The Passion of the Plush
(Summary: Hinata sleeps with a teddy bear, of sorts, and this is why. Takes place in part during the Chunin Exams.)
Kurenai-sensei's apartment had burned down recently when an overnight guest forgot to put out his cigarette, and this left three unfortunate genin with no place to live. Well, more accurately, it left Hinata without a place to live, since Kiba and Shino's parents love them or some crap like that.
In an effort to avoid actually going to stay at her father's house, she had asked every person she knew and had, for one reason or another, been turned down, until word that she was homeless got back to Neji, and he took pity on her and invited her to Team Gai's. And that was why she was sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of her cousin's bedroom.
"Hinata-sama? What is that?"
Hinata squeaked a little, turning over to hide the object she was holding against her chest. "N- nothing!"
"Is that a teddy bear?" Neji persisted, trying to turn her over to see what she was hiding. "You still sleep with a teddy bear? I thought you kicked that habit when you were seven!"
Hinata turned red and tried to explain. "I— I got back into it."
Neji found this hilarious. "Hey, let me see it," he asked, laughing.
"No."
"Come on, let me see."
"No! Hey, stop!"
They had a small scuffle on the air mattress, until Tenten got sick of it and pounded on the wall next to her bed, which adjoined Neji's room. She had long since come to regret her choice of bedrooms. "Yo! Sama! Nii-san! Some of us are trying sleep here!" (Tenten had started calling Hinata and Neji "Sama"and "Nii-san" when she found out that they referred to each other as such. She found the duo very amusing... just not while she was trying to sleep.)
Neji snatched the stuffed toy out of Hinata's hands. For a moment, he stared at it, then handed it back, looking mildly disgusted.
"Can't you do anything without being so cute it hurts?" he asked. Hinata shook her head and cuddled back up to her very worn and much loved Naruto plush doll.
It is a difficult thing, to be born with a purpose. To have no choice in what you will become. Your life is planned before you even draw breath. What if there is something more important to you? You must leave it behind. You already have your purpose; that must be the most important thing.
He had been born with a purpose, and he hated it, because it kept him from what he loved most of all.
Plushies.
He loved plushies. Loved their smooth hair, their big eyes, their soft, huggable bodies. Even as a small child, plushies were what he lived for. Teddy bears that he could hold when everything was too much, when his purpose was too disgusting to bear.
And then, miracle of miracles, he discovered a precious gift; he could make his own plushies! Not just animals, not just cartoon characters, but plushies of everyone he knew, his own family of loving plushies.
How he longed to quit his task, to throw up his hands and leave them, and devote his life to plushies.
But he could not. His purpose (how he hated it!) stopped him. He was forced to leave his refuge, his room of felt and cotton and sewing equipment, and train.
"You had no right, Father," he often whispered to himself, kissing his latest creation goodbye for the day. "No right to sell my destiny like this..." And not only his destiny, but theirs, as well. They surely suffered for it, too. They had had their own dreams, surely, that vanished at his birth.
It wasn't his fault, and he knew it, but he wanted to make it up to them, so he tried to share his gift. He made them plushies. Temari plushies, Kankuro plushies, plushies of himself...
Gaara loved plushies.
Aside from every possible variation on him and his siblings, he had a plushie of his "Grandma" Chiyo (a crazy old lady who was obsessed with him, and whom his father made him be nice to), his uncle (which Temari had removed when she saw that it upset him, but didn't have the heart to throw away. She hid it in their basement.) his mother, his father, Shukaku, Baki, and their next door neighbors.
The latter signified a problem; he was out of people to plushify. He only made plushies of people he felt deserved the honor. It was hard for him to specify the criteria that he graded plushibility by, but it was a very rigid one.
The Chunin exams solved everything. Konoha was a gold mine of plush-worthy subjects. The possibilities! Rock Lee plushies, Gai plushies, Tenten plushies (for Temari), Shino plushies with little bugs, Sakura and Ino plushies with carefully concealed velcro so you could connect their fists to the other's forehead, a plush Kiba and Akamaru, Zaku plushies with detachable arms, extra-squishy Chouji plushies, Sasuke plushies (he would have to fight him some time. sigh. troublesome...) Shikamaru plushies, Naruto plushies, Neji plushies, Hinata plushies, Asuma plushies with cigarette, Kurenai and Kakashi plushies, Anko and Ibiki plushies, Hokage plushies, Hayate plushies with little squeakers so that they coughed when you squeezed them...
