Author's Note: Thank you for the amazing reviews. I am not derserving of your patience, love, and dedication.
The Chaos Theory
Interlude 4
Naruto and Sasuke dodged as a wave of white chakra plowed through the forest, sending shredded leaves and splintered wood in every direction. Dozens of birds fluttered from the surrounding trees, and were followed, alas, by a merciful bout of silence.
Hinata's satisfaction, however, was again short lived. Catching her breath, she watched as several more shinobi crept into the clearing to reinforce their fallen comrades. She, Naruto, and Sasuke were severely outnumbered, but her teammates didn't seem to mind. The Uchiha drew his blade as Naruto clenched his fists. They launched themselves at the Grass ninja with too little trepidation and too much bloodlust.
Deflecting stray weapons, Hinata withdrew from the battle. As chakra-consuming as her technique was, it was efficient. She just needed to get higher.
She leapt from branch to branch, circling the clearing as her eyes sought out a perch. Dozens of weapons were pelted toward her, but she twisted away from them with grace and agility one could only inherit from Hyuuga. Her aggressors proved only to distract themselves from the battle, and to make their executions all the more prompt.
Hinata chose a vantage and continued toward it until the branch was just across from her by a few yards. She leapt for it, arms reaching.
She enjoyed the way air buffeted her face, drawing her hair back as though by somebody's fingertips. Her eyes drifted to the ground, curious of the others. She saw Sasuke slice at veins and arteries like he could see them the way she could.
Hinata snatched for her branch, to miss it by inches.
She choked on the taste of blood in her mouth, belatedly realizing that she had been struck. Numbed by shock, she fell from the air, clutching her abdomen and bracing for impact with the ground.
...How would it feel? Her body relaxed to a diver's sprawl, and she watched the earth grow nearer.
Someone messily stole her from the air. Someone, with an extraordinary talent for speed, who reached her in the seconds any other would have failed. Together they fell through a gale of foliage and slammed to the ground in an inelegant tangle.
There was a foreboding pause as displaced leaves fluttered down to their bodies. Hinata reluctantly coughed, bitter about her error. She lifted her face from Sasuke's chest. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his teeth grit from the impact. The air had probably been knocked from his lungs, and maybe she would have urged him to breathe if she wasn't certain he very well knew how.
Grunting in pain, she tried to climb off him, only to notice one of his arms clamped around her waist. Sasuke noticed, and arduously released her, his arm moving as though it was stone.
Hinata rolled onto the grass, and could do little more than curl onto her side, feeling blood trickle through her fingers. She wondered whether Sasuke was hurt. She opened her eyes to slits.
The two were enclosed in the forest, narrow strips of light shining down on them wherever sunset managed to slip through the leaves. Naruto was nowhere in sight, but others were likely to have seen where they'd fallen.
Sasuke, too, opened his eyes, with pain and reluctance to mirror hers. They stared at each other blankly for a moment, until finally, he inhaled.
With her eyes half lidded, her body limp, and her face nuzzled by the cool grass, she watched Sasuke force himself to recover. Like a machine, he propped himself onto one of his elbows, his free arm reaching behind him to draw his sword. Maybe he, too, had heard the rustling sounds of approaching bodies. Soon enough, a multitude of kunai rained down on them, iridescent flashes against the sun and shade.
"Hakke Hasangeki!"
Another whirlwind of chakra assaulted the forest, and a dozen Grass nin were blown from the trees. Finally feeling the extent of her injury, Hinata lowered her hands and began to sink, but Sasuke caught her arm. He climbed to his feet, and jerked her up with him, ignoring her pained protests as he pulled her against his shoulder. She held onto him, trying to stay upright despite that she might have been losing consciousness. "Let's go," he growled, and they took to the trees.
Sasuke had not hesitated to leave Naruto behind. He knew the blonde could handle himself.
Unlike her.
"Your technique slowed you down," he said with painstaking indifference, which consequently wasn't indifferent at all. She thought he'd follow up with something else, like reassurance or criticism, but his comment hung in the air.
They had managed to escape to a clearing several kilometers away. Sasuke had lowered her to the ground at the base of a tree, then knelt down to survey her wound. With a strange, artificial detachment, he opened her vest and drew her shirt above her abdomen. He came upon more blood than he'd expected. "Take it off."
