creaks of their bed and then the sharp crackling of leather striking flesh.
Before she knew what she was doing the Hyuuga girl had pulled a robe from one of the broken stained wardrobe and found herself rushing from her room down the corridor. Further and further away from the noises as they grew more violent, shouts of rage, whimpering, another crack of leather and a scream...Hinata couldn't seem to get far enough away to drown it out completely.
She was lost by the time she came to the dead end but for a heavy iron door. She should have back tracked, searched for the stairs back to the foyer or a window, anyway out she could find. But the sounds were still ringing in her ears and instead she pushed open the heavy door and stepped inside.
It was a library, or it had been at one point. The shelves had all been stripped bare and Hinata found herself stepping down into a puddle as the heavy door swung closed behind her with a dull bang and click. The ceiling had fallen through in the very centre of the room, old grey rubble piled beneath the opening. Rain water had pooled a foot high in the room or so it seemed. When Hinata tried the door she found it locked behind her.
With no other choice Hinata stepped further into the room almost losing her balance as her bare foot plunged down a step further than she'd anticipated. The water was to her mid-thigh by the time Hinata was sure she'd completed all the steps to the rooms floor and shivered at the icy cold grip the rain water had on her calves.
Shivering and pulling her robe tighter over her shoulders the dark haired youth made her way around the rubble and the downpour coming through the broken ceiling. More stairs were at the other end of the room leading up to a higher level and the girl hoped to an exit and she quickly picked up her pace. That was a mistake.
She felt the ground tremble slightly before the stone beneath her gave out and she went tumbling. Her ankle twisted painfully beneath her and she felt her head collide roughly with stone as she fell into the hidden sinkhole. Dazed beneath the water in the room beneath the library Hinata kicked and struggled as she felt something behind her catch her robe. A silent scream broke the water as she twisted enough to see the skeletal face leering at her and the rib bones digging into her thick robe.
The old bones broke as Hinata struck them tearing her robe off desperately as she felt her lungs burning and her head pounding. A faint light glinted above her and she forced her way back through the hole climbing back into the library furiously on scrapped hands and knees where the broken stones grazed her as she pulled herself up.
She wanted to scream all over again as her back hit the stairs and she stared at the spot she knew the sinkhole waited, just barely a shadow in the shallow water hiding bones and bodies. But she was cold too, only clad in a nightdress now, and she was too frightened of what might come if she did scream to allow herself the reprieve. Her feet and shoulders were numb with the cold and her hands and knees burned and stung.
It was dry upstairs and there was a fire built high in a hole in the wall on one side of the room, though like all the other fires had this one seemed to give no heat no matter how close Hinata got to it. The books from below had been brought up here too it seemed, a table had been stacked with volumes and a dozen or more piles littered the room's corners piled up against the already full shelves.
Hinata was still holding herself by the fire when she heard the sound of a door creaking open, with it came the soft click of heels and the return of the noises she'd come in here to escape. Quickly she ducked behind one of the piles of books as a familiar figure hobbled into view. It had only been one heel she'd heard and it made her wonder whom it had been she'd heard before then with Sasuke. If not his servant friend had the dark master of this place been with one of her friends, Ino or Tenten. Was that why he wouldn't let her see them. Had she been so close to them in her bedchamber.
For the moment Hinata contented herself with watching the woman only now noticing the glinting blade in her hands, it was hard to notice anything but her bright green eyes at a glance. They seemed brighter in the moonlight. For a few seconds she did nothing, only stand awkwardly staring out through the library's tall windows at the rain, after a few seconds though Hinata noticed the glittering on the woman's cheeks and realised she had begun crying. Like a living statue the pale pink haired woman sobbed to herself without a sound and raised her thin blade. Hinata watched her horrified as she began cutting into her own arm tracing over the scars glowing in the moonlight.
She had reached her elbow and covered the stone beneath her in scarlet before she stopped with a short harsh gasp. There was a clatter above us on the roof and a moment later a black shadow fell through the opening in the ceiling. There were splashes and curses in a harsh voice before the man appeared clambering up the steps dripping rain water.
