Title: Vertigo
Type: Naruto Fanfiction
Genre: Romance/Adventure
Pairing: Sasuke x Hinata SasuHina
Characters: Uchiha Sasuke, Hyuuga Hinata
Story Placement: Alternate Storyline fanfiction
Background: It's in a different time and place, the plot is actually the background.
Plot: Once upon time, there was a girl who lived in a tall tower. All she'd ever know was the circular stone walls, the worn silk sheets of her canopy bed, and the man who kept her locked away from the world. But when a clumsy boy literally falls through the roof, Hinata is exposed to a world she'd only seen from the tiny window at the top of the tower and feelings only expressed in story books she read late at night.
Warnings: I will not attempt to attack certain Naruto characters though there is a little anti-Sakura and anti-Ino in the beginning and middle of the story. I do apologize but things do get better for them. I don't even bash my own villains! I can not predict the future of this story but there maybe a yaoi if you squint and turn your head to the left.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything; I was simply inspired by other works and embellished a simple love story.
Author Note: Oh boy, the second chapter! By all fairness, this is actually the first chapter and the other is a prologue but I prefer to stroke my ego and call this one the second chapter. Plus it ends up bothering me eventually when numbers don't match up. Bah, anyways, I hope you enjoyed what little there was in the first chapter, this chapter is longer; PROMISE!
ENJOY!
Vertigo
By Heaven's Drunk
Chapter Two.
This music's irresistible
Your voice makes my skin crawl
Innocent and pure
I guess you heard it all before
The day hadn't been eventful, much like every other day in her life in the high Tower. She had awoken to the sunrise and birds chirping to each other. She had remembered the man saying that when birds chirped, it was spring time which meant that flowers were blooming and love was blossoming. She liked Spring because it meant that the cool breeze would flow in from her window brining the delicate scent of flowers and grass into her bedroom. She would close her eyes and imagine herself to be lying in a field, smelling the flowers and basking in the warm sunlight. She itched to know what the grass and flowers felt like, desired to know if birds would approach her and allow her to feel their feathers.
She felt her heart sink when she opened her eyes and found that the image of paradise was framed by gray stone. She turned from the window and approached the cluttered shelf, grasping a thin clasp of papers hastily scribbled on and retreated to the cherry wood chair to read. It was one of her favorites, Rapunzel. She hadn't gotten far into the story when she began to tremble. Her hands shook and finally released the pages to let them scatter along the ground. She rushed to the bathroom, ran the sink water and shoved them in the boiling fountain. Her pale violet eyes stared at the frail hands as the shaking subsided then finally stopped. She heaved a sigh of relief, dried her hands, and turned towards her bedroom.
"Hello, Hinata-hime," The Man's cold voice forced the breath out of her. She bowed quickly, the purple dress audibly crinkling with the movement, and forced herself to walk foreword, past him and to the bed as she had always done. He smiled at her, an emotionless grin that chilled her more, and He stepped towards the scattered papers, fixing them in order and setting them on the windowsill. He pulled the chair to be adjacent to her and grasped her hands in His larger, paler, scalier claws, "My dear, Hinata-hime."
"Y-y-yes," She shamelessly stuttered, cursing her weakness when the Man came into sight. She could never understand what He'd always bring out in her. She stuttered, shivered, and felt mechanical when He was there and in all 17 years, she had feared Him even though He'd shown her nothing by detached affection.
He grinned coolly and reached to stroke her cheek, she flinched just the slightest bit but not subtle enough for him to not notice. The oily smile faded and she felt her heart stop, "You are 17, Hinata-hime, you shouldn't be afraid of men."
She nodded quickly, biting her lip to the point of bleeding, looking anywhere but into the man's cold black eyes. He grasped her hand tightly, the other hovering just above her head.
"Your half birthday will be in the summer," His voice echoed in her head, stiffened her heart, and she froze to the point that his touch did repulse her, "and then is shall only be 6 months before you come to understand my ownership over you."
"W-w-what d-do y…y-you-" She tried to form the words, enforce her question on Him, questions that had been forming since she was young. He interrupter her with a cold, dark chuckle.
"Hinata-hime, if you're going to be a good wife, you'll have to stop that bad stuttering habit," He grinned arrogantly. She gasped audibly, attempting to form the words with her mouth. He stood up abruptly, dropping her hands so quickly that she fell from the bed to land at His feet. He bent forward, kissing her forehead as He always did and retreated to the bookshelf to grab a book, "Hinata-hime, what would you like me to read to you? I have a new book for you."
She paused for a minute, not being able to understand His words. She curled up, resting her forehead at her curled up knees. She could hear Him sigh before picking up a thing, worn book, "It's called Persephone. It's about a beautiful young goddess who was enraptured by the Lord of the Underworld. I thought Hinata-hime would like this story."
She nodded her head, finding the strength to stand on her feet and move to the bed. He grinned and chose His place at the foot of her bed. He opened it slowly and began to gently read from the worn book, "A long time ago, in ancient Greece…"
She listened as she always did finding herself feeling a tense anger towards this Persephone person. She was able to roam free in the sun and yet she was here, trapped in a stone room with a man that was more Monster.
