A/N: PLEASE READ! It's July 2020 and I've made some changes to the story. Chapter 5 used to be called Deliriums and included 6 pages worth of Neji's POV that in conclusion didn't truly move the plot much. I love him dearly but I've chosen to remove his scene and merge what used to once be Chapter 6: Cursed instead. If anyone wants Neji's scene, message me and I'll share it with you.
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Chapter 5:
Cursed
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"Life keeps on growing colder year by year
With a winter heart and my frozen tears
I stand alone to face my darkest fears"
-Absent Without Leave by Sineria
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November
Midnight.
The hour that marked the start of a new day and now the beginning of his updated guard schedule.
The Hokage had switched it (again), just as he'd suspected she would. Though he highly resented her and more often than not felt like casting her into one of his genjutsus, he had to follow her orders. Shuffling guards and their hours in case something, or to be precise, someone, dared to enter the village without Konoha's consent was primordial, and Sasuke's eyes at night were indispensable.
Not only had Tsunade placed shinobi with tracking skills and powerful sensor abilities in strategic places, but she'd also enforced the implantation of more seals over the village. The number of vigilantes and ANBU had increased; security in Konoha was top-notch, or was aiming to be.
Civilians and low-ranked ninja, however, were kept oblivious. Only a selected few were fully aware of the situation the Hyuuga clan was in; many shinobi knew nothing of the suddenly missed Byakugan users. Although, news of Hyuuga Hinata's capture had spread fairly quickly.
Sasuke suspected that the enemy responsible for taking the little doll had bequeathed traces of his presence on purpose. What decent shinobi failed to undergo subtlety and instead conceded detection so early in the game? What shinobi with a grudge against the Hyuuga allowed their heiress to live on when the opportunity to kill had been more than apparent?
One with ulterior motives, the Uchiha was sure. After all, hadn't Orochimaru himself operated in a similar manner?
The way Sasuke had retrieved her, without much resistance by the renegade Mist-nin and with the doll's eye detached but not dead, easily within reach, was suspicious. Too simple, Sasuke surmised.
As the series of events publicly went, Team 8 had returned from a mission outside the village when the kidnapping occurred once they were inside the gates.
His last ANBU team had left no evidence of their departure or infiltration during their infiltration, but he doubted the bad guy in the plot was stupid and didn't realize it was Leaf shinobi who destroyed the hideout. After leaving Water Country on his summoned hawk, the Inuzuka female had gone back around the enemy's base and erased all evidence of their cell ever being there. Sasuke wouldn't have bothered since no ANBU ever left signs of their presence and all the men and guards likely to speak were dead anyway.
There had been only renegated nins, their sustenance supplies, and nothing else, not even a lab for the Byakugan to be tested or properly kept in, which meant that the place had been temporary.
Out of all the dead bodies the Uchiha, Aburame, and Inuzuka team had piled up, none of them had much, if any, information on the mastermind behind it all. Whoever he was, he was keeping a distance to avoid an easy capture.
I shouldn't be thinking about this, Sasuke scolded himself as he stared out into the desolated houses of the Uchiha Compound from the top of a pine tree.
This section on the outskirts of the village remained unvisited and, after a very unpleasant review of the past, not even Sasuke wished to step in anymore.
It was too painful, but he had too much pride to admit it.
So now he watched from afar, detached and uninterested, despite the hollow ache in his chest.
He was twenty and had nothing left to live for. It was ridiculous if he stopped to maul it over (which he didn't). He was only breathing and wasting oxygen to honor the memory of his brother and parents. That was the reason he was even here, in Konoha and looking at the empty compound in the first place. His clan was dead except for him. His brother had sacrificed it all and allowed him to live, just to keep the peace of one village.
His hands didn't tighten and his resentment didn't show in the sharpened features of his face, but it was there, simmering quietly under the surface of his aloofness.
The black threads of hate were well woven, though futile at the moment. He couldn't kill any of the rotten bastards that forced Itachi to make his decision. Danzo was off burning in hell and enjoying the company of the devil, but the Third Hokage's old advisers weren't.
Mitokado Homura and Utatane Koharu.
How he wanted to kill them in the most torturing way...And yet he couldn't.
His fingers traced idly on the seal adorning his forehead and temples, a dark scowl etching on his face. The day his Eternal Mangekyou was sealed, the only things keeping him from killing the old woman and man upon seeing them together had been the chakra restrainers and his eroded physical state.
