Enjoy!
Sasuke's first swing was a lazy one. He was watching his target with ponderous eyes—how would Hinata react? The tip of the blade, the sharpest piece of a long strip of refined metal, swiped through the air in a sweeping arch. Sasuke saw Hinata's head instinctively jerk backward, but her hair was left behind by the momentum—a few dark strands were clipped by the sword, the feathery tips separated from her head with a simple slice. Then he heard her gasp, the shrieking panic from the mouth of his unprepared 'opponent'.
Hinata stumbled backward, but she didn't fall—it was good that she didn't fall; promising, that is. Sasuke was quite glad that she didn't fall; it proved that she had potential. The thugs in the alley? They had each fallen right away. Sasuke went after her again with a second swing, watching her body contort in a terrified dance. Even as Sasuke held back immensely and presented the slowest of swings, he was still pushing the girl to her imagined limits. Here and there, the slashes caught fabric and hair, and upon the final swing of his initial volley, he easily stopped the blade against the surface of Hinata's fleshy throat—the steel was cold and solid, the blade so sharp that a hair's breadth of movement could have caused a cut into her neck.
Sasuke was stopped entirely, and so was she—the flurry of movement was already over after only a few brief practice swings. Hinata was panting, her body arched back; Sasuke's arm was extended forward to keep the tip of his weapon pressed to her throat dangerously. Frozen but gasping, Hinata was an interesting sight to see. Sasuke felt no guilt, despite the terror in Hinata's eyes—during their shared dinner, he had been the one to feel vulnerable and weak against her gaze. Combat, however, was his home territory. The girl with the beautiful eyes and quiet voice couldn't hold him back during battle. "Not bad..." Sasuke said at last, allowing the moment of stillness to simmer for a longer while. He drew the sword back from the smooth, pale throat of his suddenly-acquired student, then turned the blade back to its sheathe and slipped it inside with a sliding metallic groan. "But not good, either. You're rusty."
Hinata's chest was rising and falling in quick cycles, inadvertently showing off that she had become quite a developed woman, even through her jacket. She looked down at herself to assess the damage, seeing rips and cuts in her favorite garment, then she frowned toward Sasuke. "I-I wasn't ready," she said in her own defense, and while it was true she that she had been caught off guard, she inwardly seemed to think that it wouldn't have made a difference how ready she was.
"Ready or not, Hinata, your opponent is going to search for your weaknesses at all times. Let's go again." On the spot, Sasuke's blade was drawn a second time and he began another volley of practice swings. He was attentive to his reach—he was sure to only ever risk grazing her. He restricted himself to catching a strand of hair, or knicking a tiny hole in her loose jacket. He made a game of it; how many times could he allow the girl to feel the wind of his blade against her skin without also allowing the razor-like gusts to cut her? He was smirking as he went after her, pushing her back through the rubble of his ruined homeland. Eventually, as Hinata was being forced back, her feet lost stability and a chunk of rubble rolled out from beneath her, sending her backward. Sasuke watched carefully—would she let herself fall that time?
Hinata struggled with her balance, but the terrain was too uneven—the follow-up places her feet landed upon gave way just as easily as the first, and although she made a valiant effort, she eventually succumbed to the disjointed ground and hit the surface with the left of her hip. Sasuke took quick advantage of the opening and once again pressed his sword against her throat, nudging her backward until she was flat on her back with her arms helplessly spread. Sasuke chuckled once, his smirk plain on his mouth. "What do you think is my advantage over you, Hinata?"
She panted, extremely careful of her neck as she felt the tiniest touch of metal against a vital vein. Sasuke obviously took his training very seriously, and even though Hinata was scared out of her mind, she was also thankful for the intensity he had already shown her. With Ko, she had always felt like she was being babied, even before she had become stronger than he was. Even Neji had always held back a lot of his strength for her sake; she was often treated as fragile and weak, which dampened her ability to become strong. Weakness without adversity had a tendency to remain weak.
"What is my advantage, Hinata?" Sasuke repeated, pushing the tip of his blade closer. Hinata was leaning back as hard as she could. If she let up at all, her head would have been pushed up by the condensed rubble to slide her neck into the sharp sword, which would have possibly opened her skin to a flow of redness. Although Sasuke's reflexes could have probably allowed him to pull back if such a thing were to happen, Hinata was in no position to trust that assumption. And so she treated him like he was going to kill her if she made a single mistake, cowering on the ground as he pressed her further with his words: "Name my advantage."
"Y-you're just stronger than me, Sasuke," she whimpered out, careful of how her throat moved.
"No, that's not it. Right now I have something very specific that gives me power over you...give it a name." Sasuke tightened his grip on the handle of his weapon.
"I-is it y-your sword?" Hinata struggled, her hands gripping the ground beneath her and squeezing along a few loose rocks.
Sasuke gave a smirk; he seemed to approve of her attempt, though there may have been more to it. "That's a decent guess. My sword gives me reach; it allows me to cut you effortlessly. With that in mind, if you want to overcome me, then you'll need to overcome my advantages one at a time. First, remove the most crucial advantage."
"H-how?" Hinata squeaked, ever-wary of breathing a little bit too hard against the blade. Her whole body was weighted despite only her neck being pressed.
