The Chaos Theory
Interlude 3
By the age of sixteen, Mirai Sasuke was mentally…healthier. He had developed an appreciation for life to replace his indifference and melancholy.
He didn't know why...it was hard to express...but what had been vacant was now filled with curiosity.
So the Hyuuga was finally let out of her cage, the onlookers would murmur.
Her hair was yet longer. Her eyes had become void and stony, and she always seemed to know when he was watching her.
With or without the byakugan, she catalogued every creature around her. Hinata was stronger, but more importantly, she had partaken in a unique training regimen. He saw it when she sensed hidden poisons even Kiba would not have caught. And he saw it when she reacted to even the faintest rustle of leaves in the forest.
It was inevitable that they would eventually be assigned a mission together.
Both teams seven and eight had disbanded following Tsunade's death. As chunnin, their grouping was now determined by how their abilities corresponded.
He watched Hinata's turned back as they continued through the forest. They hadn't said a word to each other since departing the village.
"I hate you," she mentioned.
And with that, the silence was broken. After a year, it was her first regard.
He remained aloof, not knowing why he bothered to disagree. "I saved your life," he said coolly. "I saved your eyes—your identity."
She turned swiftly to face him. "That wasn't enough!"
Her dark hair hung in livid eyes. Her face was flushed in fury.
Sasuke simply observed, allowing his apathy to feed her anger.
"I hate that you didn't save me. I hate that you lied to me—about Hanabi. She wasn't all right. She's not all right. And I hate that you were the one who was there—that anyone was there at all—that you s-saw me like that!"
Her composure was crumbling, and it was so easy.
It's been a year... he mused.
But maybe withdrawing into her family had left her naked to the world.
He saw her, sometimes, with Kiba and Shino. They knew she was different, that her father had died—and they knew what had happened to Hanabi, but only by physically seeing it for themselves. Kiba and Shino did not know about the events that had preceded it, the things that had transpired on the night of Tsunade's death that weren't accounted for in Konoha's history. As far as the villagers were concerned, one of Hyuuga Hanabi's missions had gone terribly awry.
And that was how Hinata preferred it.
She was doing for her sister what he'd done for her. But to her own detriment. She had become severely withdrawn.
Sasuke pocketed his hands. Che. "I hate you too."
Maybe he pitied her. Maybe he harbored a demented attraction to her pain. Perhaps he lingered on that morning, how her mind had been focused on her sister—not herself—the moment she'd awoken, knowing what had happened to her. The disturbing level of selflessness revealed in her refusal to die if it meant he would follow, if just to spite her.
"Why didn't you leave me there?" she wanted to know.
I'm human, he thought, but he didn't respond. He was human even if the world didn't know it.
He dismissed the question, glaring at her. "Your decision to follow your sister was a stupid one."
He saw none of the tears he had anticipated. "And yours to follow me?" Hinata returned.
Sasuke watched her approach. He hadn't thought she had the nerve.
"Why did you save me?" the Hyuuga repeated, as though she had wanted to know for the past year.
"I don't know." They were face to face now.
"But I need to know..." Her voice quavered.
Though the question was irrational, it had that persistent, underlying meaning.
Why couldn't you let me die?
Sasuke clenched his jaw, glaring at her, but she refused to back down.
He didn't mind it.
A flash of metal. Flecks of blood.
Hinata leapt into a tree branch, hunching forward and clutching her face.
A senbon glinted between Sasuke's fingers. "What are you going to do about it?"
Their mission ended with staggering efficiency.
"You work well together," Kakashi said upon their early return.
If only he knew it was anything but the contrary.
Then maybe he wouldn't have put them together again, and again.
But Sasuke stopped indulging in thoughts of the Hyuuga, disturbed by what had become of her. A shell of who she had been. Was it pity that made him muse on her? Sometimes his mind lingered on her for too fucking long.
The cut he'd placed on her cheek didn't leave a scar, but surely she hadn't forgotten it. She didn't look at him during their latest mission together. She didn't look at Naruto either.
The blonde was sympathetic like everyone else. He thought Hinata was clearly distraught over her father's death—over the injuries her sister had sustained on mission, and maybe stressed out from the pressure of her impending promotion.
