By the time she'd woken up again, the sun was high in the sky and she was surrounded by warmth and a scent reminiscent of the electrically charged smell of lightning before a thunderstorm. With her mind slightly still befuddled and her body still aching slightly, it was difficult to pinpoint where she was exactly. There was a stinging in a leg she knew she shouldn't have had and an itch on what felt like a tail. Memories of the past few days trickled into her mind as she found herself naturally drifting from sleep, chronologically filing themselves into her brain. She was somehow metamorphosed into a cat and she was separated from her team after a particularly humiliating battle in which she had lost. By some kind of wrong turn of events, she was rescued from her predicament and even healed by the most unlikely of allies. Hinata couldn't tell if she was extremely lucky to have been found and aided during her time of need or completely and utterly screwed for finding herself under the strangely gentle care of the Uchiha who broke the heart of her most loved one. And then, she slowly remembered that Sasuke had planned to depart from the cave at sunrise and when she opened her eyes, she was rather surprised to find herself still tucked to his body securely.
"The nearest village is five or so minutes away, Sasuke-kun."
There was a brief nod in response to the lone female member's uncharacteristically professional report before the Uchiha turned his attention to the little parcel carefully enfolded into his robes.
His calculating gaze scanned over her penetratingly and she squirmed under its dark intensity, her ears flicking apprehensively as she watched his face twitch again. It almost looked like he was concentrating on fighting something – an actual expression possibly, Hinata mused in an uncharacteristically sardonic manner. She felt strangely irritated at the fact she was at his mercy, bereft of even a human form with her ninja capabilities to fight her way back home and to her teammates. Weak as she knew she was in her human body, she was less than useless as a wounded kitten. Thus, the glint in the Uchiha's eyes, she was sure, was really the shine of a satisfied sadist.
"I hear that this town's known for its hot springs, Sasuke. We should stay for a few hours at least," a man with white hair said, twirling his absurdly large sword whimsically. "I'd like a good soak before we track down what's-his-face."
"We should also restock our supplies," added Juugo softly as a bird twittered on his outstretched finger.
With a consenting grunt towards his teammates, the Uchiha began picking up his pace, darting from tree to tree with an enviable dexterity. Hinata barely felt jostled at all and simply enjoyed the sensation of leaping across the forest in relative comfort; it felt akin to flying. As further testament to his litheness and overall outstanding ninja skills, she was tempted to fall back asleep while still being carried.
It felt like only a few minutes had passed when Hinata felt warm hands scoop her from her comfortable position, a tentative finger brushing over the top of her head as she slowly drifted away from her dreams. She meowed a bit in shock as her little paws couldn't find anything solid beneath them and squirmed with discomfort when the fingers around her torso tightened at her ungraceful movements.
"Stop moving."
His stern voice reminded her of her father's reprimands and her body automatically froze.
"I'm going to set you down for a moment," the Uchiha said, his tone somehow softening when he noticed her head looking downwards. "Then we'll get to the hot springs to clean you up."
She was gently deposited onto a long wooden bench, her sore paws unsteady at first because of the tired muscles and pads still aching from abuse. The stings of her wounds were still threading through every tendon stretched in her feline body and the sharpness of the cuts littering her flank suddenly redoubled as she unsteadily stood on three legs. Hinata hissed at the pain and avoided the Uchiha's eyes when she saw his head turn towards her abruptly. She wondered if this was the ideal time to plan and execute an escape. Her mind, though much more lucid than before, seemed to find it difficult to concentrate on ninja-like getaway ideas, however, and somehow she didn't find the Uchiha's current caretaking of her quite as disturbing as she should have.
The scent of masculine sweat and soap filled her sensitive nose and her ears heard the voices of human men and the sound of running water. Looking about with wide eyes, Hinata took in the sights suddenly apparent to her.
Bars of soap lay around either bare or in small plastic bags, suds still sticking stubbornly. Towels of various shades of colors were carelessly strewn everywhere, from identical wooden benches to locker-hooks to the damp heads of several men. Articles of clothing were carelessly shoved into metal lockers, shoe-strings hanging out from the doors as they were locked in. Bare arms and torsos were abundant in her line of sight, lending her peeks of uneven tan-lines or hidden scars. Slightly shiny patches of skin glowed under the overhead lights and taut muscles rippled under masculine flesh like powerful waves.
