a/N: I know I have a lot of explaining to do. Suffice it to say, I'm rewriting the whole of The Journal from chapter six. I honestly think I need to rewrite the WHOLE second half, of ch. 7 to 10.
Which is why you may need to re-read the last chapter before this one. (I'm awful at recaps).
Believe me, there is no Jenean or whatever brown-haired green-eyed guy in this. Reading back, I know I got WAY off track.
I hope this chapter has more of a plot, and I hope you like it!
Your Ultimate Awesome Quote: "When life hands you lemons, make urinade." – Chip Junior
Chapter Seven
Recuperation
"Your favorite book."
"I'm not telling."
"Your favorite movie."
"I'm not going to tell you!"
"Favorite singer."
"Fuck off."
At this he shifted uncomfortably, looking away with a pointed, steely gaze. I noticed his nose was almost fully healed. Lucky.
We wallowed in silence for several seconds, me in guilt and anger, him in something Sasuke-ish.
Finally he swiveled around. He was glaring noticeably.
I smarted, remembering. It was just like when he found me in the ravine. His gaze, intense. His hand, feeling deathly cold as he dragged me up.
But this time it was a mock-glare.
"I don't really have to help you in filling this out, you know." He held up the journal. My journal. "I could be somewhere else."
"Namely, school?" I shot back. I knew that directing all my unspent angst at him was not fair. I knew this. I also knew I didn't want to be fair.
"School is better than being here." He looked straight into my eyes. "With you."
My gaze flitted away.
"Sorry," I mumbled, my hands twisting awkwardly on the flimsy bedspread. This hospital wasn't known for its quality.
He sighed, a sharp, jagged exhale of air. He lifted the pen into his narrow fingers again. "Favorite book."
"The Scarlet Letter," I muttered.
The pen hung suspended in the air. Sasuke lifted his head.
"No, way," he accused.
"Rawrgbnimoshpk," I answered smartly.
He paused again, as if I would give him a different reply. When I failed to, he threw the pen down in a dramatic gesture.
"I'm not doing this if you're acting like this," he claimed. "I'll let you try to write, with that poor, sorry excuse for a hand."
At his words, said gauze-covered hand gave a violent twitch.
"In fact," he continued, standing up now, "I think I'll be leav – "
"Harry Potter!" I howled, kicking my bandaged legs up. "It's Harry Potter!"
"Oh, so she does speak English," he quipped, unenthusiastically sitting down again. As much as he didn't admit it, I knew he hated school more than this.
I let my head drop down to the pillow, giving in.
"Favorite movie?"
"Twilight."
He stared. "No."
"Yes," I replied sullenly. I reconsidered on this situation. Telling him about the secrets of my life was too dangerous.
"That movie?" he said, in a somewhat horrified tone. "That movie, with all the bad acting, horrible werewolf hair, stupid lines like, "you are my own personal dose of heroine," and the virtual plot-less falling in love?"
"Yes!"
He muttered something incoherent, which sounded a lot like; she's touched in the head.
"Favorite singer."
"The - jonas - brothers."
This time dropping the pen was on accident.
I laughed aloud at his expression.
"You don't mean that. I'm definitely leaving right now, if you mean that. I'm getting the hell away from you, I'm taking the next plane to Tokyo – "
I suddenly got a recollection of the near-distant past. I chortled, saying it aloud.
"Last summer I went over to TenTen's house. I met her grandfather for the first time. And so he asks me, as soon as I walk through the door – "Do you like the Jonas Brothers?" And then I go, "Um…sort of?" – because back then, being socially inept ("not that you're not now," Sasuke supplied helpfully) I didn't know who they were.
The grandfather rolls back his eyes and says, "They're all – "
I gasped in silent laughter for a second. Sasuke's eyes narrowed.
"They're all what?" he wanted to know.
"He said – he said – " I collapsed into giggles, "they're all faggots."
And while I was dying from choked back chuckles, he wrote.
"That's more like it," he said almost to himself.
"More like what?" The laughter died on my lips.
"Yourself," he said simply. "Sarcastic. Funny. At least, in the journal. God knows, in real life, you can't be funny to save your life."
Before I knew what I was doing, I threw my (thankfully empty) plastic kiddie cup at him.
He dodged to the side. The cup collided with the elegant hanging plant, and somehow got tangled up in its thick leaves, glinting plastic yellow in the dark green.
"Uh oh," I snickered.
"You idiot," he mouthed, just as the door swept cleanly open.
Naruto.
My eyes opened wide. I hadn't spoken to him much directly after -
My throat collapsed.
"Hey, Hinata!" he cheerfully greeted, a grin evident on his bright features. "Feeling any better?"
He walked over to me. Did he know that I was shaking at his near presence? Taking my gauzed hand, he inspected it, sniffing.
"Gosh, this looks terrible." He dropped it into my lap carefully. "Be more careful next time, Hina-chan! Don't slip down into ravines anymore!"
The silence was absolute. My mind couldn't seem to fabricate anything to fill it up. Compulsively my eyes searched for Sasuke's.
His gaze was stony.
"NARRRRRUTOO!" shrieked a maniacal pitch, and the door broke open. Glass shivered on the windowpanes.