However, that didn't mean they were safe. He would kill them, he'd vowed it as the female applied the blue marks that would stay with him for half a decade. He would kill them and they would suffer, Konoha respected elders or not.
But not now. He needed time to device overturn this blasted fuinjutsu seal first; there was no way he'd wait five years to get his dojutsu to its full power. Not when Mitokado and Utatane were so close and so alive.
His eyes lifted to the heavens, the silvery light of the full moon giving the setting a mysterious, almost fairy-like glow to his surroundings, though he hardly took notice. The angle of the moon of the crisp and late November was signaling the time.
Midnight was about to be upon him.
It was time to get going.
Sasuke turned his back to the place of his best and worst memories and headed for the hospital. It didn't take him long to arrive and switch with the ANBU guard that stood outside the Hyuuga's door. Why he stayed outside was Sasuke's guess but the young Uchiha opened the door after performing his genjutsu and stationed himself in the usual corner, just watching over her form.
The Hyuuga girl was awake tonight despite the hour, her hands caressing her silky waterfall of hair and arranging it together into a long and thick braid.
As he soundlessly entered, she paused, bandaged gaze falling in the direction of the door. Sasuke paid her no mind, and eventually, she resumed her work.
She reached out to grab a hair tie from the nightstand to her right, only to knock on a small flower vase instead.
The girl gave a startled yelp when the vase hit the floor, the sound of the shattering ceramic piercing in such a hushed night.
Letting go of the untied braid, the Hyuuga lifted the thin blanket and carefully removed the IV needle from her arm before allowing her feet to tentatively touch the tile floor. The hollow resonance assured her no glass shards adorned the floor by her toes. However, with the danger of a slippery surface in mind, she moved slowly, her hands outstretched as if to keep the outer forces from making her stumble. Carefully, she kneeled and tentatively brushed the floor with her hands, fingers slowly seeking the unseen.
She was far from finding anything but a pool of water. The vase had fallen in the opposite direction in which she committed her search. A single yellow sunflower rested beside the foot of the nightstand, seemingly bereft.
Sasuke watched the futile actions for a couple of minutes. He averted his gaze when the urge of helping her almost overwhelmed him. No. He wasn't helping her. No way.
His fingers shook and he balled his fist to keep them from lifting her tiny form from the floor. Seeing her hopelessly looking for something she couldn't see, that she would never be able to find without outside help, infuriated him. But his anger was, for the first time, not directed at her.
She was in that pathetic state because someone had put her there and she had allowed it. She failed to defend what was hers, and her stupid teammates had done nothing but get themselves beaten up while trying to protect her. Some help they were.
And she wasn't giving up her search for the damn shards of glass.
Time passed and she had perhaps traced the whole floor with the exception of the place she strove for, where the pieces of her concentrations laid, innocently taunting from behind. The skirt of her gown was cold and wet, a result of the vase's overturned water.
Stupid Hyuuga, he fumed. Why wasn't she giving up? Why did she continue to degrade herself this way, searching for something she would never find? Didn't she know how wrong it looked for her to be like this?
The reflection of her on his crushed bathroom mirror appeared in his mind's eye and he tensed.
"I know you're scared; I am too," he could almost hear her whisper, her lavender orbs gentle and understanding as she locked eyes, unafraid, with the demon he was.
No, he didn't have to think of this, didn't want to. The girl with the smile had been nothing but his imagination, a fragment of his maddening thoughts swirling in his mind wanting to taunt him.
The real Hinata would certainly not feel the way those fragments did; people in the real world were full of lies, and the Hyuuga, as strange as she was, had to be a fraud. No one was that naïve and innocent; she was an actress on a plot, acting her part. She had loved the blond idiot, maybe she still did, he wasn't sure anymore nor did he care, so she had played the let's-be-friends-with-the-pitiful-Uchiha.
Yeah. Sasuke wasn't buying it.
When she finally ceased her fruitless attempts but remained on the floor in a fetal position, all Sasuke wanted was to stride towards her, pick her up, and dump her on the bed just to get her off the damn floor once and for all.
He hoped his mental prowess was enough to make her move.
It wasn't.
The girl stayed in the same position, unmoving for a long time, her hair coming undone and falling down on the ground in soft waves.
