Dawn, in the house of Hyuga.
A somber winter's day. In a warm heated room, bounded by solid wooden walls, in a house full of drowsy morning lantern light, the subdued bustle of serving staff. The faint scent of boiling tea leaves, wafting up through the wooden floors.
"You'll never want anything but me," Orochimaru had said. Once.
Surrounded by the Hyuga family's house, their solar symbols carved into walls, embroider into drapes, flags, sleeves. The older girl, who had one stitched into the back of her jacket. Pale, purple silk threads. A wintery, quiet whisper of a sun.
Wondering about her...
Nocturnal, like peaceful fields of unbroken snow. Pure and sweet in a way that he could have, or hold, or be allowed to touch, without dirtying it somehow.
But she had a soft voice, which soothed his nerves. And she had skin that looked soft, too, as if it would yield just slightly, if he touched her... She had soft curves, swelling under her modest clothes; which gave her a sense of propriety. And quiet mystery, for what he couldn't see. And he could barely imagine, his mind was full of Orochimaru's filthy words; and of memories he couldn't quite chase away, because Orochimaru had taken this part of him and made it his own.
But. She had a warm house that was peaceful, for the most part. And she was sharing it with him, a stranger with blood too far from hers to matter. He saw the Buddhist altars, the candles lit in the courtyard, where the relentless wind snuffed them out, as the sky turned wooly shades of whitening grey. Only one fiery line of sunrise in the far, far distance, behind black cliffside. The servants came out to light them again. They covered the north windows, to chase the bad spirits away. And opened others to the south, to let the good ones in.
When this was new to him, he'd felt the good and bad spirits in his own blood, as if they were moving through him. As he shot fire, lightning; a flash as brief as that, that lit up the entire world... But that light was cold. And he was ashamed, always, as he washed the fluids from his hands. But he sensed the seductive power in it. He felt it's danger, and he sensed that this was just another dark, lawless energy, one to be used...
...as Orochimaru used him. As a conduit.
Or a container, as Itachi had said, so long ago, Sasuke being too young and stupidly naive to understand.
When he was thirteen and his body had begun to betray him in ways that he had forgotten to expect; or had imagined would somehow never happen to him. And which Orochimaru could sense, somehow, as if he could smell Sasuke with the tip of his tongue.
"I'll take care of that for you," Orochimaru said.
From the sallow, wizened people of the village, Orochimaru brought Sasuke the girls. And they were not young. He judged them as being almost twice his age. They treated him more like mothers. Guiding hands. Gentle encouragement. As if Orochimaru had reached down and unearthed what Sasuke would want, what he wouldn't even understood he wanted, until it was given to him.
They wore powder, like storybook geishas. They had painted lips that left smudged red rings on his body, as they sucked at him, and as Orochimaru watched, his eyes glistening in deep shadow. And when Sasuke sank to his knees, exhausted, Orochimaru killed one woman. Then the other.
Sasuke remembered, in particular detail, the way the woman's neck had buckled, then split, like the limb of a ball-joined doll. Her snapped spinal cord flopped wetly, like a cut string.
"Soon, all you'll want is this." Orochimaru told him, in a low, honeyed voice that made Sasuke's stomach clench. The way Orochimaru hissed his name, caressing the syllables, turning it into something disgusting and bittersweet. Orochimaru groped at his hair, and then his neck, with a hot, wet hand. Orochimaru's skeletal hand stroking him, as Sasuke shivered, because Orochimaru had flicked his tongue, striking him at the tip of his collapsed penis, making him jump, and bite down on a whimper. And Orochimaru heard, it only seemed to excite him more. Orochimaru ran teasing wet fingers over Sasuke's cheeks. His forehead. And then his eyelids, as Sasuke closed his eyes tightly.
"When I've dyed you in my colors.." Orochimaru whispered luxuriantly in his ear. "...ah... when I've turned you into me, turned you inside out.." Orochimaru's hand slithering down, then his mouth, hot with the dead women's blood and visceria, as if these could give him mystical powers and divination of the future. "I'll turn into you, then.." Orochimaru swallowing him whole, just then. The tight rings of muscle in Orochimaru's throat tensing and working all over him, bringing him erect again, and then refusing to let him go. Until he spilled again. And again, as if Orochimaru wanted to suck the life right out of him. And he knew that Orochimaru wanted everything. If there was anything left to Sasuke, after he had lost everything, Orochimaru wanted it.
Orochimaru lounging back like a bloated, satisfied mosquito, watching as Sasuke put his clothes back on.
"You know you'll never want anything but me." Orochimaru said. And Sasuke was amazed that Orochimaru could make him feel so small and filthy, and do it so effortlessly.
