If you want me.
That was what he'd really said to her. The words he used were a bit different. But that was what he had said.
And now, as snow fell all around them, Sasuke was trying to explain to Hinata about Orochimaru. It was something he should disclose to a prospective partner. Doing so felt clinical, and made him feel slightly sick, but it was something she had to be warned of. He wanted her to make a clear, informed decision. He told her that he was involved with some very dangerous people. He said that he was directly complicit in what they were doing. And, drawing breath, he told her that while most of it had been consensual, the actual sex part- if you could call something so brief, businesslike and perfunctory the same- was always exploitive and what came after was usually violent. And that they usually didn't survive. He told her that he didn't like it, but he had to play the game. For now.
He told her he was certain that this was not how his mother would want him to treat women. And then, that he had little experience with actually pleasing, or making a woman happy. He told her he'd try, but she should be warned that he wasn't sure he'd be very good at it.
He left the fact that he'd never had much of a successful emotional connection with anyone unsaid. He was sure it was apparent. The snow continued to fall, silently. He was stroking it out of her hair. A few flakes clung to her cheeks, and he nudged them away with his fingertips. Daylight was fading, the snow was falling from an increasingly dark sky. But he felt more comfortable with the cold, heavy silence that gathered all around them, as the high winds whipped snow against the walls of the house that rose on all sides. They were only in a small pocket of sheltered calm in a raging storm. The temperature was dropping as night fell. But they had enough chakra between them to transfer heat from warm hand to hand. And something about it, about her, made him feel secure enough to tell her these things, embarrassing as it was.
"I don't meet many people that I like." he said finally. Unnecessarily, he thought. Her silky hair was pooled against his neck, and it lay over his bare hand. It was precisely cut in straight lengths, like soft ribbons of satin. Her breasts swelled against his arm, and she smelled of flowers, just a hint of perfume. It was dizzying. And his body wasn't cooperating, he'd have to give it a good hard spanking later. But he knew how to control himself, Orochimaru hadn't broken him of that bare shred of decency. So he lay his cheek gently against hers and waited for her to decide.
She said that none of that changed the fact that she liked him.
He thought that she was far too compassionate for her own good. But he appreciated her kindness, and the fact that she seemed to be a sensible girl who didn't make decisions hastily. He mistrusted people who did.
Hinata had listened to him quietly and calmly, her head resting on his shoulder, while he clumsily tried to make her feel comfortable. She had touched him once or twice, gently running her fingers over his cheek. She seemed to sense that he found this difficult to talk about. She told him- with far more grace then he managed, he thought- that she knew a little bit about how to be close to people, that she was close to her teammates, and to her friends. And that she thought she and her cousin Neji, and her father would someday be closer as well; and that she was working towards this. She said she had little sexual experience, which he didn't think would be a problem, given her training.
They were discussing terms. Maybe it should have seemed odd and impersonal. But after daily life with a theatrical leech like Orochimaru, Sasuke thought that nothing would ever seem odd again. She said that her father would return in three days. Sasuke, of course, would have to be gone from the house by then. She said that while she thought she would miss him, and she was sorry that she wouldn't have more time to spend with him, she was aware that he probably needed to get back to whatever he was doing. She said that she could tell it was important to him. And her small warm unscarred hand was wrapped around his as she said that. The late winter snow was falling as the light died, and her pale skin and eyes took on a distant, ghostly beauty, he thought. Her voice was so soft, it was almost supernatural, the way it affected him, the way she seduced him with softness, grace and compassion. It was everything he wasn't. It seemed to come so naturally to her. And it felt like more kindness then he deserved.
But he knew he couldn't lose himself in recriminations. There was simply no time.
So they discussed terms of agreement. They would have to decide quickly what they wanted from this small patch of time they had together. They would have to then act, quickly, seize the moment. It would be over soon enough, like a ninja's life in general for that matter, and they didn't have time for a slow, dignified relationship. They didn't have time to try to fall in love, properly. She said that she was not the sort of person who fell in love quickly. And he knew he was not either. If they'd had time, if they could have held to one another, tried to reach one another.. if they could have planned for love and worked to achieve it. They agreed that if this had been the case, then it probably could have happened.
So he told her that if she wanted to, if she could make room for this in her own life and ideals, then he would enjoy doing these things with her. He was sure that he liked her as well. Something about this, and the brief time he would spend with her, felt like it could fit into the rest of his life, and coexist peacefully with it. No matter how dark he'd become, how low he'd dragged himself, pursuing Itachi.. no matter how much further he would have to go. He did not think this would stop that, or change that in any way. He did not think it would hold him back. And he didn't think he would regret it.
