A/N: Look a new chapter! It uses extensive punctuation, includes extensive references to obscure things that are obscure and thus, you do not know what they are, and extensive SasuHina. It's extensive to me anyway, because this story has been so lacking in SasuHina up till now. Bet you anything, this'll be the first chapter that gets more reviews, just cause of the SasuHina. Oh, fickle followers.

I had fun writing this. I was evil, but it was fun.

Enjoy this chapter of... Oro's Jail!

The sky was velvety black and the air barely stirred as his feet stepped stealthily into the no man's land between nations. On his back was a heavy wooden box, the panels of wood interlocking into an inescapable prison that smelled faintly of formaldehyde. He walked with a steady pace, eyes and ears alert to any sign of danger, fingers held lightly against the hilt of his katana. He barely noticed the thumps coming from the wooden box.

"Let me out," sobbed Hinata, beating her hands against the wood. She had cried so much in the last few hours that she was surprised she wasn't drowning in tears just yet. Now, her tears had run dry and her eyes felt swollen and itchy, but she couldn't stop her dry weeping. Moreover, her captor didn't even seem to notice her futile attacks at the box. At some point it had occurred to her that perhaps using ninjutsu against the box might her help her break out of it. It had proved useless, as the box seemed to be made of an impermeable and unshakable type of wood, or coated in some clever ninjutsu to stop just that sort of thing from happening.

Through all of that, she had to keep readjusting her legs to keep them from falling asleep. The box didn't allow for much movement, and every slight adjustment always ended up getting her into a position that was fractionally more uncomfortable than the last until eventually her limbs were so bent in on themselves that she was certain that once she came out of the box, if she ever did come out of the box, she'd remain in this twisted position for the rest of her life.

However, at the moment, that was the least of her worries.

She had never been particularly skilled at keeping track of time and relied on all sorts of clocks to keep her scheduled. The big sundial in the garden. A clan member passing her in the hall who, for some reason or other, always had the time. The position of the sun, dragging steadily across the blue sky, infusing it with its own personal hues and signifying the time of day. But here there were no gardens, and no sundials to shed their shadows of enlightenment upon her. There were no halls with passing clan members, all too willing to help the heiress in her quest for time. There was no sun, there was no sky, there were no cracks in this wooden coffin. Here, time passed as if not passing at all, and there was nothing to tell her otherwise. She had begun to fear that perhaps she would never be let out of here; her energy would slowly start to dissipate, her limbs would break, her body would eat itself, and still she'd stay inside this wooden tomb.

In fact, it was happening right now. Her frantic beating became nothing more than half-hearted pats on thick, unmoving wood. Slowly, slowly, slowly, as slowly as a land turtle, her sobs dissolved into stunned little gasps every few minutes, and her swollen eyes began to close with what felt like the weight of the world.

When she awoke, there was a throbbing at the back of her head and she found it impossible to move her body. Everything ached, and every tiny movement hurt so much that she tried to stay as still as possible. Even that hurt. But it was nothing compared to the pain her eyes suffered when, with a strange sucking sound, the top of her coffin was lifted up and off.

Hinata squinted her eyes through the blinding white brightness that filled her space. Suddenly, a black shadow filled her line of vision, and she gasped in fear. This was her captor, the man who she'd been unable to see clearly as her eyes had been so filled with tears, who had roughly stuffed her in this wooden prison as soon as he was clear of Hyuuga lands. This was the person who had ignored her desperate pleas for freedom, who heartlessly plucked her from her home and thrust her into a jail cell of uncertainty and fear. She suddenly realized that she hated this man, whoever he was, and she was surprised by the feeling, one that she'd never experienced. It was pure and strong, undiluted and rational, yet irrational at the same time, a feeling so potent that her gaze was momentarily red and she could feel the anger and loathing flowing through her system as if it was blood, infecting and conquering, creating wild ideas in her head.

Before she knew what she was doing, she was launching herself at him, her fingers bent harshly like animal claws, her legs unfolding with the sudden energy that filled her. Somewhere, her mind registered the crippling pain that reappeared as she attacked, but her fury overrode any other sensations, taking over like a virus. Chakra rushed through her fingertips as they connected with a hard body, and she shrieked in hatred and anger, urging her fingers to connect more, to attack more, to hurt more. Uncontrolled and blind, her hands whipped around and around, searching for ways to incapacitate, to kill. So lost in her fury was she that it took her by surprise when a pair of strong hands wrenched her arms from behind and locked her into an inescapable hold.

"Stop that," a low voice said murderously.

Hinata twisted, trying to escape and continue unleashing her fury on him. "Let me go! I'm not finished!"

