family affair

twenty:

five hours

The door opened between them and they stared at each other for a long minute.

Sasuke was a tense jaw but was otherwise unemotional. He stood tall with his hands in his pockets, his eyes clear, his entire body obscuring the rest of his apartment from view. He was purposely making himself bigger than her: taking up space like a threat. Like nothing was happening.

Hinata, on the other hand, was the red-cheeked opposite of her lover: her breath coming out labored, her lips puckered in stress, her eyebrows drawn and serious about her eyes. They stared at each other some more until Hinata lifted her hand and slapped him across the face, surprising them both.

It didn't stop the Hyuga though. She lifted her hand again––as if she were a puppet guided by some other force––but Sasuke grabbed her wrist this time, stopping the blow. His cheek was red and burning. He didn't know that she could hit so hard. He guessed that it made sense that she could.

There was a noise like a dying animal, and Sasuke realized that Hinata had begun to cry. Angry tears slipped down her red cheeks, their size rivaling those of Ghibli characters––golf-ball-sized tears, in now silent trendles down her face. Her shoulders were trembling and Sasuke did not know what to do.

So he brought her into his barren apartment and closed his arms around her body, the warmth so familiar but so terrifying, that he couldn't control the hollow feeling opening up his stomach like he was preparing for another great loss. Her arms curled around the back of his neck, holding tight. He became aware that she could kill him like this: easily and skillfully, just like he could kill her. Their craning necks, locked in embrace, became their most delicate parts.

But then Hinata took a step back, wiping the snot from under her nose. Then she took another step back as if she was aware that killing could be involved. Then she said, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Sasuke's head swung in disdain. "Why the fuck would I tell you?" though he hadn't meant it to sound so harsh, his confusion was palpable. He kept going, "Are you out of your mind, Hinata? Seriously? Are you fucking stupid?"

She looked like she could slap him again, but was choosing not to. "Are you f-fucking stupid? I'm not the one who's a ...who's a..."

"A what?"

"A goddamn spy, Sasuke! Stop acting like you don't know what I'm talking about! Jesus Christ, you think I was never suspicious?" Hinata's fingers balled into little red fists. "You think I'm an...an idiot? Walking around having sex with my father's henchmen without t-thinking about who they are? What that means? You think I'm not cataloging your every action, questioning your every behavior? Do y-you think I've never been used before?"

Sasuke's head snapped up in alarm, "I wasn't using––"

"I know," Hinata conceded. "I fucking know that. But just...I need to sit down."

Sasuke led her to his bed, the only piece of furniture besides his desk chair, and offered it for sitting. She chose the desk chair, folding into it like a doll. She felt faint. It was hot in the apartment, the radiators putting in their fair share of work as they hummed in greeting.

"So..." Sasuke's frown deepened. He sat on the bed across from her. They weren't touching and it felt strange not to. "You knew."

"No," Hinata said. "I had guesses. T-theories."

"Like what?"

She shrugged, her eyes fluttering away from him. "I dunno. I thought m-maybe you were trying to rebuild the Uchihas, and w-were hoping to gather intel on your so-called rivals. I thought you just wanted information on how to run a Syndicate because you were so young when––" she broke off, looked at him for a long moment, then looked away. The radiators hummed. "I didn't think you were a spy, perse." The word dipped with distaste that seemed foreign on Hinata's tongue, but somehow wholly Hyuga.

Sasuke sat heavily on the bed across from her. The desk and bed were close together––it was a tiny apartment––and their knees touched. Hinata jerked away, propelling herself and the chair into the desk behind her with a dull thud. She didn't manage to go very far.

"I am a spy, Hinata," Sasuke said plainly. His eyes tried to find hers but she kept looking away. "I am an agent for an organization called ANBU. We are a private company, but for the last fifteen or so years, we have been working almost exclusively with the government."

Hinata said nothing, so Sasuke kept going. "I was assigned this case with the Hyugas almost half a year ago. I was told to retrieve the Byakugan file, without even knowing what is on it."