And she didn't seem to have noticed that he wasn't good enough for her, which was a plus.
He knew, though, that he'd have to behave himself. He'd have to take a very, very firm hand with himself. Because he knew he'd done very cruel things to people he cared about before. He remembered, in particular.. Naruto at the Valley of the End. He'd wanted Naruto to chase him, find him, pull him back, hit him again- harder, dammit! You useless fuck! Naruto!- make him stay. Force him to stay. Force things to be different, beat the sense into him, like Naruto screamed he would.
And Sasuke could barely hear him over the roar of the waterfall.
And in the end, after he'd laid Naruto out, finally, nothing had changed. Because nothing was ever going to change. The past was fixed.
And in the meantime, he made people prove it to him. He couldn't believe them, even when they did... when they went as far as they could go, as he pushed them to their absolute limits, making them prove it, show him that they wanted him. That they needed him. That he just had to stay, they would do anything, they would promise anything, that they loved him so much, they'd do anything. And he just stood there wondering what the hell they were talking about.
He didn't believe it. Even when they said it. It was hard for him to believe.
But he imagined it, anyway. The way she would look, her soft face, and her gentle eyes. She could see right through him. He imagined the way it would sound, the phrasing and tonality. I want you. she'd say. I want you.
And she'd all but said it.
He wasn't sure why, but it didn't seem wise to argue the point with her.
And there were more snowflakes caught in her eyelashes now. They were falling on his hands, he felt them sticking to his cheeks, and had to blink them from his eyes. She was watching him, just as intently. Her lips were slightly parted. She didn't push him away when he kissed her. She didn't seem to want to be anywhere but here, with him. He didn't hear Itachi in the breaths between her words, there was no Itachi there at all, there was nothing about how she liked him because he was like Itachi, he must be so shit-hot great because he reminded her of Itachi and maybe, if he gave up his entire life and everything he had to give, he could become a bit more like Itachi and maybe be something worth killing. Or seeing. Or noticing as his own person, rather then an eternal counterpoint to someone else like, say, Itachi.
He exhaled, hard, and felt her shift in his arms. Her warm fingers brushed his cheek. He looked down, into the glittering cut facets of her byakugan's sighting lines. The concern in her eyes... He could barely even met them. It was too much. Too much sympathy. He closed his eyes and pulled her closer, as if this would convince her he was all right.
He had to keep himself in line. He couldn't let his usual way of feeling bleed into this, he'd just get angry over things that had nothing to do with her, or he'd take something she said the wrong way, and then he'd say something he shouldn't... he could see that it wouldn't take much to drive her away, a few harsh words would do it. They'd found a way to talk again, not that he deserved any credit for that. He'd been sulking upstairs, feeling sorry for himself. She'd had to come and find him. He'd done it again.. he really wasn't very good at this being with people thing at all.
But at the moment, she was forgiving him for walking out on her, ignoring her, being rude to her, refusing to look at her, and- though maybe she didn't know about this one- cursing at her staff. She was giving him far too much credit. But she took his breath away, even if he didn't yet really know her, even if her father would probably have him killed on the spot if he ever got wind of this. He'd made up his mind that he did like her. So he kept his mouth shut and tried not to ruin it.
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So, it was done. She liked him. He liked her. Hinata told him that they would now have to decide what they wanted. She found herself guiding this negotiation process. Sasuke said that he didn't understand people very well, so he'd trust her judgment. He said that they didn't have very much time, so making a clear decision and planning for it made sense to him. She pulled him down gently and kissed him. It was chaste compared to the wild tales she heard from Sakura and Ino, but she shivered at the touch of his lips. It was crazy, she thought, really, the way she responded so much to him.
But after so much talking, it was clear to Hinata that Sasuke needed some time by himself. She understood that. She loved her students, but after eight hours of their loud voices and constant energy, she needed some time to catch her breath and hear her herself think again. So she made up an excuse about having to grade papers. She left him alone for a while. This was all happening very fast, she needed a moment herself.
And also there was something that she needed to know. Something that she should find out now, before she went any further.
"It's complicated." Miya had said, when Hinata had asked.