"No, you're finished," the voice said, its hold cutting painfully into her already pained hands. She felt something wrapping sinuously around her wrists and hands, crawling up her arms and downwards towards her feet. When she looked down, she could see thick black cords binding her feet together, pulling her ankles ever closer. She rolled her eyes, the fury not quite done. Of course. How could she think she'd be let off so easy? Clearly, it only made sense she'd go from one prison to the next.

With a resigned sigh, Hinata fell to the floor, lying on her side and gazing upwards at her subjugator. Her gaze held the residues of anger, now cold and hard, the hatred visible in the set of her brows. She lay there, her line of sight showing forest floor and open toed ninja shoes, pale skin flaring upwards into black cuffed pants. She laid there for quite a while, the shoes and calves as unmoving as stone. Then she began to get impatient, wondering why her captor did nothing. As the minutes stretched, the cold anger faded into worry at the man's unpredictability, and then from worry into the full blown fear of the wooden box, as pure and undiluted as her previous anger. Except this was much more chilling.

Before she knew it, she was trembling slightly, and her now fearful eyes searched upwards towards some kind of sign that the man wasn't doing something quietly wicked and frightening.

What she found was even scarier.

Past the black cuffed pants, past the purple rope tied firmly round his waist, past the pale spider-like fingers left lightly against the hilt of a katana, past the white, open shirt revealing a pale, sculpted chest, past the dark shadow beneath the jaw was a face so familiar, so legendary and notorious that all she could do was mouth the name.

He was doing absolutely nothing, just gazing down at her with his characteristic expressionless stare, the thin line of his lips unmoving, the straight line of his nose untwitching, the half-lidded slits of his eyes giving nothing away. And through all that, he didn't need to. His history told everything.

"P-please," stuttered Hinata, attempting to slide herself away and failing. She cursed herself for willingly falling to the ground.

Sasuke continued to stare down at her. Then, quite unexpectedly, he finally moved, and the movement was so fluid that Hinata suppressed a gasp of surprise.

She wondered where he'd gone, but she didn't have to wonder long. Almost as quickly as he'd left, he was back, holding a piece of something. Food.

"What in the wo-," she managed to say before he bent down on his haunches and stuffed it into her mouth. She almost spit it out, unable to stand the putrid taste in her mouth, but somewhere, a rational part of her decided she had to eat it, as she didn't know when would be the next time she'd eat. Besides, she hadn't eaten since… how long had she been captured?

As soon as he was convinced she'd eaten it, Sasuke gave a small satisfied nod and stood up again. He walked away again, leaving Hinata to keep facing the ground where he wasn't.

Hinata exhaled a held breath. If she kept doing that, she'd probably die of oxygen deprivation. And she was sure that it would happen often. The things she'd heard about Uchiha Sasuke were not good; in fact, they were the worst. She shuddered as she thought back. At first she'd thought getting kidnapped was bad. But, knowing that it was the Uchiha who was doing it instilled a higher level of fear into her. A kidnapper she could survive. Uchiha Sasuke… it probably meant certain death.

You could expect nothing less from the devil's apprentice.

A wave of hopelessness washed over her. She'd never get out of this. No amount of searches, ANBU or otherwise, could save her now. The man had been missing for years, and if he was still in league with Orochimaru, he'd have mastered the art of disappearing. She'd be disappearing now too.

The despair from before threatened to take over again, perhaps much harder this time, with gasping sobs involved. She couldn't continue crying that way. Her body already felt weak and waterless, her muscles ached and her head throbbed. It wouldn't be prudent to start crying.

Besides, crying hadn't solved anything before. Sure, it helped unleash her frustrations into physical form, physical liquid form, but it did nothing for the problem. Crying didn't solve anything. At that moment, Hinata resolved not to cry. It was a short lived resolution, however. Before long, she was crying, her salty tears running uncomfortably from one eye to the next before finally curving down the side of her face and into the dirt.

It was quiet except for the cries of birds and her own small gasps of despair. His steps were so silent and calculated, so well executed she didn't notice him returning, so wrapped up in self sorrow as she was. Before she knew it, Sasuke was kneeling before her, his face bent down close, and his gaze was now angry.

"Stop crying. I hate it when people cry." The seriousness of his tone made Hinata stop cold, her heart not having quite restarted beating from the scare he'd given her.

Then, Sasuke leaned over with his hands outstretched as if to hurt her. She cringed, bracing herself for the blows. But the blows never came. Instead, uncharacteristically tender hands lifted her and carried her over to a tree, where she was left sitting and leaning against its bark.

"You didn't have to fall over like that earlier," muttered Sasuke, looking at her quite seriously.