"Hades himself had no wife, but he had fallen in love with a girl…" Love, she was familiar with that emotion from her books. She couldn't describe the feeling but she knew it meant that two people wanted to be together.
"W-w-what d-d-does l-love me-an?" She whispered.
He paused slightly before smiling, "Well, Love means that one person holds a passion towards another. It is what I feel for you, Hinata-hime, and what you feel for me."
She frowned, that seemed unlikely. The love in her books had characters living together for the rest of their lives but she did not want to be with him for the rest of her life. She did not even want to spend the next hour with him. Could that be love?
He had once said that fairy tales were simply the stretching of reality. So maybe what she felt was love and those silly little stories about Princes rescuing Princess was poetic drabble served only to entertain. This meant that love was a bad thing to her; it made her uncomfortable and restricted. So she wouldn't love, for the sake of maybe someday escaping, she would never love.
"She was young, and he was much older: dour, dark, and strange…," She shivered at the similarity between this dark God and Him. Did that mean that she was Persephone? No, Persephone had her freedom, she had her stone Tower, and "Still, Hades was a royal god, one of the three rulers of the world. He deserved a queen, and he was determined to have exactly the one he wanted." He paused, shifting a look to her that made her freeze in fear. She was set on believing that He was like Hades, "He seized the frightened Persephone and carried her down into his own land as her companions scattered in terror. The crack in the earth closed up behind them, shutting out the light."
Ha! She thought cruelly to herself, Now Persephone will taste the same bitter life that I live in.
As he continued, she could find herself feeling just like Persephone, trapped in a sunless world receiving attention from a man the frightened and disgusted her. Was this her fate? Forever by the God of the Underworld? No, she would find a way out, an escape like Rapunzel did.
As the sun set and night stars twinkled in the sky, she felt the lull of the story rock her to sleep, only drifting into semi-conscious at the sound of the book closing. His weight was removed from the bed as He returned the book to the shelf and she shivered as his movements created a cool breeze around her. She heard Him chuckle softly and cover her completely in the cotton blankets.
He kissed her forehead as he always did the ends of his hair, black as the ink the letters of her books were written in, tickled her cheeks. She was vaguely aware of the rustling wind beyond His body and the thought of the loose leaf papers, innocently sitting on her windowsill, would be blown away by the spring breeze but the thought was lost with his whispered words, "Only a few short months my dear, and you will finally experience womanhood."
She withheld her shiver to as much as she could, alerted by the words he spoke; however, she was so warm beneath the blankets that she drifted off to sleep despite the fear clenching at her heart. His footsteps barely made a thump against the stone flooring but the hollow sound of the door shutting and locking reverberated through the room, muting the noise of rustling paper.
She awoke the next morning, relieved that the night had passed without incident. She'd woken from cold, sickening fear at several points during that night and feared startling Him to where he would come back into the room. She didn't want him to ever return, she didn't want to learn what being a 'wife' meant, and she certainly didn't want to loose her solitude.
She removed herself from the bed and retreated to clean herself. She knew food would be present and a dress would be laid out for her when she exited, and then she would spend the day smelling the spring air and reading Rapunzel. She entered her cool room, shivering slightly at the drop in temperature and picked up the navy blue dress laid out for her. She dressed quickly, ate quickly, and set the plate by the door before nearly sprinting to her windowsill to read. However, only one page was still resting on the windowsill, weighted down by a few pebbles fallen from disintegrating stone.
She gently spread out her thin, pale fingers over the white page, actually feeling the treasure for the first time. She had never asked herself why she loved the story so much, why the frail and old pages barely plastered together by string meant so much to her but she couldn't help but ponder it now.
She was unhappy with her Tower.
She had connected with Rapunzel, felt her pain of being locked away from sight, feeling the weight of loneliness mocker her everyday from her tiny bedroom and barely visible window. And when Rapunzel had discovered this emotion of love, she had felt hope deep within herself that this Tower wasn't her permanent resting place. If Rapunzel could escape four stone walls, then she would eventually escape as well.
But Rapunzel had escaped. In the night on the cool spring breeze, the pages that told her story found their freedom, the pages had been so desperate to escape from her ownership that they had left a comrade behind; a single page marking the end of the story had been left alone in the Tower. This was all she had left of her hope and the feeling of forcefully settling into a position He had made for her took her breath away.
She felt her eyes water uncontrollably and feel to her knees in anguish. She couldn't describe the cold feeling in her heart but she knew she didn't like it. The four walls were cruel and mocking, closing in on her just like her fate. The Man was an evil demon casting His shadow over her mind, controlling her like a puppet to bend to his will. She didn't want to live in the Tower; she didn't want to allow this negative fate to win. She wanted out, she wanted to feel the grass, smell the flowers, and never have to see Him again.
Author's Note: Just a re-upload you guys! I'm so anal-retentative that it bothers me when the chapters don't look alike!
Thank you to SarahiNia and Repentless Wind for the reviews!
Zai Jian!