Common Delinquents
Chapter 37
She stares at her hands. They shake against her legs so she presses them against her jeans harder. She stares and stares at her chipped blue nail polish before flipping her hand over to count the lines on her palm. There are a lot of them.
A good distraction.
She hits thirty when he speaks.
"Hinata."
...thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six.
"Hinata."
forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty three, forty-four, forty-five...
"Are you listening?"
She closes her eyes. When she does, she only sees her cousin's burned body and Deidara's haunted face. She looks back at her hand, still shaking.
fifty-two...no wait fifty-five. She's lost count. Dammit.
Suddenly fingers are on her face. They're cold and they linger on her cheeks. She stiffens and all the joints in the body seem to lock in place. She stills as Sasuke looks at her.
Sasuke drops his hand, "Hinata-"
"It's okay to cry." She mumbles.
"What?"
"That's what you were going to say-'Hinata, It's okay to cry.'" She closes her eyes and regrets it seconds later. "I've heard that so many times."
"Well-"
"Take your own advice, please."
Sasuke twitches from his seat beside her, "Excuse me?"
"This affects all of us. Please don't be burdened by me." She looks down at her hands, at her chipped blue nail polish, at the tiny lines that mark her palms. She takes a deep breath, "We all...need a little time alone."
Sasuke doesn't know what to say. He slowly nods, watching Hinata flutter away from him and into the darkness.
-:- -:- -:-
It's so funny how God works.
It is so amazingly funny how God works.
How has this place, a place she has hated and feared, come to be a place where she seeks comfort?
It is so unbelievably twisted.
Hinata lifts the gun. Her hands are not sweaty this time, and she doesn't feel out of place. It is no longer the 'killing device' it is more like a shield of protection. It slides into Hinata's waiting hands with more grace than it should. Her fingers tighten around it.
Her index finger twitches and she fires, letting the sound rip through her ear-muffs and pound against her ears. She fires again and the sound echoes through the whole HQ, ringing incessantly against metal doors and walls. It tears through the silence that has fallen over the place for the last two days.
Two bullets pierce through a paper heart. She mentally congratulates herself on having murdered the paper. She hopes to never have to do it in real life.
She remembers that she's already had to do this in real life.
If anyone were to walk in on her, they'd surely think that she was conditioning to kill her cousin's murderer, but that is not the case.
She's not going to kill Deidara. She could never kill Deidara. She hates him a little, but she could never kill him.
There's no point in revenge, anyway. A life for a life isn't a philosophy Hinata wants to live by. But she guesses that that's what gang wars are built on.
Neji is dead. One shot. He's never coming back. Two shots. Deidara killed him. Three shots. Dead.
She has yet to cry. Maybe she knew it would happen, maybe she's cried too much already. She does do it a lot, cry about nothing. Then there's finally something worth her tears and she can't seem to produce any.
She's glad she wasn't there when Sasuke broke the news. She doesn't want to know what their reactions could possibly be. She only had to deal with Hanabi's; which was eerily similar to her own.
She thinks about Tenten, wondering how she must've reacted. The more she thinks about it though, the more her heart hurts, so she shoves it to the back of her mind. Tenten must be a mess but Hinata is too much a mess herself to try and help.
Suddenly, this gang stuff isn't as fun anymore. Suddenly, it's not just a group full of friends who party. It's not just the petty drug trades and money making and drug doing, it's this warped murder group. Kill them before they kill us.
It's not about the money, it's not about the power. It's just about...murder. Senseless killing.
Hinata wants out.
-:- -:- -:-
He stares really really hard at the blunt in his hands, wondering if he hit it too hard or something. He had stopped smoking pot for a while, but the habit seems to have come back to him in the way that death seems to come back to him.
There are only five of them left. Technically speaking, there are only two missing, but the ones left aren't all 'there'. Sasuke deducts that he, Naruto, Sakura, Kiba, and Shino are the only sane ones wandering around-or what can be described as 'mostly sane.'
His first mistake might've been that he was claiming he was sane in the first place.
Sasuke isn't crazy, but he's not exactly 'there.'...he's about as 'there' as anyone else is.
Wherever 'there' is.
It sure isn't here.