Hinata sat with bated breath, wondering why he was being so … almost kind. It made no sense.

"Now you're all dirty and it just makes more work for me," Sasuke said, clearly irritated. He stood and performed a seal. There was the rushing sound of water and then Hinata was gasping, her body assaulted with what felt like an entire river. Then, the river disappeared and in its place was wind, coming at her from all directions, throwing her right left, carrying her up and dropping her down again, slumping her against the tree like the rag doll from her childhood.

Sasuke stood with his arms crossed and looking at her, a curiously dissatisfied look on his face. "Rough… but it gets the job done," Hinata heard him mumble before he turned away to slide his back down a nearby tree. He leaned his head back against the trunk, closing his eyes and sighing. It was a sad sound, holding in its indescribably syllables a lifetime of sorrow.

Instantly, Hinata felt sorry for him. She hadn't known him in his Konoha days, not well, but in the few times she'd seen him, he'd been the quiet guy who hung back, isolated and always seemingly bored.

He'd had a family once, from what'd she'd heard. And they'd all been killed.

That had to be a terrible cross to bear.

However, as she glanced toward her feet, she forgot about her pity. The tight, black cords cutting into her skin reminded her that he was, after all, a kidnapper. A kidnapper and the village traitor. He deserved no sympathy.

Internally, she berated herself for being such a kind person. That's how it started. You begin to feel bad for your captor, sympathize even, and eventually you think that what they did was the right thing. It was a psychological game they played, and Hinata wanted no part of it.

In fact, it'd be best if she just stopped. Not speak to him, try to ignore him. Be as angry an unresponsive as possible. Yes, that's what she'd do.

It was difficult though, when he looked so sad.

"You have to eat it," he said, his face a shadow from the other side of the fire.

"But… I d-don't want to…"

"But you have to. I won't be getting anything else for you."

"Then … I won't eat." Hinata crossed her arms and stuck her nose in the air. She had meant to seem firm but instead the effect was comical. She looked like a little girl refusing to eat her vegetables.

"You have to eat," he said, and he was now standing, leaving his food abandoned to walk over to her, presumably to force her to eat.

She could feel her heart going into overdrive, afraid of what he might do so she would eat. And yet, she still refused to eat. She just couldn't bring herself to do it.

He was now sitting in front of her, and the look in his eyes was startling. It was inexplicably stern, and his eyebrows were lowered, making him look all the more menacing. He got closer than he'd ever been, so close Hinata finally noticed the dark circles under his eyes, terrible, purple things that in turn led her to discover the hollows of his cheekbones, emphasizing how thin he was. He was more intimidating at this distance than he'd ever been, and he was looking her straight in the eyes, his dark pupils seeming to try to convey something crucial to her.

"You're eating. Even if I have to force it down your throat. If I have to pump it through your veins, you're getting this food into your system. I don't have time for whining, and I don't have time for games. If you must know, I'm trying to be kind. If it was up to me, you'd be in a lot more pain than this. But I have specific instructions to keep you well, and I am not going to fail my mission because some bratty little girl refuses to eat rabbit. You better start chewing, or I swear that I will make this unpleasant for you."

It was a threat, and she could feel it. A tiny shudder ran down her spine, and she fervently hoped he hadn't noticed. He had, and it amused him. The first sign that he had any human left in him showed, a tiny tweaking at the corner of his lips. Instead of making him look happy, it just made him look even more sinister.

He stood and walked back with his own meal of wild rabbit, which he'd caught, killed, and skinned right before her fearful eyes, and sat himself down quite close to her, pointedly looking at her.

It wasn't necessary. His threat had hit the way he'd wanted it to, and she began to chew tentatively on the rabbit. She grimaced as she did, fighting with desire to eat and the disgust she felt at eating a cute little bunny. Eventually though, hunger won out and she began eating quite steadily, uncomfortably aware of his cold gaze on her.

He didn't start eating again until she was halfway through with the meat.

"Umm…is this thing really necessary," Hinata asked in a small voice. She weakly waved her arm in front of his face, showing him the small mark he'd put there, a smattering of dots and circles that itched uncomfortably.

He glanced at the black mark on her pale skin. "Yes," he said monotonously.

"Hmm," she murmured, resting her head comfortably against his shoulder. Since putting on the chakra control seal, she'd been much more trusting and had been crying less, he'd noticed. She'd also been a lot more lethargic, and it eventually became necessary for him to carry her on his back, the way Itachi used to carry him piggy back style, like when he was a kid. As this thought crossed his mind, Sasuke's grip tightened on her legs.

"Ow," she said quietly, lazily, barely.

"Sorry," he muttered, not at all apologetic. He loosened his grip slightly.