"Figure something out." Sasuke said in a monotone as he pulled his sword away from Hinata's neck. The freed girl gasped and shuddered. She looked like she was already regretting her choice to ask for training, but Sasuke could also see deeper. Past the regret, past the fear—she wasn't turning to run, she wasn't begging for him to hold back. Not yet, anyway. Her resolve was admirable, whether it proved to last much longer, or not. "Stand up. I'm going to come again. We're going to keep this up until you can remove an advantage from me, or until the sun goes down."
Hinata did as she was told and shakily began to stand. Again, she looked at her jacket and lamented the rips and openings in the material, plus the thickening layer of dust that had been kicked up by her falls against the broken rubble; the dirt was starting to gather on her clothes. The training field they were using was rather hazardous; chunks of sharp, twisted metal were poking up from the ruins and every step had the risk of collapsing the floor beneath her feet. She was gripping small stones in each hand and hadn't even realized it in her tension. When she at last stood up, her hands were still holding them tightly as if they could protect her. "Y-yes, Sasuke," she said with faux intensity. Her exterior had calmed, but her mind was shaking like a kite in a strong breeze. She raised her arms and took up a fighting stance. This time she told herself she was ready.
A few bright flashes of a sword later and she was beaten for a third time, staring up the length of an immaculately-forged blade from the ground, feeling its sting on her neckline just as before. Her former confidence was drained and her body was trembling just like her thoughts. He's not even trying, Hinata lamented as she gazed up at the cold, collected stare of her trainer. Her hands were useless again, her body timidly turned to stone by that single, pinpoint spot of contact. Again, the sword was pulled away and she was given a moment to collect herself.
Sasuke was unimpressed on the top layer, but beneath that he was glad to see that he was correct in his assumption. She did have potential—the problem was that she was scared, and the fear held her back even further than the Hyuuga girl herself could ever have realized. Sasuke put away his sword, declaring a momentary halt in their practice. "Hinata, sit down and take a breather," he instructed as he stood firm. The student gave a nod, breathing hard and falling harshly to the rocky debris beneath her. She kicked up a ring of gray smoke when she collapsed, her body swelling to take deep, solid breaths to keep herself from passing out. Sasuke stepped nearer to her and dipped down, bending his knees and balancing on the fronts of his feet. He laid an arm over his knee and steadied his head. "Are you afraid of me?" He looked into her.
Hinata was hesitant, but after a moment she gave a frightened little nod of her head. "Y-yes..." she admitted, though she didn't want to. She had thought about lying, but she had gotten a distinct sense that she couldn't have done so even if she tried.
"Why do I scare you, Hinata?" He asked further, keeping the same look on his face. Cold, stern, unimpressed.
"Because..." Hinata gulped down a lump in her throat. "Because of how easily you could kill me, if you wanted to." A nervous hand was playing with a string on her jacket, then she also played with the zipper. Her eyes were turned from Sasuke, finding the scattered plaster and pebbles to be soothing by comparison to the harsh stare.
"I'm not going to kill you, Hinata," he said with the typical coolness of his personality. It was hard to judge his sincerity on the surface, but he meant every word. "But others might want to. Don't let yourself be cripplingly afraid, but don't let your guard down either. Fear is dangerous, but so is fearlessness. A person's fears need to be balanced, otherwise mistakes are made; being too cowardly or too bold can each lead to bad things. You know that already, don't you?"
Hinata thought back to the moment of fearlessness that had nearly gotten her killed against Pain. Her left side hurt again, and she didn't know whether it was genuine physical pain or a psychological sensation. "I do, yes...I know that." She was catching her breath at last, and she allowed herself to look at Sasuke; she tried mightily to feel no fear of him—but it was always there, always tickling the sides of her nose. The sensation that he was a killer, or a monster; the knowledge that he was the terrifying final member of a legendarily evil clan. But despite everything her instincts told her, despite every clue and tidbit given to her by friends, family, and strangers alike, despite what she knew of his gruesome history, she still didn't think Sasuke was a bad person. "I'm glad that you're willing to help me...but why? Aren't you too strong to bother with someone like me?"
Sasuke gave a hmph, looking off to his side, then over his shoulder at the splayed uniform he had left behind. "Strength doesn't make me any better than the people around me. Nor does weakness make a person like you useless...Strength can be misused, and weakness can be overcome. The physical body is far from the most important thing when determining strength, anyway...Naruto was a weak kid at first; no talent at all...but he did incredible things even before he became as powerful as he is now. No matter how many times he was beaten down, or told to give it up, he was determined to fulfill his dreams." Sasuke then turned back toward Hinata with a piercing gaze. "What's your dream, Hinata? What is there to gain by training with me? If your reason is to win the tournament, then what do you want to prove by winning it?"
Hinata was propped back on her arms, shaky and quiet. She thought about the question, and she felt like any answer she could have given was going to be a dishonest one. Was it to prove her father wrong? No. Not at all. She was honestly over her father's disapproval; it was a constant thing in her life, not one worth struggling against. She had proven already, earlier that same day, that she didn't care about what Hiashi Hyuuga thought of her. Was it for Neji? Perhaps in a way, but not entirely. She wanted to prove herself worthy of his confidence, but at the same time she knew she had already proven herself to him during the war. She was strong then, and strong now. Did she want to live up to Sasuke's assurances? To prove that if she applied herself, she could be as strong as he thought she could? No. As fine as that would have been to say, it was just another dishonest cop-out. She found the real reason buried beneath nervous withholdings, but she stopped herself from saying it. And yet, when she tried to give a glossy, determined falsehood, she felt her throat dry up. Why couldn't she ever bring herself to lie to the dark-haired man about such personal questions?