The snow had begun to sharpen into freezing rain. When Hinata went downstairs to find her school briefcase, Miya was supervising evening cleaning on the main floor. The scent of lemon oil filled the hallway. "In the front closet." she said, when Hinata stopped to ask. "Where's Mr. Sunshine? On the roof again?"
"I don't know." Hinata admitted. She'd left him alone, she didn't know where he'd taken himself off to think. That was the point.
The old cook turned from a group of servants polishing the wood floor. "I'd go find him, dear. He's not going to want to be outside. There's an ice storm coming." Hinata nodded and promised she'd go look for Sasuke. Miya harrumphed a bit about young men and their recklessness. She said that Hinata had a letter waiting. The courier-nins had come through the gathering storm.
Hinata went off to the front hall to collect her bag, and saw that the letter was just a message from the academy. They were reopening tomorrow, they were planning on taking advantage of the storm to do extreme weather survival training. Hinata tucked this away in the back of her mind for later, and swiftly walked back through the polished, slightly damp halls to find Miya again. She took the old cook aside, asking her a bit uneasily, could Miya spare a moment..?
"Dear, I would need to spare several hours." Miya said, after Hinata had explained. They had stepped into the far back of the house, the greenhouse where the gardeners would grow flowers in the spring. At the moment it was silent, and a bit damp with the smell of peat moss and treated water. There were a few luridly green seedlings in clay pots glowing under a bright ultraviolet light. And this hard light cast everything in the room in sharp tones, it made mockingly large dark shadows from the most innocuous objects. It was cold, and it was a bit creepy, and Hinata thought it was appropriate.
"Then I just need to know a little bit," she said, trying not too sound too desperate. "I know father will never tell me. And I need to know... I need to know." She had crossed her arms tightly around herself. She leaned against the brickface that made up one wall, and the rough surface of stone and concrete tore at the heavy fabric of her jacket. Somewhere in the dark masses of empty, sandy pots and green plastic hoses, water was steadily dripping. But Hinata thought that she felt more cold then apprehensive. She was the heir, she had been having this stern little conversation with herself several times now over the past few days. She turned so that she could meet Miya's eyes, look a little more like she could handle this. "I'm ready for whatever answer I hear." she said, and her voice seemed steady.
Sasuke had been a child when his family was killed. He had been alone. No one had stepped forward to help him. Hinata knew as much, she had seen Sakura and Naruto discuss him before. And she knew that the Hyuga could have taken Sasuke in. But they had not.
"I want to know why we didn't." she said. "What happened?"
Miya pulled a wooden crate away from the wall and sat down heavily. Hinata watched as the old cook prepared her thoughts, waiting.
"If you want the short version, dear, then it was politics." she said, looking into the middle distance.
Miya told her that there had been bad blood between her father and Sasuke's. Sasuke's father had been threatening to prosecute Hinata's father for conspiracy, claiming that he had evidence of a secret plot - "and it was for land-sharing and merged banking procedures between the Hyuga main house and two other powerful houses, dear, it wasn't as if it was for a coop," Miya said. Sasuke's father had demanded that Hinata's father turn the Hyuga's financial records over to the police squad. Hinata's father thought that this was harassment and that Sasuke's father was just upset because of some convoluted insult that Hinata's father had allegedly made towards the Uchiha clan. Sasuke's father replied that his father had known that Hinata's grandfather was a criminal, and that he knew the son was one as well. Hinata's father said he would go to the Hokage, Sasuke's father said that he would involve ANBU, and there were a lot of threatening letters sent back and forth, a lot of dividing of battle lines in the other houses, a lot of whispers that went through the village, and finally the matter had been dropped. But Hinata's father had never forgiven Sasuke's, and Miya said that Hinata's father had refused to have Sasuke in the main house for that reason.
But there was also the fact that Sasuke was not of direct Hyuga blood anymore. His distant common ancestry couldn't make up for this, not in an advanced bloodline as precisely tended as the Hyuga. "A lot of the old guard, you have to understand dear, don't feel the Uchiha are pure-blooded anymore." Miya said, her voice taking on an old note of resignation. "And, also, there's always resentment against the police, so even those houses who were not involved, or who do not protect their bloodlines..." she shrugged, slowly. And shook her head.