"Stupid woman." Snarled Sasuke Uchiha pushing his soaked hair from his glaring eyes. If his companion heard the insult though she didn't care, a wide broken smile stretched her pale lips and her tears fell more freely before she crashed into the dark man wrapping one pale arm and one blood soaked arm around him. I watched her grip him, rubbing his back and chest like one might a missing pet.
"I'm back, I'm still here. Show me…show me your beautiful smile." He offered more gently than Hinata thought him capable. Sakura pulled back from him still crying and smiling at him and he offered her a small tight smile of his own in return. Her blood was still dripping to the floor though neither of them seemed to notice it. Her expression changed for a second, more frightened and excited as she leaned up on the toes of her bare foot and pressed her chin up. Hinata had seen Ino like that before and even Tenten once, the silent woman was looking for a kiss. But the dark man didn't close the distance, instead his black eyes flickered for a moment to land directly on her hiding place.
"Go fix your arm Sakura." He ordered slipping away from the woman as easily as a shadow might, it was so sudden that his companion fell forward onto her hands and knees without him to support her. He didn't seem to notice though as he strode purposefully toward Hinata, she heard an angered hissing from the fallen woman as she too noticed the younger woman.
"You've been wandering." He didn't say it like a question but Hinata couldn't be sure. All at once she was aware that she'd been spying on them. She became even more conscious for her dress though as the man's eyes dropped to take in her profile without shame or subtlety. She blushed and then paled at the look the other woman sent her as she stalked from the room.
"I um, there was, ah." The words got tangled in her mouth as Hinata tried to explain herself. Why she felt the need to didn't even occur to her, she could see her father in him again, Hiashi Hyuuga's scorn, his disappointment, his ire. An explanation wasn't necessary though as the door opened with Sakura's departure, the moans and the shouts came echoing through. One of the dark man's eyebrows raised.
"You were trying to escape that? Bashful aren't you, or was it putting naughty thoughts in your sweet young mind." He'd moved closer and with it seemed to have changed persona, the starkness and cold distain falling away. It were as if he were two people at once, one young, cruel and mocking the other older weary and almost kind if strict.
"I thought it was you." She didn't know why she said it, maybe to try and make him somewhat uncomfortable too. It did not seem to, if anything the amused spark in his eyes grew brighter as he drew closer again and Hinata moved away until her back hit a shelf and she had nowhere to go.
"Was it Sakura you imagined me with then? First my servant and then my whore, you certainly don't think much of her." Sasuke spoke as he closed the distance pressing a palm against the shelf that held her back. Hinata could feel the cold from his body, see small icicles forming in his dark hair, smell the blood that stained his clothes from his 'friend'.
"Or did you imagine it was you beneath me, at my mercy." He leaned in to whisper cold breath burning the shell of her ear.
"No, I um, I've never, ah." Again her tongue failed her as Hinata accepted that for moments, near the beginning mostly before it seemed violent, she'd found the imagines her mind created absent Sakura with her beneath the handsome dark man instead. His fingers, his tongue, him touching everywhere. She wanted to say it was fear pushing the unbidden thoughts, worries that he might come to her bed next…but then she'd only be telling half the truth as the thoughts sent tingles through her.
"You're much too delicate for this place." He muttered not entirely scornful as he moved away. He turned away from the girl to stare at the raging weather outside and she couldn't help but wonder what exactly he had been doing out there…what had happened with Sakura though she'd rather just forget entirely.
"You grew up near here, have you heard the stories?" asked the dark man leaning himself casually against a reading table and crossing his arms. Slowly the Hyuuga peeled herself away from the bookshelf, wary of both the dark man and the pool of blood she found herself caught between them.
"What stories?" asked Hinata stepping slightly closer to the drenched dark man. The air felt colder around him, but Hinata didn't feel as bothered by it now. She was forgetting what it was like to be warm now.
"You'd probably call them ghost stories…though in this place they're recorded history." Whispered the dark cold man darkly. Hinata could see the shards of ice clearly now in his hair, frozen icicles hanging just before his eyes. If he noticed them or felt the cold he didn't show it.