At this, Hinata clutched her neck, where she sometimes wore the flashdrive on a chain before delivering it to location, but she did not have it today. Still, a shock went through her body as a memory rumbled beneath the surface, "––b-but that day when I took you Yamanaka's Flowers––you didn't take it then. That was your chance!"

Sasuke nodded again, unperturbed. "I know it was, and it didn't matter at that point. It's...it's hard to explain," he said. "There are too many things." He said.

Hinata stared at him blankly, her eyes revealing nothing as she demanded, "So explain them."

So Sasuke explained as best as he could. He felt as if he talked in circles, sprinkling his own confusion over the sequences of events––the past ten weeks feeling like an entire lifetime. He told Hinata that he thought that it had been the Hyugas who had murdered his clan, and how as an agent his greatest aspiration was revenge. Revenge, and finding his brother. He told Hinata that the longer he stayed with the Hyugas, the more confused he became. He told her that ANBU began acting strangely and making decisions that did not make sense. He began to question the organization that he had made a home out of since he was 15 years old. He told her about the fear that welled up in his chest closely––the fear that he was going to die. He told her that he began to be suspicious of Gaara and his intentions with the Hyugas, and had started gathering intel on Suna, Suigestu, and Orochimaru. He told her about the lies. He told her that he found his brother, and his brother denied involvement with Orochimaru. He told her that he had asked Sakura––the pink-haired girl––for help, and now she was missing. It was too much. He could not make heads or tails of it all.

And now ANBU had outed him to his assignment, and Itachi was right. He did not know anything at all.

Hinata was silent for several long minutes, taking deliberate breaths in through her nose and out of her mouth. She felt the texture of the chair under her, the hard of the desk behind her, the soft of her skin when she pinched the skin between her thumb and index finger. Trembling she cast her eyes to the floor, "I knew...I knew something was up with you," she admitted again.

"You see more than you let on," Sasuke agreed, looking at her hard, his body tensed. Neither of them moved. The energy in Sasuke's tiny apartment was electric. Hinata felt the humming of the radiator on her skin.

Hinata looked away, rubbing her arms as she continued: "You k-know I study spies. I seek them out. That's my role. I was just waiting to see what happened and then...I fell in love with you."

She let the admission hover in the air. Sasuke did not move, he did not blink, and Hinata did not give him time to respond. Instead, she stood rigidly, feeling like her legs had turned into blocks of cement. "That's why I c-came to warn you. You don't have much time to make it out of Konoha alive, Sasuke. And I have a plan."

-:-

The plan was absurd and Hinata knew it, but it was all she had.

After a few minutes of terse discussion, Hinata opened the bag she took with her and revealed to Sasuke the hundreds of thousands of colorful yen (and sweaters and a first-aid kit) she smartly packed inside. Because she had already exposed her weakness (admitting out loud that she was in love with him, and not giving him room to reply) she had to be strictly logical for the next several hours. She was intent on his survival. After that, well, they'd likely never speak again. And she had to be okay with it. That was her problem to bear. She should have never let this happen.

Sasuke said nothing at the appearance of the yen, nothing at her brief explanation of Hyuga-coordinated assassinations, and nothing about her plan to meet in five hours at a location she specified with a point at her smartphone.

He was to leave his studio apartment and go into hiding––the specific place, she could not advise––until they would meet up again in the early hours of the morning. Already, Hinata had coordinated new identification documents for him, she just had to wait to pick them up from a guy she knew.

"So this is it?" Sasuke asked his tone hard. There was no sign of love in his voice. Hinata thought that maybe, she had made it all up. Maybe he had used her, and she had let him. Maybe he was using her now, and she couldn't stop herself.

And she couldn't think about it now. She wanted to see him live.

"This is it," Hinata confirmed. She turned to the door. "I'll see you soon."

-:-

Five hours passed and it felt like a century to the Uchiha. He left the apartment shortly after Hinata did, with the thousands of yen packed in a smaller bag of his choosing, and strapped to his back. He left the sweaters and the first aid kit behind.