Morning now, with the sun up behind the clouds, and the house came fully awake. He got up and took care of his weak body in the bathroom, washing his hands with strong lye soap. He wouldn't jerk off in her bed. He had some flicker of pride left to him, some small drop that Orochimaru had forgotten to lap up.
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"Spring isn't coming early this year." Miya was saying. She handed the matches to Momoe, one of her senior kitchen girls. "Go light the candles. And tell the gardeners to come in, before their finger bones freeze right off!"
The old cook fed the woodstove, standing watch as the servant girl ventured into the icy courtyard garden. Hinata sat at the kitchen table, in the glow of furnace cross drafts. Even the clay tiles were warm under her feet.
Kimiko, the other girl, tended the boiling kettle. She sang softly under her breath.
Hinata was imagining herself having a conversation with Sakura-san.
First there would be polite small talk. How was Naruto-kun? How was Tsunade-sama? Oh, her father was fine. He was feeling much better. Neji? He was well. Yes, it was a very nice day. Her students were all wonderful. Bright, bubbly children. Lee was doing very well, he was a natural teacher. No, she hadn't heard this latest bit of gossip. My, that was far more interesting and scandalous then the missing-nin who was absolutely not sleeping in her bed at this very moment. Unless, of course, he was leaving a bloody trail through her family home, carving up her staff. Which he wasn't. Because he wasn't there at all. Yes.
Well, Sakura-san, she was just thinking about the time Uchiha Sasuke had tried to kill your husband. Did Sakura remember that? Oh, she was just wondering if Sakura felt that Sasuke would be a danger to others, should he return. Oh, no reason for asking. Yes, very nice weather. Give her regards to Tsunade-sama.
Hinata pinched her nose bridge delicately. She hadn't slept well.
One of the house cats wandered over, wrapping itself around her legs. It was the one that her sister had named after Naruto, because, as Hanabi had put it, it 'had the same hair.'
"Tea?" Kimiko said, sympathetically.
"Pour her a drink." Miya called from the kitchen, now, where she was supervising several apprentices in rolling fresh noodle dough. She cackled.
"Please." Hinata said, weakly, as Kimiko fetched the sake. Hinata scooped the animal into her lap, stroking it's shaggy fur where it spiked on the crown of it's head, probably a permanent startle reaction from the experience of living with Hanabi.
"He's kind of cute," Kimiko offered, setting the small saucer down. Hinata tried to smile at her, but couldn't quite manage it.
"I heard that he can kill people just by looking at them," one of the apprentices said.
"Stupid," the cook muttered mildly, bopping him on the head with her wooden spoon. "If you have time to yap, kneed harder!"
"I have to go to work." Hinata murmured, to no one in particular.
"Go," Miya told her, bluntly. "Shoo. He couldn't slap around a newborn kitten at the moment. We'll be fine."
The sake steamed into Hinata's face. It burned her lips, as she sipped it slowly.
"I suppose." she said, finally. "I just wonder if... he'll be well enough to leave, when father returns." And Miya replied with a long, thoughtful harrumph.
"Well, if that's all it is.." she muttered. She rummaged in the pocket of her apron. After a moment she set a small glass bottle of pills in Hinata's hand. "That'll help with his chakra," she said. And Hinata asked why she was being given it, when Miya was the one who brought him the medicines.
"It'll give him his strength back." Miya replied absently, pausing to swat another apprentice lightly. She snorted. "Why indeed!"
The kitchen lapsed into it's comfortable rhythms of warmth, and the voices of the servants swirled around her. The cat butted it's silky head into the bottom of her chin, purring. Hinata knew that she could not, would not go through another day like yesterday, all used up with worry... so that she had no energy or attention to give her students, to do her job with pride.
Or to even hold her head up with pride, as the Hyuga heir.
Smarten up, she told herself.
Naruto was far away, out on surveillance over fields and across oceans, too far away to be implored upon, to give her strength. His wife was working under the wing of the Hokage; and in the quiet spaces of the hospital, where Hinata had found her, that one afternoon when she went to fetch heart medication for her father.
Get up, she thought.
She found him awake, turned over on his uninjured side to watch the sunrise. The grey light of the day cast subtle shadows on his face, though he didn't look up for one long, endless moment... as she pulled over the chair, from her desk.
"Here," she said, after she had poured for them both.
He looked at the porcelain saucer steaming in her hand, his expression almost sardonic.
"Is this all right with the old hag?" he growled, low in his throat. Hinata watched him uncurl his hand from the edge of the quilt, and finally take it from her. She felt the hard calluses on his fingers. And she met his dark eyes, squarely.
"I have no idea," she said. Her voice sounded hard as steel, even to her. She tipped her saucer back.
He watched her, the motion of her throat, as she swallowed.
She poured for him, and then for herself, once more. He drank, grimacing slightly. When he handed her the saucer again, she said "I can't get drunk. I have to go to work."