"There's a spare bedroom," Naruto said that evening. It was late, and they had found an abandoned cabin to camp out in before they resumed at dawn. "You should have it, Hinata-chan. I'm sure you could use the privacy."
The heiress froze, her eyes widening. The three had been in the process of unpacking their mats in the living room—a row of three, as usual. They had been together almost constantly for the past week. It was an A-class mission, and they weren't allowed out of sight of each other.
Sasuke watched Hinata bite her lip and stare at the floor. Her hands shook as she clutched her mat against herself.
She was scared of being alone.
"We're not allowed to separate," Sasuke cut in. The Hyuuga looked up, meeting his eyes with her startled ones. "You'll stay with us."
He watched Naruto scowl, peeved that he'd been overruled. Hinata returned her full attention to the floor, continuing to meticulously unwrap her mat.
Sighing in exasperation, Naruto plopped onto his, burying himself under dusty sheets. Sasuke momentarily watched the two before pocketing his hands and exiting the cabin, unaware of how her shaking worsened.
He knew Naruto was too accustomed of his hypocrisy to find the energy to complain. The blonde had other things on his mind, like his own looming advancement.
Sasuke walked onto the cabin's crude wooden porch, leaned on the railing and stared into the night; trying to gather his thoughts but trying not to think about her.
He heard the door open behind him and glanced over his shoulder.
Her stupidity was irritating. Consistently, she followed people into traps.
Because he was anything but good company. "Had I known how damaged you'd become, I would never have bothered," he confessed. "I would have left you to die."
The Hyuuga came to stand beside him. "I don't feel anything," she breathed.
Her eyes were closed, but she seemed contented with his admission.
"I don't know who you are, or why you did the things—that you did, and I can't feel anymore, and it's—it's your fault."
"Aa," he agreed, submitting to her.
Hinata drew and exhaled. "And I can't l-love anymore," she continued. "Because...because he will n-never understand me—the way you did that night."
She opened her eyes, revealing their wetness even in the moon's wan light. She didn't try to hide it. Her arms hung listlessly at her sides, fingers hidden in the too-long sleeves of her nightshirt. She looked just as helpless as she had the morning he'd escorted her home. And he stood beside her, just as stationary.
She suddenly threw herself into his arms. Or maybe he drew her there. In a single instant, she was pressed to his chest, wrapped in his hold, and neither knew who had initiated it first. Her cool hands clutched the back of his shirt.
It formed a connection he'd never had; a level of intimacy that was alien to him.
He held her back, compelled by a visceral need. He held her tightly, the way he had when he'd gathered her from the forest.
"You're a liar," he said, as she cried into his chest.
She trusted him. He was potentially the only person she wholly trusted at that moment.
It left him numb, but he was good at keeping it to himself.
"You're the same as me," she said, staring at the ceiling, her cheeks wet and her sobs beginning to yield.
The same, in the sense that Konoha wasn't relevant. No one was relevant, because no one knew them quite the way they knew each other.
Sasuke glanced at her from Naruto's other side. "I'm nothing like you," he disagreed.
The blonde was sprawled between them. Whether he was asleep or just pretending to be, he left them mostly ignored.
"I'm alive," Sasuke continued. "I'm still in Konoha. I have purpose." He paused, observing her glassy eyes, which were heavy-lidded, and affixed to the dilapidated roof above them; almost dreamy. "And I'm not going to pursue a relationship with someone who's suicidal."
Her face flooding with surprise, she abruptly sat up.
It was the first time he saw her blush.
He sat up as well, if just to eye her, but found himself staring, for moments, and then...scores of moments.
And when they hung in that silence, staring at each other, and finally Naruto's snores had grown to be suspiciously pronounced, Sasuke glanced away. "You have feelings," he accused.
He watched Hinata duck under her sheets—
Reflected that she was strange, then returned to his.
They continued missions together, but with considerably less hostility. Naruto would join them on the occasions he wasn't otherwise occupied, and Sakura, scarcely. She had taken up a lot of Tsunade's burden, and most of her time was spent at the hospital.