She complied, trying not to move more than necessary. Her arms trembled, but she tried to attribute it to shock. When she was finished, she was left only in slacks and a bra on, her face hot even though it should have been cooling from the blood loss.
Sasuke's eyes remained on her midsection. It was nothing he hadn't seen before. He examined the wound, ensuring the assault hadn't breached an artery, before reaching into the backpack beside him to withdraw a coil of bandages. He began to bound the wound, wrapping his arm around her shoulders when he needed to reach behind her. Hinata squeezed her eyes shut and grasped one of his arms. Whether for physical support or emotional, he couldn't determine and couldn't care.
A man suddenly burst into the clearing. Sasuke and Hinata looked up, startled by his suddenness.
Naruto held a tree, gasping for breath. His eyes were still a blazing crimson from the fight. In his voice was that universal concern he would never exhaust, "Hinata, are you alri-?"
The Hyuuga instantly recoiled, hunching down and wrapping her arms around herself. Sasuke stiffened as the bandages he had placed moistened with blood.
"D-Don't look at me!" she cried.
Sasuke was speechless. "She's fine," he said after a moment.
Naruto stammered, "Okay—right."
As he trampled off, Hinata lifted her tear-streaked face. They met eyes for the first time since their retreat, Sasuke wearing something akin to shock.
He hastily returned to the wound, working quickly, and with far less grace than before. He jerked at the bandages, binding them tightly. She winced at his roughness.
"Put some clothes on," Sasuke said, standing and leaving her with the backpack.
Feeling suddenly cool and clammy, Hinata watched him exit the clearing to join Naruto. There was a muttered exchange between them, but she could discern words that should have been intangible sounds from her distance. They wanted to make camp because of her injury.
Hinata pulled on a fresh shirt as the men started back. When they entered the clearing together, she was prepared for their proposition.
"We're camping here for the night," Naruto announced. He leaned over the backpack beside her to pull out their mats, not looking at her. He straightened and set them up in a neat row: hers, Sasuke's, then his.
"And we're going to scout," Sasuke said from the edge of the clearing.
"We'll be gone for ten minutes. Just going to circle the area," Naruto reassured. He started toward Sasuke, but threw her a backwards glance. "Will you be okay?"
His geniality never tired. She would grow fond of it again in the coming years.
Hinata stared at the ground. "Yes," she whispered.
There was a swoosh of air to mark their departure. Hinata waited a moment before planting her hands on either side of her. She forced herself to her feet, trying her best to muffle her pained grunts.
Hunched slightly, she moved toward her mat, ignoring the way the world tilted and swam around her. When she reached it, she lowered herself to her knees and reclined, not bothering to remove her sandals. She grabbed a sheet Naruto had left there and pulled it over herself. Her eyelids felt very heavy, but she couldn't sleep.
Rustling noises reigned free. Disoriented as she was, it was hard to determine harmless sounds from dangerous ones. All of them became a nefarious muddle in her anxiety.
Hinata closed her eyes, ignoring the shivers that crawled along her limbs then down her spine. She waited for five, then what had to be ten minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Maybe something had happened. Maybe she should have gone with them.
That was stupid. She had already compromised the mission by getting injured. Accompanying them would have just hampered them more. They could have very well left her alone there to wait for reinforcements as they continued on with the mission. That protocol wasn't typically their style, but they should have. Theoretically. Logically. To be a true shinobi, emotion shouldn't have played an influence.
She felt her shaking progressively worsen, until it was violently blatant. Hinata turned onto her side. She squeezed her eyes shut when she heard people enter the clearing behind her.
Naruto's relaxed movements and Sasuke's steady footfalls. She listened to them pause, as though to survey her tense form. She tried to fall asleep then, if just to evade the palpable disapproval she could somehow sense radiating off of them.
She heard Naruto move toward his mat, and Sasuke follow, but the Uchiha stopped beside her. She heard—felt, him kneel down, touching her shoulder if just to make sure she knew he was there. She hadn't expected him to do that. She was certain he despised her.
Her eyes snapped open when she felt him lower himself to her mat, his body light against hers. She stiffened as he wrapped his arms around her, carefully avoiding the wound. His face connecting her hair, he took regular draws, as though he could just sleep there, wearing his weapons, and armor, and holding her.