Hinata swallowed worried saliva and rolled her tongue along the fronts of her teeth before answering truthfully: "I want Naruto to admire me. I want him to say good job. I want to be strong in his eyes, and I want him to know that I can be strong for him if he ever needs me..."
Sasuke perked a brow. On some level, he understood, but on another he felt the need to talk some sense into her fantasy. "Naruto is a one man army, now. No offense, but I don't think he's going to find himself relying on your combat strength any time soon."
Hinata shrugged her soft shoulders, leaning her head over to brush her cheek against the fluffy hood of her jacket. The way she tilted had her looking to the ground again. "I know, but...if he sees that I'm still strong, he might realize that he can come to me if he ever wants to. He's a one man army, but...he still might get lonely, or sad, or worried...I just want him to remember that I exist in case he does need somebody."
Sasuke sighed to himself, brushing his hand down his face and closing his eyes. It was his turn to collapse into the rubble, seating himself haphazardly amongst the dusty rocks. He felt some of the wind taken out of him—he had been doing a good job of making himself ignore the pain and irritation, but Hinata's wishful thinking had gotten him following the same stinging train of thought. "Yeah, well...it's good that you don't want him to get lonely, but he's got Sakura, now. The two of them are off together on their honeymoon. They're married, they're in love, and they don't need anybody else. Not you, nor me. They're probably touching noses and whispering romanticisms into one another's ears as we speak..." Sasuke then found himself smirking, his imagination wandering. "Or maybe they're not. Maybe they're arguing about something; say, maybe Sakura's sick of eating ramen for breakfast, lunch, and dinner..."
Hinata caught herself smiling softly, too, as she pictured the simple conflict that might have been brewing. She was starting to draw little lines in the dust around her thighs as she pondered. "But you heard her...she promised in her vows that she would feed him ramen, right?" She peeked over at Sasuke through a part in her drooping hair, wondering if he would smile or frown at the mention.
It was a frown, but then it morphed to a neutral kind of positivity—the new look was definitely not a frown for long, though it never became a smile, either. Still, there was an unspoken satisfaction in his eyes, a little bit of humorous acknowledgment peering through. "Maybe...but that was only on Thursdays. Right now, it's Monday. Naruto can be a surprisingly stubborn brat, but Sakura is probably the only person alive who will never let him get away with it..." Sasuke imagined Naruto sitting in a dining chair with a lump on his head, throbbing and red; the lump was left over from an argument with his new wife over where to eat dinner. Naruto would have probably insisted on ramen, and Sakura would have wanted to try something fancy; Naruto would have put up a fight, but he would have ultimately found himself eating whatever Sakura wanted. "Sakura Haruno is strong in every way," Sasuke said into the wind, then furrowed his brow and corrected himself. "Though, I suppose she's Sakura Uzumaki now."
"Yes," Hinata said in response, though Sasuke's comment wasn't initially pointed to her. "Sakura's a strong person, just like Naruto...and also like you. The Sixth Hokage must be so proud to know that you were all a part of his old team..."
"Sometimes I wonder about that, Hinata." Sasuke let it slip. He was doing it again—the confessions came so easily when that girl's ears were open to him that he failed to realize his own words as they manifested. He was saying things that he had never said to anybody. The girl whose name he had barely remembered was able to pry his shell apart so quickly, so easily. She didn't even seem to understand how difficult a task it should have been to see into him, and she smiled so harmlessly when he spoke his secret thoughts. Sasuke felt that he should have been more guarded, but he simply wasn't. "I wonder if Kakashi is proud of me. Maybe, in spite of everything, he would have preferred it if I had died during my attack on the Kage Summit, or maybe he would have been happy if Naruto had been able to kill me someplace else."
"I don't believe that," Hinata said without really knowing for sure. She didn't know the Sixth Hokage like Sasuke did, though her conversations with him always gave her a warm sensation. "Do you regret making the attack on the summit, Sasuke?" Hinata asked, curling her knees up and resting her chin on the combined platform of both legs.
"I regret a lot of things," Sasuke answered somewhat cryptically. "But there's no time to worry about those things now. We're supposed to be training, and you've got a long way to go." He stood himself up rather abruptly, doing the only thing he could do to protect himself from spilling his own guts to her. Hinata was so beautiful, so innocent, and so well-meaning—there were so many good things about her that he couldn't begin to ignore. She unintentionally compelled him to answer every concern she had...unless, of course, he was actively swinging a deadly sword at her. And so he drew his weapon and quickly slashed it toward Hinata yet again to clear his head. Combat was something—perhaps the only thing—that Sasuke could take lasting comfort in.
