II.
This was not really how Hinata wanted her wedding day to be like – indeed, she'd imagined a quick passionate elopement, leather, and motorbikes riding into the sunset, at the most extreme – but given who she'd chosen to marry (more importantly, who'd chosen to marry her) it was inevitable that money chests be exploding. Her dress alone was so atrociously expensive it could have put a shinobi on the moon and its train seemed intent on living up to its name in terms of length and amount of coal needed to relocate it.
The Wedding of the Century, they called it – burying into a final obscurity the apocryphal, apocalyptic Jiraiya and Orochimaru affair that was ten kinds of illegal and a hundred kinds of fucking wrong – unknowing of its inauspicious beginnings, care of Uchiha Shisui.
This was how he introduced them, in a training ground: "You know why Itachi is scary? It's the way he acts with exquisite courtesy, like he's about to kill you."
It's amazing how glorious things like deep, loving relationships start from that wreckage.
Ah, but speak of the devil, and he appears, looking detestably gorgeous.
"How did you get here?" Hinata asks, absolutely delighted, hastening to welcome him in before tripping over the ocean of lace. The intruder swims to save her, before she suffocates under the weight of the headdress. "The Hyuuga compound is extremely well-guarded."
"Do not underestimate my genius," Shisui winked, struggling to forget the sentry-deterring genjustsu of overpowering floral scents and girlish giggling, a cheap trick taking advantage of the baser instincts of men to avoid bridal entourages. "I come bearing the good wishes of Iwa jounin incapacitated about half a mile from your backdoor as well as a little thing from Itachi."
That said, he gave her a really nice smack on the cheek.
"T-that was from Itachi?" Hinata asked incredulously.
"To be honest, that was all me," admitted Shisui, smiling like a loon. "I offered, but Itachi refused to initiate the message." On a seemingly-unrelated note, he asks. "You know why it's custom that the groom never sees the bride before the wedding?"
Hinata shakes her head, a mistake since it dislodges what Shisui suspects is a dozen finely-crafted and bejeweled senbon from her hair. He caught some of them in mid-air and whistled at the sharpness.
"It's a same reason why we posted the best of ANBU sentinels around the compound. It goes back to the time when marriages were either arranged by parents or by luck of draw – they didn't want the groom to bolt in case the bride turned out to be Godzilla."
At this comment, Hinata accidentally jabbed the murderously-expensive heirloom, a pearl bird-in-the-cage pin, into her own head and was marvelously keeping up her pleasant face.
Shisui, observant if insensitive to a young bride's jitters, was quick to reassure.
"Of course Itachi wouldn't do that even if he saw you."
Sensing something a little wrong with his statement, Shisui tried again.
"Itachi wouldn't bolt unless there's another Godzilla." Hinata frowned.
"Another Godzilla, burning down Konoha." Shisui hastily corrected, trying to avoid a bridal crisis that, in reality, wasn't coming, considering Hinata's ability to take it all in stride.
"The hell with this – what I mean to say is," Shisui's eyes soften like only one person's ever seen before (Fugaku, in a moment of incomparable terror, when Shisui met Itachi for the first time and looked ridiculously enamored).
"You're a damn beautiful bride, Hinata."
End.
[Theme: Bride Visits]