Injuries, Infection and Imprisonment

Hinata rose from the cot on which she had been lying and gingerly sat up. It was a supreme effort, every muscle ached, her entire chakra network had suffered a devastating overload from Karin's blast. Neuro-receptors had been flooded with acetylcholine and were now sluggish to respond making her joints feel heavy and lethargic.

She opened her eyes.

Nothing.

Was the room simply pitch dark or...? Darker thoughts flickered through her mind. Frightened, she tried to activate her jutsu, whispering its name, "Byakuugan."

Nothing.

She shivered in the chill, dank air. The place smelled damp and musty, it must have sat still and undisturbed for ages. Where was she?

Heavy steps this time approached as if down a long hall and she tensed herself on the cot waiting for her abductor's entry. There was a scraping sound and a groaning of rusty hinges as a massive door slid open.

"You're awake," his voice was flat and noncommittal. "It's been a day and a half," he continued answering her unasked question even as the words formed on her lips.

"Where...am I?" she asked.

"With me," another neutral response that told her absolutely nothing. He noted that she would turn her head as if to incline her ear to his voice but her eyes kept looking straight ahead not focusing on him. "Can you see?"

"I...," she hesitated not wanting to admit it but then realized there was nothing to be gained by doing so. "No." Hinata realized that with his question he had answered another one of her own. There must be light in the room if he expected her to see and yet she could not. She wasn't just in darkness without benefit of Byakuugan, she was without normal sight as well. Blind.

"I thought so." Again his voice remained indifferent, resigned, none of the fury she had heard earlier in their confrontation with Karin. Another sound, heavy and dragging as he drew a chair across the room. She heard him settle into it beside her.

"Close your eyes. This will help," he said as he tied a cloth, cool and wet around her lidded eyes, covering them. There was a faint scent of spearmint and something else medicinal to it. "It's soothing not healing. Keep that in mind. Recovery will take time. If it comes. I'll send Seito in with food shortly."

She heard him rise from the chair as if to leave. "Sasuke?" she spoke his name for the first time and heard his steps pause, wondering if he turned to her or kept his back to her. A million questions tumbled through her mind but there was one that she couldn't suppress, "Sasuke, where's Shikamaru?" After the initial query others tumbled out. "Where's Karin? What happened?"

"Karin is gone. I'll deal with her later. Nara is here but he's still unconscious."

The mention of Shikamaru's loss of consciousness frightened her. "What happened to him?"

"He's wounded."

"But... how? will he recover?

"That remains to be seen." The coldness in his dispassionate voice now seemed even worse than his white hot anger back in Konoha.

"But, why bring him here?" Her voice was frantic and confused. "If you'd left him in Konoha then Tsunade or Sakura-chan..."

Sasuke raised a hand as if to cut her off but realized it was unnecessary since she couldn't see it anyway. Still his clipped tone silenced her just as effectively. "Only you and Nara saw that I was in Konoha. By bringing him here, that still remains true. In any battle or conflict, information is power. Nara would tell you as much himself. If he could."

With that he turned and left the room, closing the door soundly behind him. Not that there was any need to worry she would try to escape. How could she even see which way to go?

Left alone with her thoughts in the impenetrable darkness, Hinata shrank in upon herself. Her fingers bunched together the tattered blanket that had covered her while she slept. Plucking it up she wrapped it around her body for comfort as much as for warmth.

What had she gotten them into?

Groggily, Shikamaru came to, aware that he was in a rough-hewn room of stone, lying on a cot with a searing pain in his right leg. Struggling to sit up he eventually acceded to the pain, admitting defeat and lying quite still back against the narrow bed.

He cast his thoughts back, able to clearly remember the fight with Karin, remember the slicing blow she'd struck against him. After that things became hazy. He recalled the pain, kunai biting through his leg sharp and clean and the subsequent weakness as blood drained out of him. A voice distant and vaguely familiar sounded in his memory.

Sasuke Uchiha. It didn't seem possible and Shikamaru tried to dismiss it as a delusion caused by the pain. But Sasuke remained stubbornly in his awareness. It was starting to come back to him now. He recalled Sasuke giving the order to bring him, had memories of Naruto's friend and nemesis holding Hinata at his side as they sped along through treetops, feet dancing swiftly from branch to branch.

Shikamaru tried in vain to retrace their route in his mind. There were fleeting images of landmarks he thought he recognized but they were disjointed, incongruent as he had faded in and out of consciousness during their travels. He would never be able to reconstruct the exact path they had taken to get here.

Looking around the room, the cell he corrected himself, that he was in he realized he would not be seeing any visible landmarks from the windows either. There were none.

Locked in a cell he was unable to assess his location any further. He decided to attempt to determine the extent of his injury. Carefully he slid one hand down his thigh, easing over to the inner portion where the pain radiated outward. Ragged edges of cloth passed under his fingers. Apparently he was still wearing the same clothes, the leg of the trousers had just been cut away.

His entire leg felt swollen. The pain increased simply as he brushed his fingertips closer to the center where the skin felt hot - angry and inflamed.

Not good.