Hours passed, and the sun was quickly shifting out of its position to dip behind the horizon. The sky began to turn to the initial phases of orange and indigo, and the lighting across their isolated, ruined part of the village was starting to dim to the point of being difficult to see through. It hardly bothered Sasuke, with eyes so keen that nothing could deter his perfect sight—Hinata, however, was losing her touch despite the incredible visual acuity of her own special eyes. Sasuke was still rushing her down with testing sword swings on the regular, consistently careful to avoid hurting her even when she made a misstep. To the teacher, it was all a dance—he needed to rehearse the moves with his partner until the rhythm could be found. He held himself back on an immeasurable scale, yet he was perfectly tuned to her capabilities, just narrowly surpassing what he thought she was capable of. "You're slowing down," Sasuke commented on the tail end of yet another skirmish. He still held his sword tight, and for the fortieth time that day he was pinning the girl down on her back with just the very tip of his blade on her collar.
"I'm getting tired," Hinata said strenuously to answer him; she was panting hard, her body near its limit as sweat ran mercilessly down her forehead, cheeks, and neckline. Her hair was caked with dust and her fingernails were filthy from grabbing loose gravel and dirt time and time again. Once the sword was taken off of her throat, she rubbed her neck and felt how hot her skin had become. The sun was going down, so the air was growing ever-so-slightly cooler, and yet she continued to get warmer. She stood, finally deciding that her jacket was no good for their sparring.
The cloth had been knicked and rumpled more times than she could count during the lengthy training session. She brought her hand up to the zipper, slowly drawing it down as the uncomfortable weakness of her muscles nearly stopped her. Eventually, she split the lavender-and-white garment down the middle and shrugged it off of her shoulders, revealing the plain white top without sleeves that lurked beneath. She had no reason to wear the heavy, chain-mesh underlayer that she once had—the cotton tank top was enough.
Sasuke watched the outer layer come away, and he took a second to hold his breath and prevent his gut reaction. As Hinata's arms came free from wrist to shoulder and her neckline dipped a bit lower than he was used to, Sasuke was again taken aback by admiration of her undeniable attractiveness. He may not have been worn out from activity—not the same way Hinata was—but he was beginning to sweat along his forehead all the same. He talked quickly, trying to avoid letting his mouth hang uselessly open in stunned silence. "If you're too tired to be at your best, then there's not much else we can do tonight." He was starting to sheathe his sword, but he paused when the exhausted young woman answered him in puzzlement.
"Tonight...?" Hinata started like she was confused, but then she looked to the sky and realized how much time had passed. "Oh, it's so late already..." she muttered, wiping her arm across her head and untangling her hair with slender fingers. Whipping winds and a dozen sword-slashes had made the cut of her hair uneven; she would probably need to restyle it later on. She felt along the frizzing, deep blue threads and frowned at just how badly the near-misses of Sasuke's sword had ruined her locks. Still, despite all the wear and tear from inside to outside, Hinata wasn't quite ready to give up. She shakily stood, her legs feeling unreliable as she found footing on loose rubble. It hadn't really stricken her, yet, that they were training in the harsh ruins of the Uchiha district. On some level she recognized the location, but the implications were lost on her. "It's so late," she started a second time, now bringing her arms up to ready herself for combat again. "But I still haven't gotten the sword out of your hand. Give me one more try."
Sasuke gave a shrug of both shoulders, reaching his arm out to extend his sword, holding it level with the ground. He looked down the narrow shaft of the weapon, gazing upon Hinata at the end of its reach. As he watched her, she was clearly unable to see straight—her Byakugan had been used a lot already, and the limit of her endurance had been reached more than an hour earlier. Still, she persisted. Sasuke applauded her determination in the depths of his mind, but outwardly he put on a display as the unfeeling demon that needed to be conquered. An early audition for the part he was to play for the tournament. "One more try...but are you sure that it's the sword you need to be focusing on?" Sasuke asked her offhandedly.
Hinata paused. She had been preparing to charge, but the question stopped her flat. "Didn't you say that the sword was your advantage...?"
Sasuke hummed. "I said that it was a good guess, but I never said it was the correct guess. My blade is an advantage, but it's not the most crucial advantage I have."
"Then what is it...?" Hinata questioned, her stance relaxing slightly as she let the uncertainty wash over her. She ran a hand down an arm, wiping up the sweat that had gathered and flicking it onto the ground. She looked to her discarded jacket and frowned toward the cuts through its surface. There were more than she expected. "What's your best advantage, Sasuke?"
Sasuke looked at her, and looked at her closely—half to study her condition, and the other half to drink up the details of her form. Though he had constantly tried to deny it, he was very much a male and very interested in women; Hinata just so happened to be among the most beautiful women he had ever seen, as well. He tried not to let her thin cotton shirt distract him with the way it laid upon her torso and chest, but it was difficult to avoid stray thoughts. He resigned to examining her from afar under the guise of training purposes. "I can see your muscles shaking; you're tired now, but they were trembling long before that. The most crucial advantage isn't my blade by itself—it's your fear of the blade. You've been so focused on avoiding the cuts that you haven't noticed the openings I've been leaving after each swing. You back away when you should close in. You have stronger eyes than most—use them to seek out opportunities to counter me."
Hinata listened to every word, but she scowled a little bit. Sasuke had made it sound so easy, but her thoughts told the truth. She didn't dare speak her doubts aloud, for fear of making her new mentor think less of her: My eyes can see it all...but he's just too fast for me. I won't be able to get close enough to him before he swings again; backing up is all I can do...It's hopeless. She spoke up, but she altered the message of her thoughts slightly before she did. "I think that I need to be faster before I'll stand a chance against you..."
