"I told you not to do this!" Jiraiya yelled, slamming his fist onto the desk. "I told you not to go bringing anyone back to life!" Hinata stiffened when he turned to her. Genuinely-angry Jiraiya was a little bit scary. "You were with him and you didn't think this would be a bad idea?"
"I thought what I was witnessing was necrophilia, to be honest." Who kissed a corpse? Seriously, who did that? Ew!
Naruto rolled his eyes at her, and she made a gagging noise in response.
"Do you ever think about the consequences of your decisions?" Jiraiya finally stopped yelling.
Hinata was pretty sure Naruto thought about the consequences of his decisions all the time, and that was one of the reasons she hadn't gotten laid yet, so she really didn't appreciate this push to be more responsible. Particularly since now she was almost definitely unable to become pregnant, so an oopsie-baby wasn't even an obstacle here.
"I killed him."
Whoa, wrong thing to say.
"You killed him in the line of duty, it was him or you, you - !"
"Jiraiya-sama."
Jiraiya stiffened and turned to the door. Hinata watched Naruto take several deep breaths. He looked very shaken, and she couldn't blame him. Jiraiya hadn't ever gotten this mad at either of them before.
Danzo Shimura, the Hokage stand-in, entered slowly, leaning on his cane. "You were discussing something?"
"...The revival of Gaara of the Sand." If Jiraiya had said it through his teeth, it couldn't have been said more reluctantly.
"Ah. Well, I don't see that any harm has yet come of it."
The Toad Sage's face closed off completely. Naruto looked shocked. "You're...not mad?"
"Not at this instance, no. Don't misunderstand me, Chuunin Uzumaki," Danzo fixed one stern eye on Naruto, "Do not ever use such an ability so rashly ever again, especially if you do not know the consequences."
"...Which are?" Hinata asked, finally chipping in.
Danzo's eye on her made her skin crawl. Nothing about him seemed inappropriate or leering, but his quiet observation of her… Nothing else had made her feel so inhuman before. Even in the hospital, being hooked up to machines to measure the oxygen in her blood and testing her to see if she was fertile or not, she felt like a patient. Right now, in front of him, she felt like an experiment.
"Demonic contracts, such as the one made by you - " Danzo shifted his attention to Naruto and Hinata felt a weight come off her shoulders, " - with Gaara require an exchange. What did you offer him in return?"
Naruto turned red. "I planned to offer him a place to stay," 'Excuse me?' "And, you know, a second chance."
"You planned to? But you don't remember?"
Usually she'd watch the blush tint his ears and think about how cute it was but she most definitely was not feeling it right now. Offer whom a place to stay? And, uh, when was she going to be notified of this?
"No, not quite."
Danzo's expression didn't change. "You have weaknesses, Chuunin Uzumaki. They can be exploited. And it would at least do to remember what you've traded away to cover your bases in the future."
"I'm sorry."
Jiraiya muttered something along the lines of "Oh, he gets a 'sorry'..." but no-one paid him any mind.
"Now, for security reasons, we are going to, once again, subject you to the Yamanaka jutsu to recall what, exactly, you offered Gaara. This is non-negotiatable," Danzo stated.
"I understand."
"And, assuming what you offered wasn't too off the mark, we can accommodate him here in Konoha. He is more than likely to be useful during this time."
Naruto hesitated, "I offered Gaara a second chance. He was already used as a killing machine once - "
"I was there for the invasion, Uzumaki-san, I know how well Suna's plan regarding a child mercenary went the first time," Danzo said. Naruto turned even pinker. "Rest assured, you'll be able to see him and we'll look after his mental health carefully, jinchuuriki or not. Is that to your satisfaction?" Naruto nodded his head quickly.
"Next is the matter of your training. I believe you have been working with Yamato Nadeshiko so far to learn to control your new demonic chakra?"
"Yes." Naruto straightened. Hinata guessed that he was glad to finally have someone talking about it and not avoiding the conversation - people seemed to be really stingy with their answers to things like 'How the hell can I bring people back to life?' and 'Is there a limit to the amount of times Hinata can survive being beaten to death or burnt alive before she actually kicks it?'. It was frustrating her, too, but it she really wished it wasn't Danzo giving them answers.