Sakura stood in the doorway, an imposing silhouette with her wild pink hair and slightly showing figure. "You IDIOT! I told you not to bother Hinata, I told you to quit your antics, but nooo-oo! You had to enter when you KNEW she was recuperating, when you KNEW when you KNEW when you KNEW - !"
"Ooow," Naruto moaned as she yanked him by the hair. He landed in the hallway with an unceremonious thump.
The door was slammed after him. Sakura walked over me, looking slightly - only slightly - windswept.
"Oh, hey, Hina," she said, and a pretty smile bloomed on her lips.
So this is who I got dumped in place of...
I swallowed, feeling suddenly vulnerable. "Hi, Sakura."
Her voice dropped intimately. "Remember when, on the bus in the beginning of school, I told you how Naruto's an idiot and a jerk?"
I nodded uncertainly, and checked myself on that. Did I think that way, too?
"He still is!" she declared, throwing her thin hands in the air. They weren't nail-bitten like mine were. "I swear, if he does one more thing to annoy me - "
A loud boom shattered any shreds of hope for Naruto's life expectancy of 86.
Sakura tore out of the room. I heard her shrieks through the thick walls.
I sat back. Sasuke was being Sasuke again, sedentarily laconic.
Do I still think like Sakura does, too? Do I think Naruto is an idiotic jerk?
My hands shook in the filmy, bulky gauze.
Yes. I do.
And before I had a chance to tell it to shut up, my mind surfaced with another urgent question.
And do you still like him?
I trembled. The bed shook.
Yes. Yes, I do.
Sasuke left in half an hour, taking my journal with him. (It's no use to you anyway," he said loftily. "You couldn't write a nickel's worth.) He left conveniently two seconds before Hiashi entered the room.
He sat on the sternest edge of the wood chair, large hands clasped.
I was on the verge of talking about the weather when he posed a inquiry.
"Are you a virgin?"
I sprung from the bed with an almost unholy passion. "W-WHAT?!"
He stood up with me, mouth suddenly gone slack. His eyes grew wide.
"No! Hinata, my eldest daughter - I know I have not been the most caring father during your lifetime, but that can change! It can change!" He was almost weeping. "Tell me, if you c-continue getting on drugs and having unprotected sex, it could result in years and years of rehabili - "
"F-father!"
" - tation!" He twitched corrosively. "This is true, is it not?"
"W-WHA - "
"You're not a virgin anymore!" His eyes teared up. "Please tell me that you are going to have a proper marriage and wedlock, and will not abort the child! Oh, the poor child!"
I was shaking with disbelief. Someone come in, some pro-life guy, and tell him abortion's not allowed?
" - Oh, the grief," he managed, "that the child will go through - a teenage mother! Oh, the shame! But it is okay, Hinata. I will be supportive of your decision. I will hereby swear that every day faithfully I shall feed and burp the child accordingly to the Spellman's Guide to Infants, and - "
"FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATHER!"
He gaped at me.
"You," I said with difficulty, "are delusional."
I looked up at the ceiling for a full thirty seconds before closing my eyes and returning to Earth.
"Why," I asked calmly, "Why, do you have to make it so, so very hard to have a conversation with you?"
He blinked and said something intelligible. Now I knew where my stuttering had came from.
"I," I announced, "am, indeed, a teenage mom - " As the words slipped I realized I'd said the wrong thing. I'd meant for, "I am, indeed, a virgin."
The damage was done. Hiashi bolted out of his chair and ran for the nurse, screaming at the top of his forty-nine years old lungs.
It turned out later he was shrieking "Why didn't she use a condom? Why didn't she use birth control pills?!"
Wow, the health teacher would be impressed with his expansive knowledge. And I had no idea how he knew these words.
Some things, you just don't want to wonder about.
XxxxxXxxxxxX
two days later-
school; 10:04 AM -
"Four hours."
I lifted up my lab goggles with some trouble - there was still gauze on my arm - and glared at Sasuke.
"For four hours he ranted." I let the words sink into his prodigious mind. "Four hours he lectured on the evils of miscarriage and sexually transmitted diseases. Not the grossest of which was gonorrhea, which is apparently bacteria that grows in warm places."
He backed away slightly, but I saw the smirk. Oh boy, did I see the smirk. It spread.
"That's nice," he attempted.
"It's all your fault," I complained, pounding the lab sheet with my bandaged hand. "If you hadn't exited the hospital room at practically exact time Hiashi entered, he wouldn't have thought of - of whatever goes on in his mind!" I threw up my hands. "It was your fault, because normally,
a. I am a very shy girl,
b. because I am a very shy girl boys do not greet me, and,
c. because Hiashi saw you getting out of the room, he
d. ultimately assumed you were
e. an assassin,
f. a vampire (Sasuke chuckled darkly) or,
g. a boyfriend involved in - and Hiashi's mind jumps to conclusions - an illicit love affair."
I let the words sink in again. "Illicit love affair, my a - "
"Don't curse," he said absently.
"My aardvark," I finished anti-climatically. "And you should know, Uchiha, that things like these don't easily get out of my father's mind. Not even when I told him, for those damn four hours, that I was not pregnant and still a virgin."
I glowered at him, but his gaze was not on mine. His was on the hordes and masses of students staring very goggly-eyed.
At me.
I swallowed very slowly. The swallow got stuck somewhere between my esophagus and my stomach.
The shy, quiet girl they all knew me as?
...Had a lot of explaining to do.
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