Sasuke shook his head and straightened his hold upon his sword's hilt. "No—I've been paying attention to your movements, and I'm not moving too fast for you...the issue isn't that you're too slow, it's that you don't want to take the risk of being too slow." Sasuke performed a faster swing with his sword through the warm evening air, though Hinata wasn't in range of it. Still, the timid student tensed when the sound of hissing wind reached her ears and her arms came up defensively. Sasuke tsked. "You feel it, don't you? That sinking feeling is fear, and its pedestal is uncertainty. You're capable of more than you think, but I'm not the one who can convince you of that. Go home, get rested, shake off the rust, think long and hard about your self-doubt, then come back tomorrow at noon and take your next try."
Hinata blinked. "B-but...I asked for one more chance right now." She took a step forward, and her features shook a little bit from the neck down. Rubble shifted beneath her feet and she clenched her hands into small fists. "Don't send me home yet..."
Sasuke gave a nod, then he laid the tip of his sword deep into the craggy ground beside his foot. "Fine, but we're taking a step back. You're not quite ready for this level of training. It's my fault, really; I misjudged your condition." With a single hand he deftly untied the lacing of his sheathe, taking it away from his leathery black belt. He tossed the sheathe into the air, then retrieved his sword and slipped the blade into its tube as the casing fell back downward. With his sword sheathed but free from his belt, he brought the hilt to his mouth, then busied himself with tying the strap of the scabbard around the edge guard of the blade. With the knot secured, Sasuke loosened his toothy grip on the wide hilt and grabbed the sword at its base. "There. No more blade, which should mean no more fear." He swung the blunt weapon to test it, and the secure knot held the sword and sheathe together. There wasn't even a rattle of looseness. "If you can abolish your fear, then you should be able to knock this weapon out of my hand."
Hinata swallowed her objections, deciding instead to take the situation exactly as it was. "Okay, Sasuke..." she complied, though she still hadn't quite convinced herself that the training had been a good idea. She had spent half of the day lying on her back and praying not to be cut open. "I'm ready." She activated her Byakugan and then took a slow, deep breath to prepare. Sasuke charged at her with his blunted implement as soon her permission got to his ears. As before, his pace was slow and deliberate in his own eyes, but to Hinata the rounded slices may as well have been the ceaseless strikes of an enraged cobra. She bobbed and weaved, using her astute vision to take in the entirety of her surroundings. Without the fear of death at the tip of Sasuke's sword, she felt minutely more at ease—she was still panicked by his unrelenting pace, but was conversely soothed by the lowered stakes. She had the freedom to focus on other things, rather than the lethality of the sword. Still, she wasn't able to make the decisive move.
Sasuke's dance was paced and rehearsed, a ballet with direction and flow, giving Hinata all of the proper openings to deal with his assault, and waiting long enough for her to exploit his intentional flaws if she put forth the effort. He aimed a cut along the line of her shoulders, which she ducked below; next, a vertical slice which she side-stepped with a pirouette. He followed with a low cut, trying to sweep her ankles out from under her; she hopped deftly over it. She was making all of the right defensive motions, but there was still the crippling fear that slowed her retaliations by a half-step or more. It wasn't just the sword, Sasuke had realized. It wasn't a fear of him at all, despite his initial impressions. Mid-swing, Sasuke stopped his rounded sheathe an inch away from striking Hinata on the elbow, and instead he gave her a mild tap on the edge of her bone as if to signify that the session was over. "Stop doubting yourself," Sasuke said calmly when she froze in place after the sensation of contact.
Hinata had felt the thump against her funny bone, wincing a little bit despite its soft touch. It almost hurt more to know that it had been halted yet still managed to catch her so easily despite the fact that she had never consciously slowed herself down. "I don't doubt myself..." Hinata said, but she ironically began to doubt the truth of those very words as soon as they were in the wild.
"You do," Sasuke said pointedly. "You came to me for training, and that's great...but training isn't going to do you any good if you don't believe that you can become stronger. To become stronger, you need to give everything. You need to break through your limits. Against an opponent like me, or the opponents you'll be facing in the tournament, you can't afford to hold back."
Hinata gasped a little bit. "You think I'm holding back...?" She felt a bead of sweat roll across her cheek.
"I know you are, even if you don't realize it." Sasuke revealed, taking a step closer and beginning to re-tie his sword to his waist. "And I think I know why."
"Can that happen...? Holding back without knowing it?" Hinata pondered, and although she was tempted to take a step backward from Sasuke's advance, she held firm.