"I'm disturbed that you haven't yet learned how to recall enough of yourself to remember what happens during your making contracts. I assume this means that other demonic abilities are similarly unworkable?"
"I didn't know I had other demonic abilities."
Oohh, Jiraiya was ma-a-ad…
"I hadn't introduced them yet," the Toad Sage said hotly.
"But you were planning on it?"
"Definitely."
She doubted that, and, quite obviously, so did Naruto.
"I see. Well, in that case, there's not much more for me to say, other than when you were planning on leaving." Why had he looked at Naruto when he said that?
"In two weeks."
"You're leaving?" Naruto raised an eyebrow.
"We're leaving."
This time she said it out loud. "Excuse me?"
"I don't remember talking about this," Naruto raised an eyebrow.
"I was going to bring it up this morning, but I was sidetracked by someone's reckless decision."
'You and me, both,' she thought.
"I am not intended to be the Hokage permanently, you see," Danzo explained, "Jiraiya believes he knows a suitable replacement. You will be going with him to retrieve her."
Naruto gaped. "I have a job. I have rent."
"The endeavor is an important one, you will be compensated," the one-eyed man said smoothly.
"And how long is it gonna take?" Hinata asked.
Everyone looked at each other.
Oh, she did not like that silence.
"I think around three months," Jiraiya said finally.
"Three months?" Naruto hissed. 'There, see, that's the appropriate reaction to a sudden unexpected life upheaval. Now where do you think I am on the whole 'the twelve-year-old who tried to kill you moving in with us' thing?'
"Possibly more, but it's unlikely."
"And we don't get a say in this?" Hinata asked.
Jiraiya seemed to consider it for a moment, then shook his head. "I'd go alone, but three months away from the village with no-one else around is an excellent opportunity for more intense training where we don't have to worry about civilian safety and property damage."
Because God forbid they have to consider things like safety and property damage.
The ludicrosity of it was making her head whirl, but even more worrying: one look at Naruto's face told her he was sold. Anything for training.
Danzo excused himself, Jiraiya talked a bit more about when they would leave, and Hinata angrily avoided her boyfriend's gaze for the whole ten minutes they stayed in that room.
[-M-]
"Okay, so you're mad."
Shino raised an eyebrow.
"I couldn't stop him! He's not completely trained yet, you know that!"
Shino's dango stayed at his feet, attracting ants. Now that it was on the ground, Akamaru wouldn't have anything to do with it.
"And, anyway, it's not like I told him to grab it from you!"
A short distance behind his teammate, Shino could spot a familiar girl walking their way, hands far in her pockets, doing a good imitation of a stormcloud. He ignored Kiba as she neared, instead calling out a "Hello," in her direction.
She looked up. She was pretty. He could see Kiba's point there, though his teammate hadn't actually said anything about it. He didn't need to. It was written all over his pheromones.
Kiba turned red when he saw her. His pheromones, and his face.
"Hey. Shino, right?" She remembered him? That was unprecedented. "And, uh, Inuzuka...Kiba? I'm sorry, I might've forgotten your first name." Oh, he liked her.
"Kiba," his teammate agreed with as much shyness as he was capable of. "Have some dango with us!"
"-I couldn't."
"Please do. Kiba's paying. Why? Akamaru has knocked my food out of my hand for the second time this week."
She laughed. Kiba's face turned redder, but he went along with it, "I'm ordering you one anyway, so you'd better join us!"
"Well, uh, okay. But you guys've gotta let me pay you back with tea sometime." She sat down on the bench with them and scratched Akamaru behind the ears.
Shino knew Kiba didn't like tea and was probably already dreading the promised tea from the pretty girl, so he was even more impressed when the Inuzuka came back from inside the shop with a pot to wash down their sweets with.
"Ooh, that looks great. I didn't really eat a big breakfast." At the reminder of her morning, her face again faded into a slight gloom which even Kiba sensed.
"Did something happen?"
"It's nothing. My boyfriend and I are fighting, but that's not unusual. Just ask my teammates."