There was talk that Sasuke might have joined the branch house, then, but Miya said that Neji's father had absolutely forbidden it, refusing to be pushed around by the main house for something as useless as a low-blooded orphan who was no one important enough to care about. The elders of the branch house suspected that it was a ploy to weaken them in the eyes of Konoha's other powerful houses, to humiliate them further by forcing them to accept a child who wasn't even of their own Hyuga blood, when they themselves were not considered important enough to join the main house. Miya sighed, rubbing one eye tiredly with a gnarled finger. "There's more." she said.
The village at large didn't know what to think of the massacre, it had come out of nowhere, With so many dead, so much blood and death and misfortune clinging to Sasuke, no one wanted to bring that evil omen down upon their own house. Sasuke was marked. There were whispers that he had been somehow involved, that he had seen the murderer. And the murderer had done something to him. Miya said that while no one said it openly, many people expected that Sasuke would inevitably grow up to repeat what had been done. "And no one wanted to see the same thing happen in their house, of course." Miya said, as she leaned one hand against a battered wooden worktable to help pull herself to her feet. "So.. in the end, nothing was done. It was a long time ago, dear. You'd be wise to not mention this to your father."
Hinata nodded. She thanked the old cook. She went back upstairs. She picked up her red marking pen. She kept her hands moving, and her mind scanning the messy handwriting of her students, trying to focus on the variables of the assignment and not think of anything else. She ran out of papers to mark and went downstairs to help Kimiko with the dishes. She went and found her spare kunai pouch and sharpened every single one. She knew that if she stopped, she'd start crying, she could feel an insistent lump of tears pressing up in her throat. And she didn't know how she could explain her swollen eyes to Sasuke. She didn't know how she could explain any of this.
She thought that she might call Shino, but she knew she would start crying for certain. And she couldn't discuss the affairs of her house with him, or with anyone outside her family's circle.
But. She knew that she had agreed to this. She'd agreed to change, she'd agreed to accept the dark places that she may come to as a result. She would have to be strong, and realize that in the real world, sometimes no one particularly cared what happened to one small child, especially if he wasn't someone they had any use for. This made her stomach turn, but she knew that this was the way the world worked, and that it was her soft parts that objected. She knew that she might someday have to protect her family from impurity this way. She knew that she might be someday sent on missions to kill or orphan children herself. She had to accept it. She knew that sometimes bad things happened. In fact, they happened every single day, somewhere. Sometimes they happened to small children.
The villagers had unconsciously suspected that Sasuke was a murderer, that having been stained with a murderer's blood that he was now one and the same. Hinata had stood at the window of her classroom and quietly thought this as well. She was no better. It was easy, simple, to just make that split-second decision. To just assume that he was a dangerous person. She'd done it. She hadn't even thought twice about it. She'd thought that she had the moral high ground, automatically. Why was that? Why? Because she was a decent girl from a decent family and he was an orphaned, infamous runaway who reeked of blood.
She was walking, moving from room to room, steadily. She passed servants extinguishing lanterns, sweeping flagstones, polishing glass and wood, but she barely saw them, she couldn't remember if they had said hello or not, she just knew that she didn't feel right being at her desk, or being in this house. Not when she knew what her father had done. She wanted to go somewhere else, maybe just for a while, maybe just until she could catch her breath. Maybe she could call Sakura, ask if she could talk for a while. She could say that she had some questions about her father's heart problems, and just wanted to chat. Sakura-san would know it was a lie, but would talk to her anyway. Hinata stalked up into the dark west wing, down it's long paper hallways, and into her grandfather's study. She saw the foggy, strangely half-lit darkness that the whirling snow and ice created outside, the windows were a paler shade of shadow black then the walls as she walked into the silent, dark room. There were long fingers of ice creeping up from the bottom of the glass. She thought that she could handle this, she could accept this. She just had to pace herself, allow herself her own space to exhale, to release this tension and furious energy. She switched on the paper lanterns hung over the desk and picked up the phone.
But the line was dead. The ice storm had descended.
---------------------------------------------------
Sasuke was training. Thinking. Working as hard as he could, in rhythm, just like this... just like this, he thought, as he moved through a defensive pattern... it cleared his head. He could decide wisely. He had to weigh his priorities. And he had to tame this sudden sense of dread that had come out of nowhere. He felt a shudder of weakness waver up from one of his feet, a strained tendon from training too soon after the injury. He pushed through the motion anyway, pushing through the pain. You had to get used to fighting through injuries. And a little pain could be a good thing, a powerful motivator...