Sasuke gave a slow nod, then shook his head to clear the wild hair from his face. "You told me at dinner that you felt like you weren't good enough...You said that you gave everything you had for Naruto, but he never appreciated you in the way you wanted him to. So you're afraid, aren't you, Hinata? Afraid that giving your all still won't be enough to get you where you want to be. You're so afraid of being inadequate that you won't risk giving your all anymore—because what if it's still not enough? If you hold back, at least you can cling to the secret pleasure of knowing you could have still given a bit more..." With his sword held against his belt, Sasuke reached for his handkerchief somewhere in the pouch dangling over his shoulder. He had been encumbered and overdressed throughout the training day, but not a single movement had been anything beneath perfection. He wiped along the exhausted girl's cheek with the white cloth, mirroring the way he had cleaned a tear from her on a previous occasion. Sasuke watched Hinata's face; he saw the way her eyes drooped half-closed, felt the way her cheek subconsciously leaned into the gentle caress of cloth and fingers. Sasuke realized that the effect he could have on her was a lot like the effectshe had on him. The thought excited him, though his face remained frustratingly neutral. Without even cracking a smile, he delivered his point: "Believe me, Hinata—if you try your hardest, then you will always get what you aspire to."
The girl was enthralled by the touch on her cheek; not only was she grateful for the cloth's ability to soak up the annoying, heavy sweat, but it reminded her instantly of the wedding night—a time where such a simple touch had meant the entire world to her. Two days, it had been, but the gap there had felt like two months. She didn't want him to take his hand away, but he did after he finished speaking. She felt his touch and heard his words and the two stimuli seemed to come together as an entirely new sensation, a grip upon her very soul that sought to shake her out of the last reserves of her depression as hard as could be. "T-thanks, Sasuke," she mumbled out, looking to the ground as usual when she tried to hide the horrible redness of her blush—the burning heat of her exhaustion already covered it up, but she didn't want to take the chance. "I can tell that you really think so, but...if I don't feel like I'm holding back...what can I ever do to stop holding back?"
Sasuke gave a hum. "Only you can figure it out in the end; the only advice I can give you is to acknowledge your limitations, but don't settle for them. Avoid telling yourself that you're not fast enough, not strong enough, or not intelligent enough to do something. If you can't find a way to trust yourself yet, then trust me when I say that you can be fast enough to counter me at the pace I'm going." With his sword put away and the sun all but vanished behind the village beyond, Sasuke closed his eyes. "We'll start up again tomorrow. I have a few things I should do tonight."
Hinata gave a nod, a skeptical but real nod. "A-alright...thank you again, Sasuke. For helping me, I mean...I know there are more important things for you to do than think about my problems...so please take this." She moved over to her jacket, carefully kneeling down to dig through the pockets and fish out a few leaves of money, offering them up to Sasuke with fatigue-weighted arms.
Shaking his head and hand, Sasuke refused the offered payment. "That's not necessary. Actually, this has been my pleasure so far, Hinata."
Holding the money out for another moment, Hinata felt shy beneath those words of Sasuke's. His pleasure; that meant that he was enjoying himself, or at least he said he was. "R-really?" she blurted with disbelief, but then she took her chance to divert from her vulnerable, wide-eyed stupor and asked the question she had been sitting on since she had come across him hours earlier: "Sasuke...what were you doing out here when I found you?"
Sasuke automatically looked over his shoulder again, spotting the somewhat-distant layout of his father's old Police Force uniform. During his various skirmishes with Hinata, he had wandered away from his old home and the memories that he had dug up. Looking at it all from afar gave him a few seconds of clarity. "I came here to think about something, that's all. Don't worry about it. Focus on how you're going to surpass yourself." He took his attention away from the nagging memories and put his sights on Hinata. "You're pretty worn out...will you be able to make it home alright?"
Hinata paused for a moment; Sasuke was offering to walk her home? That was what it seemed like. Did she want him to? She nodded her head after a moment, though she wasn't really sure of her own feet anymore. "I'm alright, yes...I'll leave you to your thoughts." She wobbled a bit when she took her first step, but she started trying to leave the broken district behind anyway. She felt even more broken down than she had realized. She hadn't taken many hits, but her muscles had been stressed more than she was accustomed to. Whether Sasuke had believed that she held back or not, her body didn't seem to think so. She stumbled, and right when she thought she was going to hit the ground, she was caught by an arm against her stomach, held out like a tree branch to cushion her fall and keep her on her feet.
"Careful," Sasuke whispered from a few inches away. Wind followed him, rustling Hinata's stingy hair as Sasuke's fingers spread apart to balance the sagging weight of Hinata's core around her bellybutton. He could feel her body relax as her fatigue set in; the adrenaline built by her training had been used up, and Sasuke knew that Hinata wasn't quite as fit to make the journey as she thought she was. "Why don't I take you home?"
Hinata writhed a little, feeling the heat of his fingers against her torso and shivering with the sensation of being held up by his strength alone. And there was the warmth of his voice that reached her ear through her hair, the supportive concentration of the Uchiha's gaze as he looked upon her...she felt shapeless for a moment; Sasuke could have molded her into anything he wanted for that fleeting few seconds, but she collected herself well enough to stand upright and step away from his intoxicating hand. She exhaled and looked to the sky rather than face Sasuke. "I-I'll be fine," she said again. She took another step, though she wasn't exactly sure what she was trying to prove. The ground was uneven and her legs were tired, but she painstakingly made sure that her footing was solid for each step. "Home isn't very far away..." she assured herself while pretending to assure Sasuke. "I'll see you tomorrow."