"I-I don't like ghost stories." Hinata replied reflexively. The soft girl could never sleep after even the lamest story her friends had enjoyed telling during storms and festival parties and somehow she thought this dark man's tales would be worse than anything they could conjure.
"Maybe you do have some sense then. I don't know which one is the oldest but I do remember which one Sakura showed me first." He responded leading the girl closer to the fire. It was almost more disturbing for her to see him in its orange light, the specks of ice glistening but failing to weep or melt, the scarlet stains on his light glowing faintly.
"S-Sakura told you?" asked the Hyuuga girl in turn moving as close to the fire as seemed wise and clutching her knees. Even beside it her breath misted and she found herself shivering.
"Showed me. We didn't meet until after she'd lost her tongue and I didn't even guess her name for years, I may still truly not know it now. But she has other ways of communicating." A tremor struck the pale girl as she listened and the Uchiha's eyes glanced away. The pink haired woman stood not very far away, her arm roughly sewn together. She stared at the man across from her expectantly for a moment before skulking away, her single heel clacking against stone.
"There were two orphan boys, the closest of friends and inseparable. They made a living using one of the boys talents, a fat boy who promised that he would eat anything." Sasuke spoke ignoring his companions appearance and exit. For the moment the only thing that seemed to hold his attention were the crackling flames of the fire.
"As a joke or maybe a challenge one wealthy village they passed offered the boys a small fortune for a mystery meat. Macabre folk that they were they placed before the always hungry boy a thief who'd been captured, he was to lose a hand for the crime." As he spoke his dark eyes rolled lazily back to the shivering girl capturing her own pale pair. He smiled flexing his outstretched hand and Hinata gulped.
"They laughed and laughed, until the boy began. They found it less amusing as the gruesome brat sucked down flesh and muscle off the thief's bones and he howled…begging for someone to lop the hand off. They paid the money and sent the boys away but the damage had been done, the boy had discovered his favourite meal." His eyes went back to the flames, the orange light dancing in their hollow deeps. Slowly his cracked lips stretched into a smile without humour.
"First it was the easiest prey, children, cripples, fools. But as the boys grew so did there viciousness. One boy grey tall and thin, slicking through the night to claim victims for his brother. The other became so fat there was no moving him, swollen and disfigured his outside matched the monster stirring inside him. They burned them, some army host when a noble woman went missing. They say the fat one ate his partner before the flames claimed his life, desperate for one last meal." The thunder clapped as he finished his disturbing little story. He glanced at Hinata still clutching her own hand.
"There was another man in these woods too. He'd been raised by wolves and became like them himself, lead a pack of vicious mutts and took maidens from the villages as concubines, bitches for him and his brothers. You've heard that one?" asked the dark man drawing closer but Hinata could only shake her head. She'd heard no stories of beast men or cannibals and she hadn't wanted to.
"What about the Hanged man then, and the woman who follows him?" He was in front of the fire now, close enough to touch her if he wanted. Hinata however couldn't help but notice the way the flames drew back away from him, but only for a second.
"He was a noble soldier, engaged to a common girl he'd fallen in love with. Revolt came and he had to go fight, they lost though and when he came back to the village he was in chains. They hung him in front of his fiancé and she stayed silent forever after that." That one she had known, most of the village girls did and she'd heard half a dozen versions of it during the last Autumn festival alone. For a moment Sasuke smiled gently, the same way he smiled at Sakura to reassure her and Hinata felt a knot twist in her stomach. Without the cruelty or the mocking, when he smiled genuinely like that…
"He was actually hung twice." Commented Sasuke almost lightly his smile falling away to a tight frown. Hinata found herself responding with a soft 'what'.
"It was an enemy invasion not a revolt but otherwise you have the beginning right. The victors hung the soldier and he died. I'm sure you can guess what would happen to a pretty girl though after her village was conquered?" spoke the Uchiha and Hinata couldn't help remember Tenten's sharp words to Ino, it made the story somehow less romantic.
"The soldier had fallen in love with the maiden for her passion though, her strength and more than one invader discovered what that meant the hard way. She gelded them, killed them, became a scourge on them as she sought vengeance. They routed her out eventually though." There was a flash of pride for a second in his voice as he spoke of strength and then a deep frown as Hinata listened on baited breath. She had an idea of what was to come but she hoped for it to be wrong.