Managing to prop himself up on his elbows, biting back curses against the fresh waves of pain his motion set off he looked down at his wounded limb. A jagged laceration started jarringly close to his groin and ran several inches down his thigh. It wasn't the length of the gash that concerned him though, as much as the depth of the entry point. Gah - had she literally cut him to the bone? It felt like it.

If Sakura were here she could fix this in a jiffy. Or Tsunade. Even Ino had become quite adept with her healing jutsus after training with those two. But the last he'd seen of Sakura had been some time before the explosion Karin had triggered. His pink-haired friend had probably been back at her apartment in Konoha or else out to dinner with their friends at the time this all occurred.

Keys jingling outside his cell door caught his attention. He tried once more to sit on the cot and managed to get into somewhat of an upright position but the effort left him exhausted. Eyes trained on the door he half expected to see Sasuke when it opened and half hoped it was Hinata. It turned out to be neither of those two.

A slim young shinobi that he did not recognize appeared carrying a tray of simple foods, soup, some grilled fish, a little rice and tea. Setting the tray down at the foot of the bed the young man surveyed his captive. Shikamaru sized him up as well. Not that he was in any position to challenge the man, but he felt it was still always good to try to determine what you were up against.

"Can you eat?" the shinobi asked as he set the tray down at the foot of the cot, always careful to keep an eye on Shikamaru, immobile though he appeared to be.

Shikmaru nodded. "Thanks," he said, reaching for the soup first. The weight of the simple ceramic bowl seemed far heavier than it should but he managed to lift it to his lips, cupping it in both hands to take a sip. "Where's Sasuke?"

The question caught the man off-guard, to hear his leader referred to so casually. He stiffened, "If Sasuke-sama wishes to see you, he'll send for you." He turned to leave.

Shikamaru thought to himself that if Sasuke sent for him, it would be a very cold day before he got there because he certainly wasn't moving very far in the condition he was in. More than food he wished the young man had brought a medical nin with him or at least a first aid kit with some antiseptic and antibiotic.

At least as the door closed behind him Shikamaru caught a glimpse of the young man picking up a second tray of food.

Was Hinata imprisoned close by?

Sasuke paced in the small area feeling confined in more ways than just the three dimensions that determined the space of the room he was in. The loss of the original members of Team Hebi had been unsettling enough. Now to have Karin re-intrude upon his life in any way at all after such a prolonged absence would have been unnerving in its own right.

But this? This was unthinkable.

It had seemed like some bizarre joke at first. He had only ventured to Konoha because her message had sent a shock through his system, a jolt of reality that the physical production of a Uchiha heir was indeed a possibility.

And the memory of how such a thing came to be possible dredged up long buried demons from his subconscious - vile memories of Orochimaru that left him feeling trapped, breathless and unclean. The man had used him, abused him and he had allowed it to happen.

There were samples the snake sannin had taken, blood and tissue, and others that he had required Sasuke to provide. Shame and humiliation battled with rage for supremacy of his emotions at the moment as he remembered those sessions. Blindly he lashed out at something, anything in his frustration. His fist collided with one of the stone walls. Fortunately he had not chakra-infused the blow so the wall suffered no damage and only his knuckles were skinned and bruised.

Rubbing his injured fist with his other hand, having at least released some of his pent up frustration he tried to collect his thoughts and consider what he should do with his two prisoners.

Shikamaru Nara and Hinata Hyuuga. Two of his old friends from his Academy days were now imprisoned by his command. He had brought them to this remote location rather than to his current base of operations.

Seito's jutsu had seemed to prove effective - Karin had been surprised by his appearance - she had intended to lure him with her message but hadn't expected his response to be so swift. More importantly she did not appear to have even detected his presence until he had interfered with her plan to incapacitate and kidnap Hinata.

So Sasuke had chosen this location on a whim as he and Seito were traveling back with the two in tow. It was a series of caves in a mountain range midway between Konoha and his base. The caves had been home to Seito's clan before the majority of them had been defeated and dispersed in the Third Shinobi War. Seito had told him that the crystalline structure that formed the walls of the cave had been integral in molding his clan's chakra and developing their jutsu. The crystals generated a natural impedence for most chakra frequencies. Seito's clan, having developed in the shelter of the mountains had honed their skills in using that impedence to master the chakra-masking jutsu that could shield them so well. It had obviously been effective at deterring Karin this time.

When they had sped away from Konoha two days ago Sasuke had fully intended to take Hinata back to his base. But that presented its own set of problems - namely too many questions from curious underlings. He preferred to contain the damage of this scandal and to limit the number of people who had any idea why he had kidnapped the Hyuuga heiress.

That number was currently limited to one, probably two. He had not even revealed to Seito precisely why it was important they capture Hinata. But he suspected Shikamaru knew damn well what was going on.

There was the possibility he had acted in haste, he mused. Had his rage at discovering the truth of the preservation of his genetic samples clouded his judgment and had he been too quick to take Hinata? Perhaps she only intended to proceed with this abominable plan but had not yet started on it.

Grimly he realized there was clear evidence to refute that theory.

Karin had been there that night with the intention of taking Hinata claiming she had something she wanted. She would have only done so if she had known there was something for her to take.

His child.

A Uchiha child.

And Karin would know. She would have sensed the presence of a new chakra signature.

Hinata Hyuuga what have you done?