Sasuke allowed her to escape his grip, but he watched her with a sort of tilted curiosity. He could see even without his Sharingan that her movements were unwieldy and strange; she was legitimately weak after all that time trying to fight against him, as well as against herself. Sasuke wanted to insist on taking her home, but if she, for some personal reason, needed to carry her own limping body all the way home, then he was going to let her do it—nobody ever got weaker from doing a little bit of extra pushing, right? He pulled out of the debate before it began. "Fair enough; take care until next time, then. I'll be waiting for you at noon." Sasuke gave a half-hearted wave of his arm as Hinata found her way out of the ruinous region. She vanished from his sight and he gave a sigh. The fighting had kept his nerves calm, but there was still an odd sensation to his heartbeat, like he had been nervous all along just like before. Sasuke wondered if he would ever get used to being near that woman; she was such an oddity, in such a pleasant fashion. He had never quite felt that way before—not even around Sakura.
With Hinata stubbornly carrying herself home, Sasuke had been left to his own devices. He had gathered up all of the things which he had ventured to retrieve from his home, and he carried them all under his arm and into a populated part of town. He heard the whispers as he walked, various judgements and misconceptions about him. Despite the lack of welcome, he wasn't ashamed to be there; he took up as much space as anybody else when he walked and his head was held high. He was sometimes trying to teach himself some humility to offset his age-old, inherited pompousness, but he couldn't bring himself to stand aside for anyone. That said, most of the people who recognized him also kept a wide bubble open for him to walk through. Each step Sasuke took seemed to part the crowded streets as he forged a path to his destination—a small, unassuming apartment building far from the wealthier parts of town.
As he traveled and the time of day grew later, Sasuke's keen hearing was starting to pick up murmurs of wrongdoings, whispers of planned robberies and of illegal fight clubs. As the potential property values decreased around him, so did the savoriness of the populace. The village used to be prosperous from top to bottom, but it had only taken a few short years for the economy to wring itself out and for the poor to congregate around one particularly seedy part of the town. In particular, the refugees from other villages, places that had been destroyed by the Juubi, were taking up a lot more space and resources than initially planned. The poor district was a small, rotten corner near an outside wall of Konoha, but if left alone the decay was likely to spread. Naturally, Sasuke parked himself at the center of that decay to keep an eye on it, especially as he considered the implications of his new potential job.
Konoha definitely needs a stronger police force, Sasuke thought to himself. But I don't know if I'm the one who should try to make it happen. As he debated with himself, he reached his destination; it was a place he had seen before from his perch high atop the Hokage Monument; a dark place that seemed to prefer it that way. He knocked on the door of the apartment building's landlord, a small shack separate from the building but within its property lines. The man who answered the knock was rubbing his eyes like he had been awoken from sleep, and Sasuke addressed the balding middle-aged gentleman in a bathrobe with simple, practical words. "Put me in your cheapest vacancy right away. I'll pay for two weeks upfront."
The older man wiped a cloth over his head—he had sweat beading along his baldness and his eyes were a bit mismatched, like the sockets didn't quite line up right on his skull. "Nah, I don't take more than a week at a time..." he said in a grumble as he eyed Sasuke from top to bottom. "Y'look a bit fancy t'be here, don'tcha?"
Sasuke hummed. "I'd rather be in a place where I won't draw a lot of attention from...certain parties, if you get my meaning." An intentionally vague answer; testing the waters. There was no recognition in the man's uneven eyes; Sasuke in his travel cloak was rather unremarkable to non-shinobi, so long as his eyes remained inactive.
The owner of the building shrugged. "Fine. Still only takin' a week's worth from ya. I take more'n that, I'm liable ta get robbed around here." He held a greasy palm out, and Sasuke produced a quick lump of cash—too much for a week in a place like that one, but the Uchiha lad had already been paid too much for his job and had been told to pay it forward. "Thankya," the suspicious-looking landlord huffed, folding the cash into his pocket and turning to fetch a key from a rack on the wall unseen behind the door frame. "Seven's all yours, kid. Got a bed an' a shower, not much else." He tossed the key, which Sasuke caught. "Don't cause trouble, eh?" he grumbled as he shut the door.
Sasuke looked at the small key, a dirty brass trinket with a sloppy '7' etched onto the head of it. He turned from the closed door after hearing the owner lock no fewer than three separate bolts and levers; security seemed to be an issue around there. A part of the newest tenant's mind wanted somebody to try to rob the place—even though he had said that he didn't want to be noticed, his true intention for choosing such a rocky segment of the village was to get into—and subsequently stop—as much trouble as possible. Sasuke left it in Kakashi's hands to repair the economy...but until that happened, there were quite a few crimes in the works that could use a thrashing. Sasuke hated to give any credit to the madman, but Danzo Shimura and his Root organization used to be quite efficient at dealing with threats from within—once that organization was properly dissolved, the fledgeling criminal underground naturally fell into the grooves it left behind. Unseen, unheard of, but very much thriving in its unchecked secrecy.
Though the natural-born residents of Konoha were burning with the Will of Fire and tried to maintain the peace, the same couldn't be said for those who had been welcomed into the walls under dire, forced circumstances. The population of Konoha was growing too quickly; a few bad apples tended to slip through the cracks, and when they did, good apples found themselves corrupted by proximity. The tournament was coming, and it would certainly take some of the edge off...but only some.