She took his example, took longer draws, her astonishment ceding to the familiarity of the contact.
Her eyes wearied until they dropped closed. She hardly noticed that her shaking had stopped.
"Che, I knew you two were dating." Naruto smirked.
Sasuke opted not to respond, but stared grimly into his drink. Another remark, and he would surely have to consume it.
"No, really, Sakura-chan. They've been getting cozy on missions..."
Sakura looked somewhat baffled at the revelation. A smile formed on her lips. "Sasuke, Sasuke," she chided, shaking her head jokingly.
An engagement party was the last place Sasuke had expected to spend his weekend, but his lack of attendance in the absence of a mission would have been contorted into a weird political statement. He, among the three being called the new sannin. And Naruto, who was being groomed to take the Hokage mantle in another year or so.
Sasuke glanced at Hinata, who was seated with some relatives several tables away. She too stared into her glass, looking up only when the conversation was directed towards her.
He had caught her in the forest out of instinct, just as he would have for Naruto or Sakura. He had tended her wound because she couldn't have done it herself. It hadn't mattered. He had seen her unclothed before.
But it had been very different before. She had been battered, broken, and scarred. Now things were different. He was different.
He was sick.
Sasuke raised his glass to his lips, savoring in the rare indulgence of alcohol.
Contrary to popular belief, their eyes never once met across that crowded room.
Most of the guests filtered out of the Hyuuga house as the party diminished, but Naruto hung around in hopes of catching the honorable couple with an awkward conversation. Sakura stuck by Naruto.
With Hiashi's death, no one had a say in whom Neji dated, except for the elders, whom he treated with such a potent impotence, it somehow became canonical.
At the age of eighteen, Hyuuga Neji was due to be married to Yamanaka Ino.
Most suggested it was all part of a prolonged sex game in which neither demented participant was willing to back down. And though it probably was, the bride and groom to-be were awfully polite toward each other. Sasuke watched the aloof Neji opt to kiss his fiancé's hand rather than her lips. Ino, in turn, blushed demurely.
"These relationships no longer surprise me," Naruto whispered conspiratorially. "I don't know where they come from, but if Gaara proposes to Kiba's mom, I will not be surprised."
"I think they're just sexed out," Sakura said dismissively, nodding to the betrothed. "That happened to me once. Sometimes you're just sexed out, and you do other stuff."
Naruto looked alarmed.
"Politics," Sasuke said. Ino was facing a promotion in the Torture and Interrogation Force. She'd be at Anko's right, and the first in line to succeed her.
There was a thoughtful silence, before Naruto grinned. "Let's go talk to them." He dragged Sakura off to the couple's table. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. Naruto and Sakura were always together.
Someone slid into Naruto's empty chair.
It was Hinata, which was fine, but it was in a completely different context from what he was accustomed to. Though she looked as appealing as ever, the word "pretty" couldn't describe her. That would suggest he hadn't noticed the formfitting black dress, with the asymmetrical hem and the generous V-neck, too generous, really.
"You like me," she accused.
Sasuke grasped for his drink.
It was true. Sometimes he even entertained the concept of being with her. He had held her three times, and thrice more than he'd held anyone else that he could remember. So admittedly he did like her.
That didn't mean he wanted her.
"You're at the top of my list," Hinata said.
"List?"
"My list of 'purposes.' I'm collecting them."
"Aa, your list of reasons not to kill yourself."
She faltered, then took Naruto's unfinished wine glass. "Un," she agreed, and drank.
Sasuke appraised her.
"To be with you," Hinata said, awkward under his scrutiny. "To watch over Hanabi. To inherit my clan and eliminate the branch house. To become me again. Ano—to become a jounin."
This piqued his interest. "You're being considered for the ANBU."
"I just—want to be a jounin," she responded inelegantly. "I like children."
It was the first fact he'd learned about her that wasn't relevant at all. It was simultaneously annoying and refreshing. "I hate children."
Hinata smiled slightly, her defenses lowering. "And there's a lot more on the list. I just—don't want to get cocky," she mumbled, glancing away.
He liked when she blushed, but didn't know what to do with that knowledge aside from staring at her. Conveniently, it made her blush more.