He waited.
And waited some more.
Only to almost face-fault when he realized she'd fallen asleep.
He was tempted to leave her there –served her right– but a prick in his conscience reluctantly coerced him to move.
He hesitated for a moment, eying her curled form before bending low to gather her up in his arms. She barely weighed a thing, he noted with some surprise. She was colder than the floor he'd plucked her from and he fought a shiver as she shifted in his hold and then went still, her face tucking itself against his chest.
He almost dropped her, so startled at her unconscious move. If she dares nuzzle me, I'll make her regret it, he thought viciously, yet when he settled her on the bed, it was done with none of the anger or disdain he planned for. A part of him wondered how she could sleep on the hard mattress but he discarded the thought.
That was the effect she had on him and he didn't like it. Being out of control was one thing, being unable to tell what he felt when she was around was another.
She was to be forever a puzzle, filled with gaps and not satisfying his inquiries, questions he didn't want but had.
He leaned his shoulder against the wall and refused to look at her slumbering figure.
He had to put a stop to this urge of watching her sleep. It didn't feel like madness, it felt like a need, a storming desire he wasn't fulfilling completely and didn't dare to.
The girl, with her ungrudging gaze, had become a threat to him unknowingly from the very beginning. How he didn't catch on until it was too late was inexplicable.
But it had to end.
Once she went home to the Hyuuga compound, he would no longer be in charge of her security, and he'd be free of her, of the revolution in his chest that hated her and simultaneously wanted to shield her from the darkness that had eaten at him long before it had touched her.
No, he shook his head in an attempt to erase those absurd thoughts. No, I want her in darkness. She was curious, let that curiosity be her destruction.
The Hyuuga's name and destruction had never sounded so good together. Two opposite sides, coming together to form a new creature.
"What kind of creature will you be, Hyuuga Hinata?" he asked the Hyuuga doll in a whisper.
"...Light..."
If not for his training, Uchiha Sasuke would have jumped. But he was ANBU and he refrained from reacting. Instead, his impassive, crimson stare settled on her.
"...light," she mumbled in her sleep. "It's...too dark..."
Sasuke walked to her, his steps feather-light. "You live in darkness now," he responded easily, bringing a strand of dark blue up to his eyes for inspection, the soft wavy piece brushing against his fingers.
Indigo eyebrows creased. "No," she breathed softly.
"You don't have a choice," he countered automatically, and had someone witnessed the bizarre exchange, Uchiha Sasuke would have been labeled as a lunatic beyond salvation.
"...not over..." she sighed before her breathing evened out and she sank into a deeper slumber, her small fist curling and tucked itself under her chin.
Sasuke said nothing, his heart galloping loudly in his ears before he frowned.
Taking the discarded IV, he considered reinserting it in her arm himself but paused, uncertain. Could the catheter be reinserted? Or did it have to be changed for a new one? He glanced at the girl again and sighed in utter aggravation.
He needed to call a nurse.
But first, he had to clean up the mess she'd made.
XXX
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Sometime later, he saw her stir.
The Jonin-level genjutsu dropped, and he allowed it.
He knew she was now awake; the small change in her vitals supported his belief.
Part of his mind was telling him to think things through, but all he ever did was think and analyze. He wanted to stop thinking. The overload of information and observations was messing with his brain and he was getting sick of it. It was his usual to constantly go straight to the point of the matter and never beat around the bush. It was time to start doing just that.
His presence was immediately picked up by the girl.
He saw the Hyuuga go as still as she could possibly go, and if not because he already knew she was up, he would have thought her unconscious.
So he neared her bed, not quite knowing what he was doing but letting his body work it out for him, giving free rein to mere instinct. When it came to the doll, he was never in control anyway, he'd learned that by now. And he hated it and despised himself even more for not giving a good fight.
He was breaking in the way he'd hoped she would, but everything was going against him. Again.
Why? He didn't understand why. All he wanted was a good reason for this behavior. Then again, when was the last time he thought rationally when it was the Hyuuga involved?
Never. Everything was hazy, and his hate was the only thing that kept him stable enough to keep her at arm's length.
His hand lifted and his finger traced her cheek slowly, delaying the trajectory until he reached her chin, lifting it up from its position on the crook of her shoulder to face him, though she couldn't see him and he knew that.