He looked right at her, and her insides quivered. But somehow her voice stayed steady. She could feel it with her fingers, the Hyuga crest, molded into the smooth side of the sake bottle.
"I need to know that it's safe for me to leave you in my house." she said.
His face shifted into a glare, his eyes seeming to turn an even darker shade of black, as he did. But she held his gaze.
"Promise me." she said.
Outside, the bare branches of trees whipped in the fierce winds. She realized, as the silence stretched, that he was holding her gaze too, holding the intensity of his expression. He wasn't looking away.
Until he did.
His hair looked soft, almost, when it fell into his eyes like that. For a moment she thought that she'd upset him, and she said, more gently "I trust Naruto-kun, I trust his judgment."
"This isn't a place for someone like me," he snapped suddenly, his voice hard and cold.
He still did not look at her.
And something in her instantaneously hardened. Her resolve, because he was talking about her family, something he did not know about, and didn't have the right to do.
"I want you to not hurt anyone in this house." she told him, more harshly then she had ever imagined she could. "This is my family." Anger spiked through her, out of nowhere, like jagged lighting. "Show some respect!" she heard herself snap.
And he raised his head, the motion slow, almost elegant. A particularly unkind smile hinted over his lips, and he said, dark eyes trained on her "What would your father say?" Like it was a taunt. But it only snapped things into hard clarity for her.
"My father is away." she told him, getting up. "You will have to leave before then, whether you're healed or not. The ANBU," the words were coming to her, they wouldn't stop. She had to pause, gather her breath again, before she could continue. "The ANBU will arrest my entire family, if we're found to be harboring a missing-nin." She held his gaze, and she felt her byakugan winking, as she tightened her fingers on the sake bottle. Standing over him, she saw the bare tree branches waving silently behind him, behind the neat line of medicine bottles on the windowsill. "Naruto-kun trusts you, and I will trust you." Her fist clenched. "Promise me!"
Silence.
His eyes were closed, though he hadn't turned his head. He'd simply closed them, his expression turning grim, almost merely serious. But it was blank, holding all this thoughts and motives and the truth of who he really was, whether he really could be trusted, holding all that within himself, so she couldn't see.
He nodded.
She stood, and waited for him to open his eyes. His word was enough. It would have to be.
"I'll have Miya send you breakfast, then." she said, when he did. "And these pills will restore your chakra."
She left the sake bottle on the table near the bed, the glass pill bottle beside it.
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So, he wondered. As morning deepened, in the house of Hyuga.
Left alone, as always. Lonely. That would be hard for others to believe. That would be hard for him to believe.. and was. He never wanted anyone around. But it was hard being alone. Sometimes... It was hard to be with people, too.
After she left, and after another girl about her age brought him a hot tray of food, he lay back, watching the storm gathering outside. Rain already pattered at the windows. Today, they'd opened the wooden shutters. And beyond the wall of the little garden outside, it's tiny bare bonsai trees, he could see the misty shadow of the village skyline, just starting to disappear into the clouds.
No one would believe... that he didn't enjoy it. Being nasty, cruel.. biting every hand offered to him, spitting in the face of anyone who dared to come close. It made him feel even more wretched then he normally felt, and that was a damn good trick right there.
He looked for it, and found it instantly. Never far, always close at hand. Sneering indifference, which covered all ills, which seemed to just fix him, like hatred did, where nothing else could.
But he found he had no taste for it. Surrounded with the solar symbols, the warm walls. Her family. Five days, she said. A very short time, for someone who'd been run through with a samurai blade.
He took the pills, washed them down with the last of the sake. Alcohol numbed him, and not in a way he liked. But it was good enough for now. It made him drowsy, and relaxed. Like things could run without him for a while...
He closed his eyes, willing the seal to awaken again, to push him along in the healing process.
And it did.
He woke, and wrenched the stitches, cursing them.. cursing Orochimaru, vowing to hold Orochimaru down, rip him open. Sew him up repeatedly with a scalding hot needle. See how much he liked it.
But his seal was alive. And the energy was moving, he could stand. And he could hold his hands steady. He found a man's shirt and pants, folded neatly on the desk.
Wondering about her... because he was alone with his thoughts, and he couldn't help himself. Surrounded with the unassailable safety of her house. My house, she had said. My family. With that unconscious note in her voice, the pride of belonging,
She had extracted the promise, shamed him into it... with a soft hand. Wasn't that what the Hyuga did? With their byakugan eyes, their gentle fists. Their powerful house clan, larger and richer, and more influential then even the Uchiha had been. When the house still stood... The deeds now, sitting in trust for him, waiting for him to turn nineteen, when a whole district of the city would fall into his hands. He wondered if they'd just torn the whole district down, by now. If this old village had finally given him up for dead, once and for all.
And in the early evening, she was there.