He circled the training yard, moving through darkness and dampening snow, winds that were starting to pitch and shake the heavy bare oak trees. He could hear their trunks groaning as they swayed, and the wind whipped him across the face, clawing at his hair. He couldn't see the footprints he and Hinata had made earlier in the day. They had snowed in. And now, as he moved, his would wipe away almost instantly, as if he had never been there at all. As if he wasn't there right now.
He thought it might be that he wasn't used to having this kind of interest in anyone. He'd found Sakura pretty in an incidental way, and some of Orochimaru's victims would stick in his mind afterwards, in snapshot memories of soft skin or hair, the heat of their bodies. But he wasn't like other people. He'd closed himself off from this. He wasn't going to have friends. He wasn't going to have lovers. He wasn't ever going to have a wife of his own. He was going to kill Itachi and then Orochimaru was going to take him. And that was how things would be.
But he'd thought that it might not be a problem. He could compartmentalize. He could live this life for a few days, shed some tiny amount of light on parts of himself that Orochimaru had no use for. In truth, Sasuke had no practical use for them himself. But he did like Hinata. She was quiet, she didn't bother him. She seemed to understand him. She was beautiful, he thought, in a quiet, dignified way. Her face had a queenly serenity to it, but she was not truly stunning until you saw her move, heard her soft voice.. something about that sound... he moved, cutting through the wind, snapping the blows, the kicks against it's changing lines of force.. Something about it comforted him, he could listen to her for hours. He'd never actually wanted to hear anyone talk before. Most people just couldn't shut up fast enough for him.
He moved... he felt the strength, the perfect response of his body. He ran through the usual reasons for concern. He could be worried about being distracted from his mission. He could be worried because he really didn't know her well. It could just be his default suspicion of people, he never really liked anyone until they proved themselves to him. He got used to some people eventually, but... The wind slapped at him and spun him off balance. He corrected, cursing under his breath. His hair was soaked now, icy water dribbled into his eyes. But he was getting battered by torrents of sharp ice and freezing water, anyway, it was just one more drop among many. He closed his eyes. He missed his forehead protector in an irrational rush, he was too distracted, the thought had time to register before he could crush it down again. And his fingers were starting to turn white, he was bleeding chakra just to withstand the cold. So he went inside.
The old woman probed at his side in a sheltered area of veranda where he could drip melting ice on the stone floor without irritating her too much. She took the bandages off entirely. She ran her dry, wrinkled fingers over the remaining stitches. She said she'd drawn a bath for him, and after the wounds needed to be disinfected again. The rubbing alcohol was under the sink. She left him a warm towel and told him to leave his clothes there. She would have someone come along soon to take them to be dried.
So he folded his soaked, half-frozen pants and shirt, left them in a neat pile by the door to the house, and went where she had told him to go.
He sat in steaming water in a wooden tub far bigger and more luxurious then anything his parents could have afforded, watching the tiny medicinal leaves unfurl themselves as they floated across the surface. He idly pushed them back and forth with his foot, thinking. He did worry about his experience. He thought that Hinata could teach him what he didn't know. But he wondered if he'd have any ability in anything other then what he did for Orochimaru's pleasure, which was quick, furtive, mostly mechanical sex that had no particular meaning or use or reason- other then Orochimaru's momentary amusement. It didn't prepare him for this.
He tried the sharingan, thinking that if he had such clear memories of Orochimaru's bullshit power games, then he should at least try to memorize the one chance he'd have to do something better. He looked into the leaves, into the patterns they made of dry and wet green against the soft gold of the tub's polished wood bottom. He closed his eyes, waiting for the headache. But there was nothing, he could use it again.
So he let himself relax a bit. Nothing had changed.. but he could accept a small bit of warmth and affection, brief as it would be. And the briefness would protect him, it would inoculate him against his weaknesses. He lay back, leaning against the smooth wooden side of the tub, closing his eyes. The longest bits of his hair had gotten wet. Little rivers of hot water trickled down his cheeks and neck. He breathed, forcing his body to settle into even deeper states of calm. He exhaled steam, held another breath of it down for a long moment, and then relaxed, pushing his shoulder blades against the rippled grain of the wood.
It wasn't the morality of it, ninjas who might die at any time couldn't put on airs of propriety. They couldn't afford a structured sexual ethic. It wouldn't be so bad, or so unusual, if they were to just sleep together for fun, or for pleasure, or even for a mutual attraction. He'd never had much of a taste for this, though. The brief, bloody encounters with the Otokagure women did not count, those were like scratching an itch, getting something out of the way, so he could continue with the only thing that really mattered.