"They smashed her teeth in, cut out her tongue and tore off her finger nails, made a tigress without her fangs or claws. Then she was passed around the men, village men were ordered to take a turn too, the dogs in the kennels, the invaders horses. They fucked her until she was pale and cold, whipping her back and marking each new suitor on her forearm." The rain had calmed to a soft pat and the Uchiha's words echoed through the damp room.
"She did not die." Black eyes found white and Hinata realised she'd moved back, inching herself away from the man as he spoke. It was not the story she knew, and she wished she didn't know it now but it was hard to miss the parallels. A beautiful woman pale and cold, with broken teeth and cuts on her arms. Hinata wasn't sure it was the cold that had her shivering anymore.
"History repeats itself and the same situation unfolded years later with a man that bore uncanny resemblance to the soldier, the silent woman who refused to die believed so anyway. The night before they were to marry though his wife to be was found cut open, and a bloody blade was found in his home. He denied the crime but found himself on the gallows anyway." His voice had lost its edge, anger had given way to a dull melancholy.
"His body went missing in the night and was never found though some claimed to have seen a ghost woman carrying it away. What would she do with it? Take it to a place where two things could become one I suppose." Finished Sasuke standing for a moment. Hinata though couldn't help recall her first impressions of this manor, the things that were half one thing and half another completely. And her impressions of this man who seemed to have two similar but fundamentally different personalities, one a mocking arrogant young man the other as stern and cold as her father.
"Y-you two, y-you a-are…" a man twice hung Hinata might have said, or two men hung once each. Or dead…he was dead wasn't he?
"It's just a story girl, for frightening children." Muttered the dark man brushing ice from his hair. His dark eyes were still far away though.
"You should leave now. That rain won't get any lighter." He spoke but Hinata only shook her head in defiance pulling herself onto her feet, one of the man's eyebrows arched and he looked almost impressed.
"I-I'm not going to leave without my friends, I w-won't." her voice cracked but Hinata felt stronger than she ever had with those words, with her first defiance.
"Then you won't ever leave." It didn't sound like a threat, it was too dully spoken as the man shrugged turning away from her.
"Just tell me where they are." Pleaded the young girl, she'd found her courage but she didn't know how long it might last. She needed to find Tenten, she was always brave, she was tougher. A long lingering sigh escaped Sasuke Uchiha before he turned back to her.
"I'll take you to them, you'd only get lost alone." Allowed the man seeming defeated, it was a small victory but to Hinata it seemed too good to be true.
"Y-you will?" she tested her voice still wavering despite herself, dark eyes flashed as Sasuke stepped closer and Hinata jumped back almost into the fire itself.
"For a trade. One single favour you cannot refuse, and I'll take you to see your friends." He'd completely invaded her personal space one icy hand brushing the hair off her shoulder as he slide his thumb over her jaw, the other found her side his fingers trailing like ice even through her damp nightdress. Hinata choked on a breath in the cold embrace, her host's nose almost touching her own.
"Not sex." She whispered rushed for a second, she was too cold to blush though. The dark man smirked and ghosted away from her leaving her frozen and on fire all at once as she tried to deny his effect.
"No nothing so base. Have we a deal?" He asked as the lightning flashed again. Somewhere Tenten and Ino were trapped in this massive confusing castle and for one favour this man would find them for her.
"It's a deal." Hinata answered her voice even again with distance from the pale man.
"They're below now. When we go you must be careful, no innocent can be harmed up here but below the rules begin to blur, innocents can be harmed if they allow it or accept it or don't fight it." Hinata didn't quite understand what Sasuke was trying to say with that, why would she want to be harmed.
"We'll go now?" Her courage was fading fast now and Hinata wanted to move as soon as possible, her friends were waiting for her now. She wouldn't let them down.
"A change of clothing first, then we descend."
And that's the second in the three shot. Hope you all are still enjoying the dark little story as it unfolds. A few hints already for what's to come in the final part. Let me know what you think so far anyway.
R&R