Shino thought he could hear Kiba's heart breaking in half. In an effort to draw her attention away from his comrade's kicked-puppy face, Shino dropped a napkin in front of her; she bent to get it and he thanked her, apologizing for the inconvenience.
Kiba ingested a whole stick of danzo in a fit of comfort-eating before asking, "What're you fighting about?"
"He…" she scoffed, "He was gonna invite someone to live with us without asking me first."
That was...very rude.
Kiba expressed a similar thought, using the F-word.
She laughed, "Yeah, that's how I feel! Anyway, it's not gonna happen now, so I guess it doesn't matter. I'm still mad, though."
"That is understandable." Particularly by Kiba, who looked ready to confront the unknown boyfriend right this second. Shino dropped his napkin for the second time and gave his teammate a deliberate look over her head when she bent to pick it up for him again. Kiba rolled his eyes.
"Anyway," she said, taking a stick of dango, "Tell me about what you guys've been up t - " Akamaru's snout closed over the round sweets, Hinata let go of them in surprise and, once again, perfectly good dumplings were on the ground.
"Akamaru! How could you do that? That wasn't yours!" Kiba scolded, volume more than making up for his inaction when the same had been done to Shino ten minutes ago. Apparently, Shino needed breasts to elicit this sort of reaction from the dog owner when his sweets were compromised.
Hinata laughed and Kiba apologized and the two started on a conversation about Akamaru's misbehavior while the Aburame finally got to eat.
[-M-]
"So, uh...cozy place ya got here…"
Sasuke glared at Naruto over no less than seven bouquets of flowers and two fruit baskets. He could tell from the way the blond was sucking his lips in that he was trying hard to hold back a laugh. And he guessed it was laughable: a sprained wrist and a stab wound for being careless got him half a Konoha gift shop (he hadn't even started on the pile of cards that had been written to him. Hinata had stacked them in order of most expensive-looking while she'd been here, and she and Sakura had gotten in an argument about whether gold script was tacky or not, which did not make the task any more appealing), while killing the biggest threat to the village got the chuunin…?
"What do you want?"
"I had some time to kill and I thought I'd check in on you."
"Why?"
Naruto shrugged, "Seemed like a nice thing to do? I'll go if you don't feel like talking."
"You already know what I want to talk about."
Naruto rearranged the flowers on his nightstand. Then he stacked the opened boxes of chocolate (his teammates' doing) on top of the unopened ones. Then he straightened the card pile.
Sasuke let out a long, obviously irritated exhale through his nose to let the chuunin know he expected answers.
"Do you seriously not like these?" Naruto asked, popping open a box that neither of the girls had enjoyed enough to continue when there were others to sample.
"I haven't tried them."
"Wha-a-at?"The sound was high and drawn-out and annoying. "Oh, you've gotta."
To Sasuke's disbelief, Uzumaki pulled up a chair, set the box over Sasuke's legs and picked a round chocolate out of the box.
"They're sea salt caramel. They're good."
Sasuke ate one, the flavor cloying in his mouth and not improving his mood.
"Gaara is alive."
Here we go. "He escaped?"
"No, I...brought him back to life. Like I did to Hinata on the bridge."
Newfound fact: the flavor of chocolate depended mightily on the conversation happening over them. Sasuke found he loathed sea salt caramel. "You did the same to Gaara from Suna? Why?"
"It's complicated. It just...seemed like the right thing to do."
A moral compass concerning someone he'd met in battle? What in the hell? "But you managed to do this twice now. So you know how to control it?"
"No!" For an interrogator, he really didn't know much about using his tone to make people believe him. "I can do it, but there's consequences, and so far we don't know what they are."
Sasuke took another chocolate. "I'm guessing you're working on that?"
"Yes."
Sasuke studied Naruto's mien, taking in the way he fiddled with the chocolate wrappers, how his blonde brows furrowed together over a piercing blue gaze that was too intense for the task of twisting paper. Conversation aside, he seemed antsy, his broad shoulders tense. Sasuke guessed he might be, too, if he was trying to get on someone's good side without telling them what they wanted to know for weeks and weeks. But...he'd made an effort. And from the long face Uzumaki was pulling, Sasuke had to assume it wasn't a lousy one. Not to mention he was the only reasonable person Sasuke had regular contact with and it wasn't healthy to deliberately avoid talking to sane people when everyone else he knew was crazy.