Even if she didn't want that, even if she only wanted to spend time with him... if she wanted to only walk by his side in silence, like he remembered his parents would, when they were in public together... Even if she only wanted his time, or his attention.. or whatever she wanted, he would give it to her. He'd let her decide. He wasn't good at being nice to people, he didn't trust his own judgment.
As for what he wanted...
It wasn't that he expected to have anything, anyway. He would never have a wife of his own. He would never have a family. He didn't think that, even if things had been different, he would have wanted this brief sort of affair. What would be the point of it? It would distract him, he wouldn't find it amusing or enjoyable enough to make up for the losses of time and effort. If the girl was worth having, he would be concerned about taking advantage of her. He wouldn't want that, it wouldn't sit well with him. And if she wasn't worth having, he wouldn't bother to spend the time at all.
But she was worth having, so he had to take what he could have. He had to seize the moment. He knew that moment would be over and gone faster then he could imagine.
-----------------------------------------
Hinata set the phone down slowly in it's cradle. The phone towers must have collapsed under the ice. Or maybe the lines had simply snapped. She sighed, she reached up for the beaded pull switch for the lanterns. She could go pester Miya again, but she knew Miya would be very busy, the storm windows on the outer walls of all four wings would have to fastened, the wooden shutters tied shut. She could feel the wind pushing and pulling on the thick wooden walls, as if even the sturdy monolith of her family's house could be moved, nudged, as if it wasn't as impervious as it looked.
She had to tell Sasuke something. She couldn't keep this from him. If he hated her family for it, her father, or her.. she wouldn't blame him. She wore this crest. She had to own it's deeds. She couldn't have done anything with him not knowing what had happened, or keeping it from him now that she did. Not in good conscience.
So she walked back down the darkened hall, empty ricepaper rooms on one side of her, the spaced circular windows of the wooden wall all embroidered with frost, picking up tiny glints of light from the main floor. The heat seeped up through the wood. She could feel the distant hum of the furnace with every step. Sasuke would have come in by now. She went to go find him.
But the anger didn't fade. It smoldered. She wished she could have been more surprised, that she would have been shocked that her father would do something like that. It just made her angrier to think that she had essentially done the same thing, just written off someone because they weren't part of her family. Because they didn't have a family, they were a runaway criminal. She didn't know what to do, she'd never handled anger well. It had just turned to a kind of numbing depression before, before she started to build her strength. But now it wouldn't go away and she didn't know what to do with it. She had to find Sasuke. She had to tell him. And she didn't know what she could do after that, she couldn't go anywhere. The storm was raging, she couldn't leave the house.
She found him in her bedroom. She wasn't surprised, he seemed to stake out little places that he liked and to return to them in predictable patterns. He was lying down on the bed, propping a book up against one raised knee. Hanabi's cat with the spiked fur was curled up on his stomach, swishing her plumed tail back and forth. Hinata could hear her purring, she was the friendliest cat in the house. Sasuke looked up when he heard her step through the door, a smile drifted over his face. He seemed so relaxed and almost happy that Hinata suddenly didn't want to say a word. She'd never seen him look that way. There was even a trace of color in his pale cheeks. Hinata attempted a smile in return, failed and said "I have something to show you." She let her hand slip off the doorframe, lamely.
"Are you all right?" he said, getting up slowly, nudging the cat out of his lap with one hand. He closed the book and set it down. There was a quiet look of concern in his eyes. She thought that his voice really wasn't that harsh, in fact it wasn't harsh at all, it was almost warm. She couldn't look him in the eye.
"No. I'm not." she said as steadily as she could, but the words quivered in her throat. She felt him silently approach her, then his warm arms pulling her close to him. She bit her lip, holding the tears down. "I just want to apologize." she said, weakly, clenching her jaw with the effort of keeping calm,. She felt him gathering her hair out of her eyes with one hand, lifting it over her shoulder. He asked her what was wrong. She heard his whispered voice, the note of concern rising in it. She shoved the tears back, fumbled for his hand.
"Come with me," she said.
She lead him through warm darkness, past windows with heavy brocaded curtains, all of them tied shut. Cold drafts flowed from under the heavy edges and brushed against her bare toes. She took him into the east wing, away from the lit activity centers of the house, where the servants chatted and cleaned. The sounds of the storm seeped through the walls from all sides. She dealt with his direct, quiet questions about where they were going, why and what was she so upset about? "We're going to the library." she said, feeling her voice shake. "And I'll show you when we get there."