The Hyuuga tensed for a moment, only to back away from his touch.
"How do you do it?"
There was no response, just the heavy sense of puzzlement emitting from her.
"How can you handle it without breaking, Hyuuga?" he resumed, not caring if she answered or not. He needed to tell her this, to get it out there, to demand it. "Why don't you hate?" I hate you. "How can you not be angry?" I am angry. "What is wrong with you?" What are you doing to me?
"Who are you?" the girl whispered calmly as if she dealt with a livid Uchiha every night. And she did; she just wasn't aware of it.
Sasuke's mouth snapped shut, lips pressed tightly together; the question had startled him for a moment.
Who are you?
He looked away, taking a step back; standing too close to her made him unable to think properly.
He was Uchiha Sasuke, last survivor of the Uchiha, Itachi's brother, Mikoto and Fugaku's son, a former traitor to Konohagakure no Sato.
Sasuke was...
He was...
No one important.
"I'm no one, Hyuuga," he spat acerbically. "Just answer the questions."
But if she was listening, she gave no sign of it. "You...how did you find this room?"
Sasuke scowled. She was ignoring his orders–
Her next words made the act of breathing very difficult.
"Your voice. I recognize it. I...know you."
"You don't," he snapped without hesitation.
A pause.
"...It's you," she countered and her awe and disbelief were present in such equal measures they easily saturated her tone.
Sasuke stopped breathing.
"You're Uchiha-san."
It was said so simply as if it had been oh-so-very obvious. And in a way, it was. But things such as identity and personal character were never an easy thing to detangle in the end, particularly if they concerned him.
"You know nothing," he promptly declared gratingly. He should have ignored the urge of touching her skin, should have stayed away, cloaked in his layers of genjutsu. What was he thinking, coming to talk to her like this?
Another weakness. He was growing feeble, perhaps not physically, but his state of mind was for certain deteriorating at a faster rate than he'd anticipated. His ability to form decisions was now unreliable and he wasn't sure how to go about it and fix it.
"I know more than you give me credit for," the Hyuuga murmured, unflinching at the acridness of his words. "I'd never mistake you...for anyone else."
"You don't know what you're saying."
The Hyuuga's lips faintly curled into a ghost of a smile. "Uchiha-san?" she addressed him softly the way one might speak to a jumpy child. "I don't mean to be rude, but why are you here?"
"..."
She sighed quietly, almost inaudibly. "The last time we met, you told me to stay away." A finger grazed over her neck, where the blade of his katana had cut ever so slightly. "I thought...I was being bothersome. To you, I mean. So I heeded your wish, but now you..."
You're here. Why?
The last words went unspoken, but he could sense the Hyuuga biting them back and keeping them locked behind her teeth, motionless under her tongue.
"...You're thinking, 'what business does he have with me?', aren't you." It was more of a remark than a question.
He knew she was surprised he'd taken part in the conversation. Her face lifted a fraction and seemed to blindly appraise him as a whole.
"I'm not here for you," he informed her as detachedly as he could manage, "nor because I want to be. Your Hokage placed me on duty."
"Oh." This was obviously news to her. Then something clearly impertinent must have clicked in her mind because she brightened somewhat. "Do you think it's egotistical...to be glad the duty was given to someone I at least know?"
"I think it's ridiculous," he determined dryly without hesitation.
He saw her face deflate, her wisp of a smile crumbling until no evidence of its fleeting existence remained; the inhuman want of seeing her cry because of him entered his dark, twisted mind. If she fell to Despair now...what would I do? he questioned himself.
A rustle eased his attention back to her.
"Perhaps it is," she acknowledged. "But I...don't get that many visitors; every day has been really quiet. And," she added thoughtfully, "silence can be terribly loud, at times. Don't you think?" She'd take anyone's company any day, even his unfriendly one, if it meant the silence with its many jabs would be kept at bay.
Something indescribable—shock, bewilderment, disconcert, a combination of all three—ran through his system unpleasantly.
Silence can be terribly loud. Don't you think? If he hadn't known any better, he would have thought she had read him like the very open book he'd assumed her to be.
But her question must've been rhetoric because she didn't await a response.
"If you don't mind me asking, do you know how everyone is doing?" No one truly told her the news of the outside and she sought to rectify that.