He couldn't wait to get back home to his plushie lab. A month? A month sitting around without anything to do, with all these plushies walking around? Torture!
He bought some fabric and started early.
"What the hell are you doing?" Baki had asked on finding his youngest charge sitting in the corner stitching patiently. Gaara hadn't responded. He was busy. "Temari, what's your brother doing?"
"Look, he'll get out of the bathroom when he gets out of the bathroom. That's all we need to know."
"Not Kankuro, Gaara!"
"Oh." Temari shrugged. "He's making a plushie. It's his hobby."
"Besides killing people, you mean?"
"Oh, leave him alone." Baki had been forced to comply; Gaara, sensitive to criticism of his plushies, had left.
"Onee-san!" a little girl called out happily, running up to glomp her sister, who was walking down the hospital hallway in search of vending machines.
"Hello, Hanabi!" Hinata beamed, embracing her sister. "Careful, they just got all that internal bleeding stopped."
"Oh. Sorry," the girl eased off a little. "What are you doing here? Are you still dying?"
"No, Hana-chan, I'm not—,"
It was at this moment that Hiashi, Hinata's vaguely-evil father, rounded the corner.
"Oh, you're still here?" he asked Hinata, who guessed then that this was not a surprise visit from her family.
"I'm getting out soon," she said meekly. "Um... what are you doing here?"
"It's time for your sister's booster S. H. O. T.'s," Hiashi explained, spelling out the fatal word so as not to let Hanabi know that she was in for a good deal of pain in the near future. "And we must be going, or we'll be late. Come along, Hanabi."
Hanabi followed her father off, looking puzzled. "Booster Hosht?" she asked as they walked. Her father patted her head.
Hinata sighed, coughed a little, took a few steps, coughed a lot, and decided to sit down and take a breather. Still coughing, she hobbled over to the bench where Gaara was sitting.
He liked sewing in the hospital. It smelled like blood, death, and sick people. He also liked watching Hinata interact with her family. They reminded him vaguely of his own. He liked Hinata, hers was one of the first plushies he wanted to make, right after Lee. He had enjoyed her fight, because it was one of those few instances where his initial reaction (how can anyone beat on that poor girl?) was the same as everyone else's.
Hinata, breathing heavily, watched Gaara finish his stitching. "Ex— excuse me," she asked after a moment. "Is... is that... Naruto-kun?"
Gaara nodded. Orange fabric had been on sale, and he didn't have enough pocket change to buy much of anything else. No Lee, no Hinata, until he got home.
"Aw..." Hinata turned pink. "It looks just like him!"
"Thank you."
"It's really cute... did you make that on your own?"
"Yes." Gaara cut the final string. Plush number one of the exclusive Konoha Plush Line, complete!
"Uh," Hinata made an uncertain little squeaking noise, like she was about to say something but thought better of it.
"Yes?"
"Um... how much... would you want to make me one?" she asked, pulling out her wallet.
Gaara's eyes bulged a little at the sight of the money. Enough for a Lee... a Hinata, a Neji, a Tenten (for Temari, of course), Sasuke, Sakura and Ino... but he was getting ahead of himself. He couldn't ask her for enough to make all those. If her father was anything like his (and the brief encounter in the hall had convinced him that he was), she probably wouldn't have much money to throw around. She probably didn't even have enough to cover the materials for the one she wanted, let alone the ones he wanted to make for himself...
"That depends," he said finally. "Who would you like?"
Hinata hung her head shyly. "Uh... one... just like that one."
"Naruto?"
"Yes... Na- na- naruto-kun..."
"Oh." Gaara looked at the dopey smile on the plushie in his hand. Naruto wasn't even in his top ten list of plushies he wanted to make; plenty of time to make another back in Suna, when he was done with some of the more interesting people. He dropped the plushie on Hinata's lap. "Twelve dollars?"
Hinata forked over the money without turning a hair.
And, ever since, she slept with her Naruto-kun every night.
"So disgustingly cute that even Gaara hurts," Neji muttered bitterly to himself on hearing this story. "You might want to find a way to ... re-word that last line... it has implications."
"I know," Hinata sighed, rolling over and pretending to fall asleep instantly.