Hyuga Hinata, a stranger's name that gave her a sense of distance, because he barely remembered her in any other way. Down in the gardens in the center of her house. Protected from the wind by it's sturdy walls, like nothing could ever harm her, here. Training, because she did not see him. Because he veiled his chakra, using the same technique her little girl had used.
As he watched her train, her hands moving so fast that he couldn't see. Thinking. Imagining, as best he could.
So much would have to be done. So much ground would have to be covered. She was so, so far away from him. Like a ghost, for all he'd ever be able to catch up to her. He spent his life watching things that retreated in the distance, that never noticed him, and never came closer. Was he tiring of it? Maybe he was broken, somehow, now. Maybe Orochimaru had finally broken his will.
Or maybe...
..he was just hung over, and stupidly, foolishly, weakly maudlin, all the sudden. Forgetting himself in a few drunken fantasies...
He remembered Sakura, telling him that she knew he hated her, that he'd always hated her. Always.. as if he had no feelings, no desires, nothing of his own.
But he wanted, and he felt.
That was the problem.
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The children slipped and fell on the ice, even though the teachers sifted endless sacks of sand over the academy grounds. The rain came down, and the children came in with soaked pantlegs, bruised knees. Hinata smoothed so many patterned bandages over scrapes and purpling spots that she found herself wrapping one around her own hand, her aching fingers.
She ran home, and lost herself in the running, her feet finding their way through the patches of ice.
Her house faded out of the darkened cloudy sky, against the angry storm gathering in the east. It's windows were full of warm yellow lantern light, beckoning. In the west, the clouds were broken, and sunlight peeked through ragged holes, lighting one side of the houses, the buildings... as the sun set early.
She slowed to walk as she arrived at the gate. She bowed her head briefly at the small shrine tucked there, and then she felt the south and east wings of the house enclose her, protectively, as she walked into the outer gardens. She looked up, up three stories. And there he was, perched on the high gable of the roof; bright against the uneasy dark clouds, with the sun picking up the sheen of his hair, the sickly paleness of his skin. He was wearing the light colors of Hyuga robes. Neji's clothes, set out for him by the staff.
She watched him stroll the length of the high roof backwards, his eyes closed. One bandaged foot behind the other. He tensed lightly, then sprung backwards, his hands catching the rail, his feet unerringly finding it a moment later. She saw the red patch seeping through his bandaged side, as he raised his arms for another handspring.
Another. Three. Four. Then he balanced on his haunches and paused. The wind worried at his loose clothes. With his eyes covered, he looked comfortably anonymous. Just another handsome young man with unruly dark hair.
Hinata stood still as a statue, frowning worriedly. If Miya saw him, she'd wave her wooden spoon at him and shout for him to come down immediately and to not get blood on the roof, and to not carry on like a damn fool with these stunts when he wasn't healed, and to at least put on a goddamn warmer coat for the love of god..
And likely, he would ignore her. And then Hinata would have to do something.
With even that little glimmer of strength she'd found.. she had little confidence in her ability to persuade him to do anything. Would she be able to force him? The pills must have done their work. And even if they had not, she didn't relish the idea of a physical confrontation.
She sighed, wishing he'd come down. If Hanabi saw him up there, it would give her ideas. And then Hinata would have to get Hanabi off the roof.
She went to change her clothes.
The clouds rolled in, pushed by the icy winds. Snow was falling, lightly, when she pulled herself up onto the roof. The gable was iced over, slippery and wet now under her feet; as she walked carefully, catlike, balancing a small tea tray. The sun was gone now, behind a thick ragged curtain of cloud. He was sitting at the other end of the gable, his back to her. A few light flakes of snow had fallen into his hair.
Her foot slipped. She bit off a gasp. The heavy clay teapot quivered. His hand tightly on her forearm, suddenly, as he pulled her steady.
She looked up from her arm, startled, and into his dark eyes. The wind tossing his dark hair, framing his pale face. He took his hand away. almost immediately.
There was no particular anger in his eyes, at that moment. But she could not read them. She looked into him with her byakugan, she saw the chakra shadow of his sharingan behind the dark iris of each eye. She was aware, suddenly, of her own heartbeat. Total silence had fallen. The snow blunted even the soft ambient noise of the village at rest.
After a moment, he simply bent, and sat back down on the gable.
She set the tray down between them, and then joined him. Her fingers were red and numb with cold, but the tea was piping hot as she poured it.
He took the cup she offered. He had the decency to look at her this time, as she handed it to him. His eyes formed a silent question.
"Because it's very cold out here." she said.
And because you are all alone, she thought.
They drank in silence. She turned, and saw that he wasn't staring out into the swirling clouds. He was looking down, into the steaming circle of his cup.
"You're my guest." she said, rising. "You're welcome to stay in my house."