It was a burden having to carry her on his back like this. First, she couldn't hold on very tightly, weakened as she was, so he had to keep hoisting her up every once in a while in order for her not to fall. Secondly, had it been up to him, he would have stuffed her back into the wooden coffin. It was much easier to carry her that way, because he needn't keep hoisting her up his back. Something stopped him, however. It wasn't just the fact that he'd been instructed to let her out as soon as he was far enough away from Konoha that she wouldn't be able to find her way back. He himself had been stuck in a similar box a few years back, and it had been a cramped and unpleasant experience. He didn't want to subject her to that again.

Sasuke didn't like to admit that he didn't put her back in the box out of kindness. He pushed it to the back of his mind, that idea, but he knew it was true. How terrible. The notorious Uchiha was claustrophobic and had sympathy? That just couldn't be. He dispelled it.

And finally, there was a third reason, and this reason was perhaps the strangest of all.

Apart for being well-known for being village traitor and the sole survivor of the Uchiha massacre, Sasuke was remembered in Konoha for one other thing. He was known to keep a personal no-contact space. It was a bubble, a clearly defined line that nobody could step past, a space that he practiced and maintained for many different reasons, one of them being as practice for keeping space between himself and an enemy ninja during a battle. It was a space that was not entered under any circumstances, a space that, once entered, could quickly become a person's death site.

And what he was doing now broke that rule, that carefully maintained rule that was perhaps the only vanity he allowed himself.

Nobody entered that space. Not since his mother and the clan doctor had anyone entered that space.

Hyuuga Hinata had just entered that space.

Not only entered that space, but completely attached herself to his body, as close as a person could possibly get without getting sewn together, her arms wrapped around his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist, her face resting on his shoulder.

It was the most uncomfortable he'd ever felt. His private space was invaded, and the worst part was that he couldn't fix it. It had to be this way.

No. That wasn't the worst part. The worst part was this strange sensation that inhabited him, something he was sure had to be sinister.

This sensation of …enjoying it? Was that what it was? Was he enjoying this?

Yes, he realized with chagrin. He was enjoying this.

Some part of him liked being this physically close to someone, even if it was someone he didn't particularly like, what with all the weak, girlish crying and clan membership. Some part of him liked feeling her warmth there, constant and sure, tangible and very much there. Some part of him liked holding her like this…his hands could feel her legs through the fabric of her pants, his neck burned with the touch of her arms, occasionally unclasping and reclasping in order to get some movement in the fingers, fingers that unconsciously brushed lightly against his skin, awakening all sorts of unwelcome feelings in him.

And then her breath. Half-asleep, her breathing was slow and warm against him, and she'd sporadically turn her face towards his neck, and it'd blow his hair slightly, finally reaching the sensitive nape of his neck. She would let out soft, feminine sighs, sleepy and unaware of his discomfort.

He didn't like it one bit. He didn't like those sensations, those foreign feelings that he knew had ruined many men. He was amazed at his own self control, wondering how in the world he'd acquired it. Ninja training had never taught him that.

"Sasuke," Hinata sighed, turning her face toward his head. He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, resolutely willing himself not to be stirred by his name on her lips.

"Hmm," he grunted.

"Why did you put this thing on me?" She again gestured to chakra seal on her arm.

"It's so you don't try to attack or run away," he said, forcing himself to stare straight ahead and ignore the feeling of her shifting her legs around slightly.

"Why would I run away," she asked sleepily, sighing into his hair.

"Uh… because you want to go home?" It sounded like a question, but he was distracted. He needed to stop being distracted.

"Oh," said Hinata.

"You sound like you're falling asleep. Maybe we should stop here for the night."

Her eyes widened as she was unceremoniously tossed off his back. Suddenly, her face was smashed into the dirt.

"There's something for you to sleep on," Sasuke muttered, and a mat and blanket fell with a soft thud next to her. She sat up just in time to see him walking brusquely away as far as he could in the small clearing, sitting down against the trunk of a tree and watching her with troubled eyes.

Her own eyes were widened in surprise. What had she done to deserve such an unkind expulsion from his back? Maybe he was just very tired…

She set about fixing her mat up, and she caught a glimpse of him as she was lying down. His gaze was intense on her and she felt uncomfortable lying there, vulnerable, as he stayed awake.

"Aren't you going to sleep?" she asked hesitantly.

Slowly, Sasuke shook his head.

"Oh," she mumbled, turning on her side so she'd face away from him.

It felt too weird to look at Sasuke. She felt as if she'd done something wrong and didn't know what it was yet, and perhaps he was angry with her.

She really hoped he wasn't angry with her.