He scratches his head, confusing himself a little. All this talk of sanity really isn't helping his current condition. But alas, sanity is something his gang lacks, he's sure of it. Tenten and Lee have gone off the deep end and Shikamaru hasn't been the same since Ino left. Chouji is only half in the gang and Hinata has been an emotional disaster ever since she stepped foot in the fucking place.
The raven haired teen sighs, shoves his hands in his pockets, and stands from his place on a roof atop a unit. He can only hope that he's not so faded that he'll fall off.
The whole HQ is eerily silent. It hasn't been this quiet since...well, never. There's no arguing or laughing, no annoying loud pop music playing in the distance, no car horns or cursing, or any of that. The only sound is that of a train horn in the distance and the feeling of the warm spring breeze.
Finally warmth. Finally sunshine. Spring is late this year, so late that there's no use in trying to warm up the units and his heart alike. He's used to the cold, he's used to the bitterness, there's no going back.
It's too late for spring, for sunshine, for new growth.
He still feels like he's buried under six feet of snow with no shovel and no gloves, just sitting there hoping on a prayer. Wishing for a god.
He's atheist anyway.
"Pathetic."
Yeah, he's pathetic.
He wonders if he should go after Deidara for killing one of his closest friends. He fingers curl into fists in his pockets. He wonders if killing Deidara would kill Hinata too.
She's already like, half dead. Or half there. But what's the difference anymore?
Sasuke squeezes his eyes shut. He can't be back to that 'there' thing again. She is here, he is here, everyone is herein this fucked up gang, trying to keep living.
Losing Neji has been...weird. Neji has just always been there-here. He's always figuring things out when everyone else is going crazy, always the levelheaded one and the oldest. He's always been the rock; the confident one, the one who always knew what to do.
Sasuke wouldn't have admitted these things in a hundred years, but now he kinda has too.
The guy's dead, afterall.
"So are we going after the guy or what?"
Sasuke peers over the ledge surprised to see an angry looking girl glaring up at him. He watches her fingers juggle a gun around as if it were a toy. She peers up at him, her face grim, her eyes as empty as his stomach feels.
Man, he's hungry...
"You're not just going to let that asshole walk free, right?"
The weird thing is, the last thing on Sasuke's mind right now is murder. It's kind of cloudy, actually, like he doesn't know what to think-or just doesn't want to at all.
So he kind of just mumbles out a half-hearted, "Yeah." Without really thinking about it.
"Yeah what?" Tenten grinds her teeth together at the vague response, wondering if Sasuke is just messing with her.
"Do whatever." Sasuke cocks his head; something is bothering him in the corner of his mind. But it's cloudy there too. "Wait."
Tenten flicks the metal of the gun, annoyed, "What, Uchiha?" Her teeth gnash together and make an angry sound, like she had bitten down on something too roughly.
"Are you okay?" He pauses, it had sounded better in his head. Of course she's not okay.
"Fucking fantastic." Tenten says, her eyes staring unblinkingly at him like she's trying to stare into his soul. "I'm having the time of my life. You seem pretty content yourself, Uchiha."
His eyes go to the pot in his hands, wondering if he should offer some to Tenten. He figures it'll just make her more frustrated. "I'll have to disagree with you there." He lowers himself down to the edge and angles his face towards the bright sun, closing his eyes. "This is hell."
He's sure Tenten will agree with him, but when he hears her make no sound, he opens his eyes and looks down.
"Tenten?"
But she's gone.
-:- -:- -:-
He stares at his reflection in the water, wondering why he always seems to be staring at himself. He doesn't take pleasure in it; he doesn't like how hard and empty his eyes look or how deep his frown his. He doesn't like the way his lips have twisted into a permanent scowl and that there are lines claiming their places on his forehead, around his mouth, between his eyes. He doesn't like how his hair feels limp and dead as if his emotional turmoil is causing it to fall out and die. His face feels tight, his lips feel dry.
He vomits again, distorting the image of himself in the water of a toilet bowl. His last meal hits the water and he leans back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, wondering what's wrong with him.
He has killed before, yes, but this time...it feels different. It ties his stomach into a knot and pounds against his head.
Maybe he's guilty.
Except he doesn't even feel an ounce of guilt. He feels bad, but he's not guilty. He did what he had to do...for her. To save her
.
And even himself.
He looks down at his bare chest, staring at the curves of the Akatsuki tattoo that has been inked into his skin. He rubs his palm against it and then his nails, as if he were trying to scratch it off his body. It doesn't work of course, it only leaves a trail of angry red lines and he feels nauseous again.