Sasuke caught himself. "Are you really trying to buy me? To modify yourself every time I turn you down?" He reached out to steal back Naruto's glass, but Hinata caught his hand. Sasuke's eyes snapped up dangerously. Hinata's smile fell, but she didn't back down. For a while they remained like that, his arm suspended, fingers wrapped in her grip.
Sasuke tore his hand away, then snatched hers back, if just to assert his dominance. No one seemed to notice the aggressive exchange, just an intimate one, his hand caressing hers.
It lingered, and then...lingered.
They continued to stare at each other, until Naruto and Sakura returned and paused beside the table. Surprisingly enough, they ambled off again, as though deciding not to interrupt. Naruto threw him a knowing grin, and Sasuke sighed, releasing Hinata's hand.
He leaned close, to tell her, "You have everything to live for." He paused, enjoying her freesia scent. "But it shouldn't start with me." As he withdrew, he searched her face for traces of guilt, but her eyes were unreadable.
Hinata stood and walked off. As she exited the dining room, he sighed again. Stupid girl.
When Naruto and Sakura returned to their seats, they giggled amongst themselves and mostly minded their business. If Sasuke was getting along with girls, they would not interfere. The Uchiha stared peevishly into his glass for a while before pushing back his chair. "Goodnight."
"Ja."
He exited the dining room into a corridor and trailed outside where a few others were chattering. Night had settled in, and he'd long grown weary of the festivities. Sasuke stood on the veranda and pocketed his hands, feeling restless. Just when he had decided to go home, he heard the sniffling noises.
They were distinctly hers.
He glanced at the few lingering guests around him, before walking around to the side of the house, prompted mostly by annoyance, maybe. He climbed the wall to the roof, unaware that it would be their favorite meeting place for the next several years.
Hinata was seated there, her legs drawn and arms wrapped around them. Upon noticing him, she wiped her hand across her eyes. Sasuke approached, standing beside her. "What now?" he asked.
The heiress glared up at him. "I stop liking you."
"Hn."
He sat down beside her. Was she really just going to sit there crying? Like a—a teenage girl? His cheek twitched. "Is your whole life dedicated to feeling sorry for yourself?"
"Baka," she hissed.
"Teme," he corrected her.
Hinata again wiped her eyes. "All you do is remind me of what happened," she said, staring up into the night. "And conveniently enough, I-"
He kissed her.
Several months later, a mission brought them back to the abandoned cabin in the Wind country, now older, eroded by harsh seasons.
Throughout their several hours of travel, Naruto had snapped at them to "get a room," every time Sasuke and Hinata accidentally met eyes. Sakura was angry at Naruto, and he, in turn, was angry at the world. A jaded Sasuke decided to take Naruto's advice literally the twelfth time he had grumbled it.
He climbed off his mat and to his feet, offering Hinata his hand. She slowly took it, and Naruto could only stare as they withdrew to the spare bedroom.
The blonde rattled his fist and groused about their collective lack of parental guidance.
Hinata gently closed the door behind them.
It had become habit that she and Sasuke sometimes fell asleep on the roof together, that they woke up against each other, on that roof, or during missions, or wherever else their energy had exhausted. She slipped off her slacks then climbed into the bed. When Sasuke laid down beside her, he did exactly what he'd intended.
Slept.
And to him, it wasn't uncomfortable, or exhilarating, just good.
He awoke to find Hinata awake, straddling him, her long hair hanging down to tickle his neck.
His weary eyes drifted to the window where sunlight streamed into the room. "Why now?" he wanted to know.
"I'm seizing the moment," she whispered back.
He assured her, "There will be more opportunities to fuck me, Hinata. Many more."
She grasped his collar. "I want this one."
As she leaned down to meet his lips, his hands slid along her thighs and up her hips, exploring her soft, smooth skin there.
"Fine," he conceded.
And she had him.
Several days later, he walked her back to her house, shrouded in an air of that strange, addictive ease. He was her slave, and he didn't mind it. He would always be the submissive in this dynamic.
Hinata was clamped to his arm, more to embarrass him than anything else. He didn't mind her, or the giggles that followed them whenever they crossed the village, not as teammates, but as a couple, now. Odd. They walked through the Hyuuga gates, and—
His breath hitched as he caught sight of the figure sprawled in the front yard.
Hinata released his arm and hurried forward.
Hanabi.