"Is there...a basket with tomatoes somewhere?" Blatant disregard of his privacy aside, fangirls did have their uses.
Naruto blinked, chewing on another chocolate. "...Yeah. By the door."
"Can you bring me one?"
"...You want to eat a tomato?"
For the love of - "You can take every sea salt caramel box home with you if you'd just bring the damn basket of tomatoes over here."
The other nin raised both hands in mock surrender and did as asked, opening the basket and rubbing the dust off one plump red one, then tossing it to him. Sasuke bit into the fruit, mildly amused by Uzumaki's resulting look of abject horror.
They snacked and chatted until the nurse came to check on Sasuke's bandages and bring him dinner, and, to his great annoyance, the Uchiha found himself feeling lonely when Naruto took off.
[-M-]
"You're finally home."
"Shit!" Naruto dropped his keys. The metal glinted in the little light that shone from their kitchen into the hall. Hinata's eyes shone, similarly eerie, in the darkness. "Damn it, that's creepy as hell, Hinata! Why are all the lights off?"
She flipped the switch and crossed her arms over the T-shirt she slept in. "Cuz I was going to bed. Where were you?"
"I visited Sasuke at the hospital."
"Visiting hours go until nine?"
"I got some milk." He showed her the bag he had clutched in his hand. "And Sasuke gave us all the caramel chocolates he got."
"Nice of him."
"...You wanna say what you're thinking?"
She shifted her weight from foot to foot, then dropped her arms. "What the hell was last night? Everything about it! Start to finish! You know how many people he killed?"
"A lot. And so have I."
"So what makes him different?"
"He couldn't control it, Hinata."
"Oh, of course - not being able to control when and who you kill is what makes you safe to have around!" Her voice was getting hysteric.
"Listen to me." She shut her mouth. Her eyes fixed on him and widened further, almost to compensate. "His childhood is exactly like mine." He set the bags down and walked to her, holding her gaze. "He had that thing inside of him and didn't know it, people were scared of him - " - his own memories were making him angry, now, and Hinata was backing up - " - they tried to hurt him and he hurt them back."
"You know that's not true! The way he killed during the exam - "
" - He was bloodthirsty because of the demon, Hinata. So am I!"
"Not like him, Naruto!"
He blinked, offended. "Are you serious? Exactly like him. I don't like that I like it, Hinata, but it's true...did you think it wasn't?"
She crossed her arms, resolute. "You hurt your enemies, Naruto. But you saw his siblings - even they were scared of him."
"They were scared of him growing up, too."
"No kidding?"
"Hinata," he grasped her arms, leaning in, eye-to-eye, "When we were kids, I had a friend. I had you. And then Jiraiya and the Hokage and Ino - he didn't have anyone. No-one but the one-tails whispering to him all the time."
He saw her shoulders settle with understanding. Just to drive the point home: "It could've been me."
Her lips parted and she moved in closer so she could wrap her arms around him. He reciprocated for a moment, then stepped away to put the milk in the fridge.
She followed him. "Okay. That was part one."
Oh, fuck.
"Part two is this idea you have that inviting someone to live with us is something you can do without talking to me about it first."
God-fucking-dammit, he wasn't going to get any rest tonight, was he? "I just assumed that since I pay the rent, I could give a friend the couch for a while."
She was silent. 'Okay. So that worked surprisingly well.'
"Was there a part three?"
"...It can wait." She turned and left in a way that did not make him feel like it could.
"No, what is it?"
"It's your three-month training trip, but now's not the time."
Oh. He walked after her and put a hand on her shoulder. She turned, expression hurt. "Hey, of course I don't wanna go."
She shook her head, "Training's important, I get it."
"Right, but," He put his arms on her waist and pulled her against him, "You know I'd rather be here, right?" He kissed her, reassured when she wrapped her arms tightly around him and kissed back hard. "I mean it."
Their tongues touched, her fingers snuck under his shirt, and he found himself not minding a whole lot whether he went to bed soon or not. He tugged on her hair and the breathy sigh she gave him in response worked better than a caffeine pill to wake him up.