"Oh how the mighty fall." Sasori says, passing by the bathroom. He blinks lazily at his friend, staring at the red marks against the pale skin of his chest. "Tattoo itchy?"
"You could say that, un." Deidara replies. His voice is raspy when he speaks, how annoying.
"Stomach flu?" Sasori says again, not paying a glance to the toilet. He scrutinizes his friend again before shrugging and turning away.
"Yeah." The blonde replies, he leans his head against the door and watches his best friend turn away, wondering if they are even best friends anymore. "How's my cousin by the way?"
Sasori shrugs, "She hates you, and everyone else, so really, there's been no change."
Deidara's face twitches and he feels anger race up his veins. He frowns heavily, "Why don't they just let her go already?"
Sasori shrugs coolly. "Itachi says we still need her."
"Bullshit!" The word flies from his mouth in a fray of spit that quickly becomes vomit and Deidara is back to leaning over the toilet again.
Sasori sighs and rubs his forehead in annoyance, he eyes his friend and only shakes his head. "Feel better, asshole."
"Fuck you."
But Sasori's already gone.
-:- -:- -:-
"How does it feel?"
"How does what feel, Hanabi?"
"How does it feel to know that your boyfriend killed your brother?"
There is a pause. Hands still in a sink of plates and soapy water. "He's not...my boyfriend."
A snort; "How does it feel?"
"Leave it alone, Hanabi."
"Does it feel like Ino's betrayal? Or worse?"
Hinata sighs deeply from her nose. She knows that this is her sister's way of coping, but that doesn't make what she's saying right.
"Do you want to kill him now? Want me to kill him?"
Hinata shakes her head feebly, taking her hands out of the dish water and turning towards Hanabi.
"Do you still love him? Did you ever love him?"
"Hanabi-"
"Is he more important to you than Neji was?"
"What?! No-"
"Did you fuck him? Are you pregnant? Is that why you don't want him dead?"
Hinata balls her hands into fists, "No Hanabi, I did not. Now can you please stop-"
"So how does it feel?" Hanabi looks up at Hinata, her eyes burning. "Must feel pretty terrible, huh?"
"Yeah." Hinata finally answers letting the word hang in the air. She doesn't elaborate.
"Do you want to see him?"
Hinata shrugs. "Not really."
"Oh." Hanabi turns away from Hinata. "Well, he's outside right now."
There's an even longer pause than before.
"W-what?"
"I didn't try to kill him because I figured you'd be mad at me. Plus I kind of owe him..." Hanabi frowns again, conflicted. "Me and Neji weren't that close anyway."
Hinata's mind goes blank. She's not exactly sure what Hanabi is saying to her. "What?"
"Deidara is in our backyard. He's sitting on the porch, crying about life or something."
"What?"
"I don't know." Hanabi shrugs, and moves to do Hinata's job of cleaning the kitchen. "He's pretty stupid, if you ask me. But he asked to speak with you. I'd bring him inside if you don't want him to get shot or something."
"What?"
"I swear you're so retarded." Hanabi mumbles under her breath, she turns towards her sister. "Your cousin's murderer? Yeah, he's outside." Hanabi puts a hand on her shoulder, "I see it this way; you have two options. You can either turn him over to your gang, or kill him yourself."
"I-what?" Hinata stumbles back, "I can't….I don't want him to die."
"Well, then there's a third option." Hanabi shrugs and gestures towards the back door. "You talk to him."
A/N: Hi it's been a month
Wow first I want to do a mini rant cause NOBODY TOLD ME SENIOR YEAR WOULD BE SO STRESSFUL. But yes im dealing with college stuff and ACT next week also 3 Aps so im driving myself a little crazy. I'm not sure when my next update will be.
Alsoooo, I have finally figured out how many chapters this thing will be. It's going to be 41 chapters plus an epilogue.
I'm not a huge fan of this chapter (It's really weird and plus I've been working on it for like three weeks ohmyygod) but the next one should be better and with more insight on Tenten Yay.
Also, I posted some unfinished fanfic things on my profile. If you want to read unfinished modern Aus, they are up there. I actually don't know why I decided to post them, but I think a tumblr friend asked me to post them.
Ok ok review and I'll update whenever.