The apartment building was plain; the doors were all outside. There was no interior hallway, just a sequence of stairs and outdoor balconies with a few dozen doors dotting the outer walls. Sasuke found his new 'home' on the ground floor and opened the door with his key. The secondary latch was half-broken, sagging down when he swung the entrance wide; the loose latch clicked annoyingly against the crackled wood as it swung back and forth. Just about every single building in Konoha was fewer than four years old, thanks to the large-scale rebuild project, but even so a building with poor maintenance could go south in short order. What Sasuke saw when he entered his box-shaped room was definitely the result of poor maintenance. The bed was clean and tidy, but the walls already had small cracks running through; even compared to Naruto and Sakura's modest, cramped apartment, Sasuke's new abode was genuinely tiny. Two steps took him to the bed, and three took him to the shower that was part of the same room with nothing but a curtain and a slightly-raised square of tiles to separate its little alcove from the rest of the place; water damage was evident on the wooden floor immediately encompassing the shower and there was the slightest aroma of mildew coming from someplace. Beside the flat, single-person bed was a waist-high set of drawers that doubled as a nightstand; the 'apartment' was more like a cheap motel room, but Sasuke didn't mind. All he needed was a roof, and anything else was a bonus.
Sasuke set down his meager few belongings, folding up and tucking the items he took from his old home into one of the empty drawers—his father's uniform, his mother's old shirt, and the single mostly-intact dinner plate that he found. Memories of his old life, a life he could no longer have but refused to forget. The thoughts attached to those items were the only memories that made him feel like he was at home in an alien village. Sasuke undressed himself after unloading his haul, peeling off his travel cloak and the shirt beneath and then readying himself for a shower by ridding himself of the remainder of his trappings as well. He stepped beyond the curtain and turned one of the knobs attached to the pipe leading to the showerhead. Despite the cracked walls and water damage in his cheap apartment, the plumbing seemed fairly decent—the water was hot and clean when it came down upon his head, and its flow was plentiful enough to wash several days' worth of dirt out of his hair and away from his forehead. A bar of complementary soap sat on a ledge, which he used gratuitously. It had been a criminally long time since his last long, enjoyable shower—and although the alcove it occupied was a cramped little space, it was a tremendously satisfying experience nonetheless.
Sasuke had heard many times that Konoha was nothing without its people—and to him, even considering his former teammates, there were no people in the village worth staying for, so Konoha should have been nothing to him...right? Wasn't that what he believed? If so, then why was he thinking about the swaying violet again?
Hinata made it home in one piece, though by the time she had walked into her room she felt like she had gone deaf as a lingering side-effect of her complete exhaustion. So much of her strength had been drained during her training that she couldn't even tell if anybody had said hello to her when she first walked in and discarded her footwear at the front door. Before she knew it, she was in her bed at the wrong orientation, laying on her back with her head hanging over one side and her knees bent over the other with her toes touching the floor. Her arms were splayed out to either side, and her hair was touching along the wood beneath her—in some places, that is. In the other places around her locks, her strands had been shortened too much by Sasuke's blade. As she felt the comfort of her mattress mold around her hips, back, and shoulders, she started to regain some of her senses. It was then that she heard the knock at her door, and she shook her head to clear her mind. "Who is it...?" she weakly called, then cleared her throat and repeated herself more clearly.
"It's me, sis!" Hanabi whispered through the wooden slab. "Are you alright? You didn't say anything when you came in..."
"I'm fine," Hinata groaned quietly. She tried to flex her abdomen and stand herself up, but she had done about as much as she possibly could have done just by dragging herself that far in the first place. She should have just allowed Sasuke to help her home, but she had gotten a bit more aware of being seen with him as a combination of Hanabi's 'date' assumption and Kiba's strange protectiveness. She was actually glad to have found Sasuke in the empty part of the outskirts of the village, with not a soul around to see them. She realized after a few stray wonderings that Hanabi was still outside of her room; probably still asking questions, but accidentally getting ignored. "How did your training with Father go today?" Hinata asked as if to pretend she hadn't spaced out, hoping it might have fit whatever was being said.
Hanabi's voice talked as a muffle through the door. "It was fine, I guess...You sound a bit strange; are you gonna let me in?" she asked, rattling the locked doorknob.
Hinata groaned again, trying to stand. It was no use, really; her muscles were tapped out. She wanted to let her sister in, but it was all but impossible for her to do it. "I-I'd kind of just like to go to bed...I'll talk to you in the morning, alright...?" she struggled to say, fighting the urge to fall asleep since the moment she had touched softness.
Hanabi sulked outside, sighing and thumping sloppily against the door. Hinata imagined that her younger sister was laying her whole self against the oaken barrier, as if she was trying to melt through it with her body alone. "Fine...goodnight," Hanabi said when she relented after a moment. Hinata heard small footsteps leaving, and then she didn't hear anything else. She fell asleep in just the same position as she had fallen into; she was probably going to wake the next morning with a wicked crick in her neck, but she barely had time to think about it before her vision blackened and she began to dream.
Hope you liked it! This one took a bit longer because I'm still fighting some mild sickness; mostly I've just felt tired. I'd wake up for 3 hours, write a little bit, then pass out again. I hope this was a good chapter for you all; I tried to give it my best, but feel free to let me know if I sucked =P
As always, thanks for reading and I'll see you again soon.