The library was silent, darkened, smelling of the resin the bookbinders used, and the crisp dry scent of old paper. The storm murmured from small windows hidden behind stone shelves. She felt Sasuke stroke her cheek with the back of his hand as her cold fingers slipped over the bolt lock. She looked up at him. There was only the faint light bouncing from the snowstorm outside, but she could see his expression. He looked worried. His eyebrows were furrowed a bit in concern. "It's about my father," she said tightly, swallowing hard. The door clicked open. "And yours. Come on.." She lead him across the darkness by memory, feeling him follow her a half-step behind.
The cabinets loomed out of the darkness in front of her. She leaned up on her tiptoes and reached into the fourth shelf from the right, her fingers finding the clay pots collected there. She found the key, identifying it by shape. Remembering that she had to look through a file of letters, she hurried over to the wall behind the cabinets, put her hand on the molded sockets of the switch, and turned on the lights between the shelves. Sasuke watched her, waiting, cut with sharp margins of light and darkness as the shadowed edges of stacked books fell over him. Hinata opened the cabinet, found her father's correspondence files, and thumbed back through the years. She heard Sasuke shift position slightly behind her. "What about my father?" he said, almost suspiciously.
She let out a breath. Her hands were shaking. She pursed her lips shut. "My father knew yours." she said, trying to keep her breathing slow and calm. "They had a fight over.. over some sort of legal thing that wasn't even very important, and because of that..." She bit into her lip, frustrated with all the little bits of paper, all ordered and annotated with her father's elegant black crest stamp. She had to go back twenty years before she found it. When she had it, she sat back on her heels. She let the box of filed paper fall back over her knees.
She stood up, little thin invoice notes curled and scattered at her feet, the edges stained with age. She held the stuffed envelope in front of her, turning it over. Sasuke had her shoulders in his hands suddenly, he had moved her back against him, he was looking over her shoulder, one hand rising from her arm to touch the crumpled heavy paper. Hinata opened it's string closure, opened it just enough to see that yes, it was the correspondence between her father and Uchiha Fugaku. She resealed the envelope. And handed it to him.
He moved her into the crook of one arm, taking it with his other hand. "What's this?" he said, his voice whispering close to her ear.
She told him.
After she'd gotten all the words out, she told him that she was sorry, that she apologized on behalf of her family, and that she knew an apology wasn't enough. She told him that she didn't know if she would ever be able to trust her father again. She said that if he didn't want to continue now, she would understand. And she felt herself saying that she had thought she loved her father, that she'd thought she wanted to be close to him; but then she caught herself and closed her mouth. It wasn't the time. Sasuke's arm had stiffened around her.
And silence fell.
Then he told her not to be ridiculous, it wasn't her fault. She'd just been a small child, there was nothing she could have done. He asked her to hold the envelope for a moment. He cleaned up the scattered paper, locked the cabinet back up, replaced the key and finally switched off the lights. He picked her up and carried her back to her room, because by then Hinata was shaking with silent tears, one hand pressed to her face, wetness slipping between her fingers, quivering with what she finally realized was rage.
They had only just arrived when Kimiko knocked. Sasuke put Hinata down on her bed and slid back the door, standing protectively between it and her. Hinata heard the murmur of their voices as he leaned out into the hallway to talk. He came back with a letter stamped with the inkjet numbers of the courier-nin. She wiped her aching eyes and said it was just from the academy. She had classes tomorrow.
"Classes in an ice storm?" he asked.
"Training exercises." she said. "To take advantage of the weather." He put the letter on her desk beside the envelope of old letters and sat back down by her side.
He pulled over the cushions scattered over her tatami mats and lifted her into his lap. He told her that it was over now and no one could change it. He said that he was glad to at least have the letters, because he didn't have much to remember his father by. She felt the flicker of the cat's tail over her bare feet, then the wet nub of it's nose. She just buried her face in her hands and didn't say anything, because her throat was clenched and she thought her chest would explode with fury if she didn't hold her mouth shut. She felt Sasuke take one arm, lift the cat onto her crumpled knees. She felt the touch of whiskers, then the cat's affectionate head butts, it's purr close against her ear. And Sasuke whispering that it would be all right, that she would get up tomorrow and the world would go on.