He left his car and all other worldly possessions behind in his studio––though, already he had few––the picture of his family was folded neatly into his otherwise empty wallet that rested in his pocket. Part of him wished he had a picture of Hinata, too. He figured he'd never get one.

Her admission of love had shocked him into silence, and she hadn't given him time to reply. He couldn't have replied, even if she had presented the opportunity because he was so caught off guard by it. Then, she was continuing on as if it hadn't happened. It was safe to say their relationship, if you could call it that, had not survived his betrayal.

It was fair enough.

But he could not account for how much it hurt. Worse than anything he had ever had to feel lately. Even the assassination attempts––which would be happening quite soon––paled in comparison to the constricting of his heart, the white noise in his head, and the flashes of memory that felt visceral across his skin.

Focus, he thought, as the five hours filtered by, one by one, and every street corner hid a danger to him within its shadows. He didn't know how Hinata expected him to survive this––any of it! Between the heartbreak and multiple people out to get him, he was good as gone. If morning came and he was still in Konoha, he would consider himself a lucky man. Or a dead one.

He hid out in an old stockyard that used to be owned by the Uchiha some time ago. So long ago, in fact, that he was positive that no one would think to look for him there. They closed up this business forty years before he was born, but Sasuke remembered his father taking him there once as a child, and pointing into the forest of overgrown weeds.

"We owned this once," Fugaku said. They were going down a road adjacent to the yards in his Cadillac with the drop-top, wind blowing through their air. The blue of the sky reached corner to corner. "A worthy endeavor, before even I was born. My father grew tired of it, but we once kept all types of livestock in those pens."

He pointed out rows of wooden fences that had been almost overtaken by greenery. On the other side of the highway was row after row of cornfields: endless commerce.

"My father's father told him––and he later told me as he drove me down this stretch of land when I was your age––'Let this be a reminder to you, boy. Uchihas are not meant to be caged. We watch the slaughter, but we're not a part of it. So I bring you here like I brought your brother here, to see some of the legacies that your ancestors have left you."

Sasuke peered out the car window at the acres of unused land, then turned to his father. "What do I do with it?"

"That's for you and Itachi to figure out. I'm too old now, I've invested in other things. I wanted you both to have this yourselves. A gift"

Thanks Pops, Sasuke thought dryly as he surfaced from the memory. He was sitting with his back against one of the decrepit barns, cleaning the only gun he'd taken with him with an oily towel. He had no electronics on him to speak of, and could only tell the time by the position of the sun. That was something he'd learned from ANBU. It was almost 3 am, and he would need to head to the rendevous point soon.

Part of him considered that Hinata was selling him out, but he dismissed it. If she were selling him out, she would've shot him in his studio apartment or worse: she would've had someone else do it.

She loved him and she wanted him to live. That said a lot, considering how he had made her feel. How he had betrayed her and knowingly fallen in love with her. All errors on his part.

When the moon, a waxing gibbous, hung low enough over the trees, Sasuke left the barn and began a quiet run through the countryside, keeping his weapon drawn and his ears open. The rendevous point was near a river that was approximately 9 miles away. Sasuke ran a tight 7-minute mile more or less that would get him there just in time.

The running almost felt like a baptism, but Sasuke could not shake the fear that had lived on his shoulders for the past few days. At this point, his only goal was survival. Everything had gone wrong so fast it was hard to say what the tipping point was––only that it had tipped over fast, and the consequences kept growing.

At the juncture between the bridge and the lake, Hinata's G-Wagon appeared in the sleek darkness. Sasuke panted as he watched her slide out of the driver's seat, wearing all black as her sneaker-clad feet sank gently into the ground. The moon was a flashlight over their heads, that made her hair look glossy, like silk, as she flipped it over her shoulder. When their eyes met, Sasuke felt his heart shudder.

Everything was absolutely fucked.

Hinata took a few steps towards him, her feet sinking into the ground. She stood a couple of feet away, reached out an arm, and said, "here."