Lately Hinata...was making an effort, as feeble as it was at times. It was outlandish that she'd taken counsel from him. She was quiet, but now forced herself to be vocal. Still she had those large eyes that seemed sad and pensive. Those pale lips, always pressed into a frown.
They adapted to their informal partnership without much complaint. Occasionally, they exchanged curt nods on the particularly long missions, or went over routes and strategy with a strange detachment.
Kakashi soon noticed their borderline awkwardness and began to suggest they were a couple.
He wasn't worth protesting, Sasuke decided. It would just make his visible eye crinkle, the way it did when Shikamaru and Temari threatened his life. Hinata, too, remained wordless, and looked anywhere but into the scarecrow's keen eye.
By the time he was seventeen, despite the monotony of missions...Sasuke didn't mind them. He didn't mind Hinata, despite how...strange she was.
"Ano..." she said one evening, "I like you."
He looked up.
"You're—nice," she finished lamely, staring at her knees.
Sasuke also averted his gaze, though not knowing why.
The sun had lowered, and Hinata sat on the ground on the opposite side of the fire. Her knees were drawn up, her arms wrapped around them.
Sasuke felt his previous level of comfort slowly drain away. Brushing off his shock, he looked back at her, surprised that she met his eyes. Her expression was perfectly blank, her eyes reflecting the flames between them. She seemed collected. She had been prepared.
"Why?" he challenged.
Hinata grit her teeth, smiling almost angrily. "You're nice," she repeated, seeming immensely uncomfortable. "And you're—v-very—handsome."
But that was all meaningless. He gave her an incredulous look and she drew a deep breath.
"My purpose—is to be with you," Hinata concluded.
He has advised her to find purpose, and she had returned with something so simplistic...so complex—so inane, or insane, he couldn't tell which. "That's it?" he said dryly.
He saw Hinata blush for the second time in his life. What had been a stark apathy had become a girliness; a naturalness he simply didn't associate with Hyuugas. She looked human for once. It made him swallow.
"Some goals lead up to others," she mumbled.
He himself was beginning to feel warm. "Oh?"
Her eyes flitted downwards again. "My purpose can expand to things like—keeping you. To making you happy, and—making you like me the way I like you."
Too late.
They sat there in silence, the firelight illuminating their bemused faces. Finally, Sasuke bowed his head, allowing his long bangs to hang in his eyes.
"No."
He didn't look at Hinata or see the way her eyes snapped up, or how her face fell, as she produced an expression even more vulnerable than the last.
She couldn't rely on him as reason to live—
...despite that she might have been his...
—because—he wasn't reliable at all. He was selfish. His life was a steady medium.
She was barely hanging on.
And he wasn't dependable. He wasn't there to prop her up. He couldn't be her purpose, because he was just a bad one. What of when he failed her, like he knew he would, like he very well intended to?
She was still so fucking unwell.
"I'm not nice," he mentioned, standing. He withdrew to his tent as Hinata stared into the fire.
She shifted a lot in her sleep. Sometimes he could hear her cry out from the tent beside his. He never intervened. Dreams were just dreams, and he was too involved as it was.
He wondered if she would become cold towards him again. Maybe they were back to where they had been a year ago.
What is this? he wondered, staring at the cloth ceiling. Why was he trying to fix her? He could have very well accepted her, controlled her, allowed her to become slowly obsessed with him, as he rather wanted to experience that numbing connection again.
Instead, he had refused her, as though there was any hope that she would ever get better. As though her life wasn't a mechanical consciousness, as though her death wouldn't be by her own hands. Emotionally, she lived in a constant limbo. With or without him, she would lose either way.
So why not take her for a brief ride? Watch her flutter, crash, sink, struggle, lose herself all over again.
Sasuke continued to stare at the tapering ceiling of his tent.
He didn't want to see Hinata decline.
She had devised a purpose—as much as it unnerved him— she had placed a purpose where she had been previously vacant. Wasn't that progress? Was his wariness just controlling his understanding of things?
Sasuke turned onto his side, closing his eyes. He played her words in his head again. Analyzed them. Dissected them.
My purpose is to be with you.