She could feel the front of Neji's shirt was stained wet from her tears, but he didn't seem to mind. He held her tightly and talked to her until she could assure him that she was all right. Then he fetched her tea and dinner from the kitchen. He told her he'd eat later, could she excuse him for a moment?
She looked up at him.
She spoke very precisely. "I'm going to become the heir." she said. "And I am going to change this house."
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Hinata was crying. He was holding her, trying to staunch the flow of those tears. It felt like he was trying to hold back a river with only his two hands. She was telling him what the old woman had said. She seemed more furious then sad, and her choked voice was strong with determination, a hard undertone of fury.
And the way she said it.. he believed her. He took her at her word.
She was shaking, he was really starting to worry about her. She leaned her forehead against his chest as he awkwardly tried to comfort her. She told him that her family had decided to abandon him because of a number of petty, stupid things, and he stayed silent, taking this in, holding his temper down with an iron hand, because she needed him. Thinking about her situation. He certainly had a lot of experience with this type of thing, didn't he?
He told her what he knew about pushing through it, little as it was.
She quieted, it seemed to make her feel better. She started talking about her family, and all the problems she'd seen running through it, like hairline cracks. Most of it was pissant little power squabbles of the kind he saw all the time, back in Orochimaru's inner circle. He thought that a snakepit like this was not a place for a person like her. But he understood her need to do battle, and to take leadership of her family. He understood that very well. And he couldn't help thinking that it would be easier for her if she had someone else, someone who could tell her relatives to back the hell off if they tried to come after her. Someone who understood her situation, someone who was a lot less compassionate then she was, who could be a real bastard if necessary. And then he sighed, and remembered the faces of his parents, and thought that he knew exactly what he had to do. He had to go kill Itachi and then come back so he could help her.
And then he remembered Orochimaru. And then he felt panic rising in a sick, nauseous wave, so he told her he'd be back in a minute. He rushed through the house, threw open a side door that the wind tried to slam shut again in his face. He barely made it outside and away from the lit side of the house in time to throw up the entire contents of his stomach, the icy wind screaming in his ears and freezing water flowing down his face, into the collar of his shirt; his hands aching with cold, clenched in the wet snow.
Because Itachi was still out there, Itachi was still alive and he wasn't spending ever second and every ounce of energy hating him and trying to kill him. And that made him feel like the ground would drop out from under his feet. While he was feeling dizzy from that, trying to walk through the storm, trying to keep moving so he wouldn't throw up again, he spent four or five delirious minutes planning to leave that night, scour the country for Itachi, kill him, and run back before Hinata's intolerable asshole of a father could make her cry like that again. And thinking maybe that if he played the timing just right and did absolutely nothing else, he could pull it off. And he could return. And then he remembered Naruto and Sakura, and the missing-nin status hanging over his head. And then he was dry heaving, his eyes streaming tears from the cold wind, coughing up bile on his hands and knees in the snow.
He picked himself up, tried to keep walking, thought for a while that maybe he could take Hinata with him.. which of course was completely fucking nuts. And then, dizzy and shaking from all the vomiting, he imagined trying to kill her father, which given that Hyuga Hiashi had been a jounin when Sasuke had left Konoha six years ago, would be an excellent way to commit suicide.
Then, sitting on the wooden veranda and letting the ice storm batter him, shaking so hard that his teeth were rattling, he imagined going to Naruto, going to Sakura, just letting them save him. Letting them do what they wanted, if they were so fucking sure they had all the answers. And then he got up, stumbled through the yard until his hand slapped the side of a log dummy, and beat the hell out it until he couldn't feel anything but exhaustion and pain.
And then he stood, one hand braced against the icy surface of the log. He looked up past it, through the whirling snow to see the softened glow of light from the house. The wind drove heavy waves of ice down upon him relentlessly. He let a breath out, shuddering.
For the moment, he was safe. He could stay with Hinata for the duration of the storm. Maybe he could help her. This was the only immediate problem he had.
What had been done... He forced himself to breathe deeply, holding it, exhaling deliberately, slowly. It had been done far in the past, out of his reach, and nothing he could do or say or feel would make a difference. The past was fixed. He was here. There was nothing to do but go on.
He told himself that he had nothing to worry about. To just look behind him, the lights in the house were on. Everything was safe. She was safe. All was well. He breathed deeply, and opened his eyes.
Darkness.
He couldn't see the light from the house.
He whirled around, his balance foot skidding.
The house was black against the sky. Every light in the house was off.
Every single one.