Falling into a daze of sorts, Hinata gasped when she realized where she was, panicking as she almost observed something she'd never seen before and hadn't until she was safely married to someone – preferably Naruto. She pulled away her gaze desperately, wanting to demand the possibly psychotic Uchiha why he'd brought her to the men's changing room of what she presumed was the hot springs he had mentioned earlier. Furiously, she charged herself to glare as sharply as her cousin or father were known for in order to express her discontent nonverbally with this new development, but the vision that met her opaque eyes struck her dumb again.
Clean-cut planes of what seemed to be raw marble stretched across a human frame, the smooth pale surfaces peppered with small and relatively insignificant scars. Well sculpted muscles and those pectorals Hinata had just moments before laid against flexed with hardly suppressed strength. But what really stood out against those stretches of creamy skin and masculine musculature was…
A pair of cherry blossom petals.
Suddenly, her mind was wiped as blank as her nearly colorless eyes and all that seemed significant in that moment in her life was the fact that she was practically face to face with the parts of the Uchiha's body that all girls in Konoha had dreamed about at least once in their individual lifetimes. If one had asked Hinata before this point in time if she had ever imagined this very image, she would have blushed enough to fill several cadavers with life-blood again. Other less modest and contrarily more shameless girls of her age would have grinned lecherously as they waxed and verbally exalted praises for these appendages. These aforementioned parts were a beautiful shade of pale rose, nearly matching the hue of Haruno Sakura's hair, and just as tender-looking as flower petals. They were most likely slightly stiff from an incoming breeze or change in temperature, but she was reluctantly certain that they were incredibly sensitive anyway as they stood pertly away from his chest and towards her direction.
"N-n-n…"
The boy, completely unaware of the direction her thoughts were treading, was still in the process of removing his clothing when he picked up on his feline companion's whimpering sounds. Turning his dark head to stare inquisitively at Hinata, he almost innocently – if a missing nin with a formidable bloodlust could ever be labelled innocent – approached her in what seemed to be concern if she had bothered to actually focus on reading his facial features and movements. His eyes glinted again with that mysterious shine when she backed away from him and she mistakenly wondered once more if he was really that pleased with her utter terror. She hoped that he wouldn't suddenly decide to kill her and kept her gaze downwards in the hopes that the lack of eye contact would soothe his fury at her perverted-ness. His large hand rose and created a shadow above her, causing her to tremble even more but instead of twisting her furry head and snapping her neck for her impertinence like she'd expected, he gently caressed her ears as if comforting her.
"N-n-n!"
His movement had brought them closer. They were now just a few inches away from her breathing space as he had stooped down to look at her with those pits of darkness he called eyes.
"Is your leg hurting you again?" he murmured to her, obviously not caring that he looked both completely out of character and probably insane for talking to an animal he'd just illegally brought into the men's changing room. "The hot spring has healing properties."
With those fragmented sentences bearing little to no logic for an outsider who didn't speak the dialect of the socially inept, Uchiha Sasuke then picked up Hyuuga Hinata with no further ado and walked off towards the springs with a towel wrapped haphazardly around his hips and a slight sense of urgency in his stride. She was once again softly cradled to his bare skin, but this time she felt the tips of her ears and sometimes her head brushing against his –
N-n-nipple!
Most would believe that Hinata had grown out of her past tendencies of passing out when her emotional boundaries were infringed upon – and for the most part, she had indeed matured enough to control her feelings and physical responses – but really, turning into a cat one moment and brushing against an incredibly bloodthirsty (yet equally attractive) boy's nipple during another is enough emotional stress for any sensible girl, especially one as sheltered and naïve as herself.
This was what Hinata told herself as she felt herself grow faint once more in the presence of the Uchiha, praying yet again that this was all some fantastically nightmarish dream she was experiencing and not at all reality.