Sasuke, barely recovering from that hurl of previous shock, could scantily believe the nerve of this girl. "By everyone, I suspect you mean your friends," he said with unconcealed repugnance. "You should worry about yourself first, Hyuuga, and not waste your time on others that hardly return the same courtesy."
"Their absence and unseen concern are to be expected," she rationalized steadily. "Most of them don't know I'm back."
"But the ones that do? Some friends that they are," he sneered.
"What—what do you mean?"
"They treat you like you're a stranger, or haven't you noticed?" Seeing her pained expression, Sasuke counted that as a yes. "Walking on needles around you, spouting polite pleasantries that will not erase your deplorable situation, behaving unbearably calm when they are here despite knowing you're probably anything but."
"That's...not something worth discussing," she replied, her fingers tracing the hem of her blanket absently. "It's not like I could honestly blame them. They mean well and—"
"Of course they do. How can they not after you were foolish enough to get captured like that?" the Uchiha put out bluntly, tone derisive. "How did it happen? How did they take you?"
Her frozen body language told him he was stepping on very thin ice.
"I'm curious, though. How does it feel, Hyuuga, to have someone take everything you have? When your life is ruined in a moment? When everything you knew is gone?" With each question, he reclaimed the distance between them until he was once again close enough to cup her chin, forcing her averted gaze to turn his way.
A single tear escaped from under her gauze, rolling slowly down her cheek. His fingers felt the grinding of teeth but he didn't remove his hand and continued to wait.
"Tell me, Hyuuga," he whispered, unfeeling. "How does it feel to be you at the moment?"
"L-Let go of me at once," she rasped, biting her lip hard, a small, pained gasp emitting despite her best efforts.
"Tell me."
There was no answer, and her tears came one after the other, a dripping waterfall that didn't cease.
After a long moment, Sasuke finally released her and she didn't waste time scooting back on her bed.
The bitter taste of guilt invaded his mouth and he turned his back on her.
Making Hyuuga Hinata cry didn't feel as pleasant as he thought it would.
"If you dislike me this much, w-why did you even accept this mission?"
Her voice shouldn't have surprised him, but it did. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his mask.
"Go to sleep, Hyuuga," he said softly. "Just...sleep."
It took a long time, but eventually, she did.
XXX
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Hours later, he felt it.
The malevolent presence that entered the room made him move toward the Hyuuga in his fighting stance. His Sharingan activated by its own accord, gleaming in the dark like rubies in a cavern.
One moment and everything was calm, only for icy, stiff fingers to run down his spine the next, whispering the intrusion of an unwelcoming being.
His hand immediately settled on the hilt of his sword and he drew it out with a metallic hiss, separated it from its sheath.
The three tomoes in each of his pupils began to swirl as they looked around for the enemy, gaining speed as he tried to pinpoint a position, a flicker of movement, anything.
The shadows cast by inanimate objects around him had never looked as menacing as in that long, endless second.
The hold on his katana tightened, and just as he was ready to send a chakra pulse to alert the rest of the ANBU guarding the room in the surrounding outdoors, the feeling of being watched and laughed at disappeared.
The soft intake of breath from behind him made him take a peripheral peek in the Hyuuga's direction, his stance unwavering. He wasn't about to let his guard down.
"Uchi..." she panted only to double over and choke on his own name. Her chest rose with heavy breathing and she suddenly sat up with a strangled, pained gasp.
Sasuke, still unmoving, kekkei genkai glowering, shot her a fuller glance, thinking that she'd awaken from one of her nightmares.
"Uchiha-s..." she tried again, only to be cut off by a wet cough. Shaking fingers were raised to touch her forehead as if to massage it, and froze in mid-action.
That's when the sudden explosion of maleficent energy slapped him on the face and shrill feminine shrieks of terror and torment erupted, shattering what little remained of the calm night
"Sasuke!"
Sasuke moved, his eyes blinking as they strained to see through the poisonous cloud of power that seemed to ooze out of her every pore.
"Hyuuga," he stated coldly, his facade of self-control failing when her hands immediately began to search for something in the air. He caught them in his grasp and she grunted in pain, her nails leaving crescent moons bites on his skin.
"Ma-Make it stop!" she urged, her breath agitated, her hold tight to the point of pain.