Sasuke took the manila folder and opened it silently. Inside was a passport with his face under a different name: Rōnin Masuda. She'd also acquired a driver's license, birth certificate, and a one-way plane ticket to Taipei, Taiwan. It was dated for the next day, around noon.

"From there y-you can go anywhere you w-want," Hinata said in a quiet voice. "w-with the money I gave you. Just s-stay away from Korea––we have a lot of family there."

"You didn't have to do this, Hinata." Sasuke said, but what he wanted to say was I love you too. I love you. I love you. I'm so so so sorry.

Hinata smiled a sad smile, the corners of her lips lifting without joy. Her eyes were dark in the shade of the moon. "I can't watch my family hurt you," she said. "Please. Make it to your flight. Survive."

Sasuke crossed the invisible line that had been drawn between them and took her into his arms, holding her tight against his body. She breathed hard into his ear like she was about to cry, but she didn't. She hugged him back, their bodies fitting together like a puzzle as Sasuke cradled the back of her head. He tried to force the words through his teeth, but they wouldn't come. He cursed himself. He didn't know why they would not come. I love you. Come with me. I'm sorry.

They broke apart suddenly at the sound of tires crunching over gravel. A car pulled across the bridge and headlights hit them. Hinata's eyes widened and she shoved Sasuke down with a strength he did not know she possessed. Hinata ducked down with him, forcing his body over into the shade of her car, which the offending vehicle stopped in front of. They were half-laying in a bay of snow, and cold spread through their bodies.

Sasuke crouched over her, his body a shield over hers as they heard the door open. Hinata stared at him like he was stupid. "Here," she whispered. A jingling sound was heard as she rooted through her pockets. "T-take my keys and get out of here."

Sasuke frowned, shaking his head. "I'm not leaving you here, Hyuga."

"They're not here to hurt me," Hinata whispered furiously. The person was walking towards them now, their feet crunching. "It's someone from the Estate––they must've followed me."

The Uchiha didn't move. "Come with me."

Finally, he said it.

Hinata blinked, then shook her head. "I c-can't do that Sasuke."

"Come with me, Hinata. I'm not fucking leaving you here." This time he left no room for argument, his tone terse––severe. He was still hovering over her, his hand gripping her arm. "I'll take you as a hostage if you make me."

Hinata paused before she tucked her keys into his pocket, her breath licking his neck in their trepid positions. "T-that actually...could work."

"On three then," Sasuke said. He locked his arm around her neck, pulling her up into a standing position, feeling her warm body against the expanse of his, and relishing in it. Perhaps for the last time. "One, two, three––"

He yanked them up with a strong pull, bringing them into the light of the vehicle. Sasuke felt Hinata's breath hitch at the sight of her cousin: Neji Hyuga stood in front of them with an assault rifle. He grimaced when he saw them together.

"Let her go, Uchiha."

"Drop your fucking weapon, first!"

Hinata turned her head to the side as Sasuke tightened his grip, pretending like she were in pain. She whispered in his ear, sending shivers down his spine inadvertently, "Get i-into the car and drive as f-fast as you can out of Konoha. Abandon it at the border."

Sasuke continued to hold her stiffly, contemplating his options until he shook his head minutely, ignoring Neji's yelling from yards away. "You get in first. I said come with me."

Hinata gave him a sad smile into his neck and Sasuke made it look like he was the one doing it, holding his gun loosely at her skull, "You'll only get f-followed. Please Sasuke, do this for me."

Sasuke did not loosen his grip. Neji was yelling into the night, swearing, until he threw his weapon into the snow in surrender.

He held his entire world in his arms, and he couldn't even tell her, couldn't even help her. Hinata kissed his neck, her hair shielding her from Neji, and gave him a way out. "If you love me, you'll push me into the snow, and d-drive away. If y-you love me, y-you'll survive. And that's how I'll know."

Sasuke kissed her head and shoved her to the ground with all his force. He watched her body hit the snow before he got in her car, and drove off down the dirt path, and into the darkness.

AN. Short chapter but I'll make it up to you :P