What's wrong? Sasuke wanted to ask but his words didn't form and she wouldn't have answered because a strangled cry tore loose from her pressed lips. Her restraint lost, she let go of the Uchiha to crumble down on her bed, her hands now cradling her head, her body curling into itself.
"It burns! Make-Make it stop! Make it stop!" she cried, suffocating in her own coagulated blood.
Sasuke seized her wrists and pinned them down to her sides, trying to make her sit up so she wouldn't drown in her own plasma. "Oi, Hyuuga. Stop flailing, you'll reopen your wounds–!"
But Hinata was shaking, almost convulsing and his grip went limp, his eyes widened with surprise when he caught sight of her face.
There on her forehead, glowing red lines formed like cuts, hissing as smoke rose from them. He turned off his blood-limit and sent the signal, his chakra pulse groaning through the floor like an earthquake, before taking her in his arms
"Hyuuga, listen to me, breathe!" he raised his voice over her strangled sobs. "Hyuuga!"
"Raven-san!" The door was kicked open and Boar, Dove, and Cat stepped in.
"Someone was here," Sasuke informed them and had to say no more. The words barely left his lips and the three ANBU were gone in search of an enemy Sasuke himself had not even seen.
"...Sasuke-kun?"
Sasuke cursed out loud, not caring if he was in the presence of women. His teammate sure had awfully bad timing
There in the doorway, dressed in her white uniform, stood Haruno Sakura, her eyes alarmed as they landed on the struggling form of the brunette he was trying to calm down, startled but not unknowing of his identity as they fell on his still-masked attire. "What are you –?" She started only to gasp in surprise. "Hinata!"
Sasuke wondered where an ANBU was when you needed one. "Get Tsunade, Sakura," he ordered.
"But–!"
"Go!" he roared, not ready to waste time explaining things to the pink-haired medic. He turned to the girl crying in pain as the lines on her forehead burned and spread like vines, her tears a dark pink as they mixed with her blood and tainted the once pristine bedsheets. "Hyuuga –"
"D-don't leave," she whimpered thickly, her body shuddering. "Don't leave me alone."
"Sasuke..." a different whisper cut through his mind and he realized that Sakura had never left.
What was she still standing there for?! "Get the Hokage. Tell her Raven sent you. Move it, Sakura!" he added when she failed to move, rooted to the spot.
He didn't wait to see if she followed along. His gaze fell on the girl, on the mussed, tangled hair, on her bloody face, and on her ruined white gown.
"It...i-it hurts," he heard her raspy, weary voice confess before her dead weight became more evident.
"Hyuuga," he joggled her, but it was useless.
She had passed out.
He brushed strands of her dark hair from her soaked forehead and felt jagged, marked skin.
His finger traced lightly over the injured flesh, the dripping blood on his uniform disregarded. His heart - an organ he'd thought frozen- unconsciously clenched. Dark eyes narrowed behind his mask when morbid awareness finally kicked in and he came to know what exactly he was touching.
There on her forehead, written in kanji, were the newly formed words in angry-red:
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日向が嫌い
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Hate to the Hyuuga
XXXX
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A/N: Thank you:nikols, aya, Kibachow, Toolazytologin, Lost-puppyEYES, RikuDai, Saamon-sama, XxJasmineReyxXB. Lilac, TAIRA18, Guest, umnia, ProjXPsyClone, Francis, SabakunoAnjel, Kibachow, genaille 11, umnia, Guest 1, Guest 2, Fiona, LIZA, TAIRA18, Tina, Peachie-Trishie, Dark Amy-chan, anlmoon, B. Lilack, Deedeecrazy8, Duchess23, crookishies, and Little Lily.
-11.8.13 (Ch 5)/11.25.13 (Ch 6)
Revised 7.22.20/ 12.13.20
Answers to some concerns:
*Keep in mind the POV. This story was to be in Sasuke's POV. He sees things very differently from other characters; he's not Hinata thus has no way of knowing what she experienced so he makes his own conclusions and he still doesn't really feel the impact of 'rape' (yet). He realized that her virtue was 'stained' when he kept tabs on her body language. Sasuke's indifferent to others' pain but now, he wants to enjoy Hinata's because she brings him peace, something that he inwardly thinks he doesn't deserve and it's killing him. His personality is a shield.
*I also wish Sasuke would go stuff his face in a patch of tomatoes and come back when he's nicer...but Sasuke will be there for eternity and the story needs him to go on!