Still Waters Run Deep

by Winter Weatherman

Hinata stumbles across a heavily injured Sasuke in the forest and smuggles him into her house. With her father away, anything could happen. An attempt to write SasuHina somewhat realistically without glossing over Sasuke's issues.

8. Clockwork

Every light in the district out and everything silent and wrong. And now ghosts would walk, would be glimpsed in little flashes, in his peripheral vision. Ghosts with red eyes, whirling with fury.

Just like this.

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In this house, Hinata thought, the new day always dawned at night.

Sasuke stepped out for a moment and disappeared for two hours.

The moment stretched. She knew he was upset, she'd seen it in the sharp flicker of his eyes. Already he couldn't fool her.

And outside, the storm wore on, it's icy roar drifting in and out of her mind. The lantern light painted distant gold across the whitewash of her bedroom's ceiling.

All around her, the four electric lanterns in her room burned incandescent yellow behind painted paper shades. Hanabi's cat rolled around on the tatami mats, settled in Hinata's lap to lick it's paws. Finally it napped, tucking it's fluffed tail around it's delicate feet. Hinata half-watched it, her byakugan flickering in and out, as she poked at her own tangle of thoughts, and just had no enthusiasm for trying to manage any of them. She saw the detailed fringe of it's closed eyes, it's tiny sharp claws just peeking out of downy fur. The swivel of it's ears.. and as she lingered over the details, calming herself with them, she knew that the problem facing her now was nothing compared to what Sasuke carried.

She could barely imagine. At least she still had a father.

The lanterns stood like silent guards. Four warm eyes. Somewhere in that endless pause of time, they flickered once, as if shaken too hard, and died. Hinata rested her eyes under the curl of her arm, and then opened them on sudden darkness.

But before that, the storm hurled ice against her window, and Hinata lay on her side on the tatami mats. Her hair spilled haphazardly off one of her embroidered cushions, half-pinned under her shoulder, pulling just a bit. One of her hands was bent just slightly awkwardly under her side, and she knew that she'll have a crick in it when she got up... whenever that would be.

She didn't know what she would do, what she should do. What she could do, and she ultimately just didn't want to do anything. Somewhere Sasuke had gone to rage, to get rid of that hard gleam of anger she'd felt in him, even as he clenched it down. She felt it moving under his gentle hands.. and she held her breath, fearing more for him then for herself. She wondered how he could put it aside, such an elemental, basic wrong done to him. Do that, and focus on her. Her and her smaller, easier problems. Her father.. the way this house was, and she knew it was that way. She had lived here. She hadn't done it with her eyes closed.

So she watched Hanabi's cat investigate the tray of food Sasuke brought for her. She would have to make sure he didn't see that, it would show disrespect for the gesture. The cat sniffed around the shallow dishes, the little pink nose snuffling at the painted scales of whiskered fish in circular waves of indigo blue. When the cat chomped down the first bit of sashimi, Hinata sighed, pulled her trapped hand out, and thought that she wasn't all that hungry in the first place.

She could not believe her father had done that. She could believe her father would do that- she had been at the hands of this family and she knew what it did. She just wanted.. she thinks.. she wanted to think better of them.

She watched the cat tear through the fish, it's little claws wet now, each gleaming with a tiny warm reflection of the burning lanterns.

She still believed that she could change her house. But it was so slow.. and it just made her so angry. A little seven year old child wasn't a threat to anything, and they just left him out in the cold.

And to her, her sense of self was built upon the foundation of her name, her father's name. It was the hardline at the bottom of her cloudy handful of dreams. And now there was a crack in that dream.. or should have been. She lay back and straightened her spine from the awkward sprawl she'd twisted herself into... she realized that she expected to feel a sense of loss and betrayal. But she'd always known this, in the back of her mind.

She thought that maybe.. maybe this was where Hanabi drew her endless bright fury.

But Hinata was nothing like Hanabi. Shino said accept it, and she would accept it.

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When he moved like this, when he hit the peak of adrenaline and his body was the direct line of action he'd trained it to be, his memories hit high-speed rewind. He retraced his steps, double and triple-checking, sure he felt a misstep somewhere, somehow he gotten himself into this mess, and.. the logic broke down in the middle. Nothing but flailing and fear, and his twelve year old self, that fractured reasoning.

When he moved... his mind was already five steps ahead, rationalizing darkness.. lights out.. ice storm.. power outage- idiot! And the downbeat was his gasp for air, the answer was the door latch stinging cold in his hand, the snap and brutality of the storm, the furious driving destroying power of it, percussive.. everything was percussion at this moment. He yanked the latch- locked. Shit!

Blown closed, locked behind him, the click lost in the howl of the storm... roundhouse.. he broke a window, smacked the shutter back, tumbled in.

Clumsily. Panicked. His hand was cut and warm now with blood. He felt the splintered maw of the shutter, but it would hold against the winds. He shoved it closed, shoved it's four latches down, he felt the wet fingerprints he made. The storm clawed at him through the broken window. He ducked under the heavy curtain, into the house.

Darkness.

Power outage. he told himself. Calm the f-... calm down!... fucking sniveling moron... fucking power's out, that's all.

Cut instep. Wetness on his heel. He felt the bloody footprints being left too. He navigated and moved away through the darkness, he remembered this part of the house. He felt the quiet presence of the walls. Somewhere there was the murmur of voices, the scurry of activity. Higher in the house. He squeezed his eyes shut and did not remember fallen bodies, precise recordings of a crime scene, time-order-method of death.

And it was during early fall when it happened, so that was wrong...

And the panic couldn't work and just ended itself in progress. Sasuke just stumbled forward on his wet and dry feet in turn. He heard movement in other rooms. It was still warm here, but where was the feeling of warm currents? Furnace was off.. sudden silence.

And the darkness twisted all around him.

"Orochimaru." he breathed.

That presence. Sudden, immediate. Unmistakable. Descending before he could even raise his hands to protect himself, a snake lunging to strike.

-------------------------------------------

Accept it... The way the entire house had, and the village after them. It was easy, maybe. It wasn't as easy as it would be when he was eighteen and full of dark threatening anger, when Hinata would have some real reasons to fear for her safety. But before that, maybe you could see the killer's shadow on the little boy. Even if it was an absolute lie and she knew it.

Maybe she had already accepted it, in her own quiet way. She would not hate her father like Hanabi did. Not yet.. not while there was still a chance. She thought that she might never love her father now, that was lost. In these collisions with reality, some of her softness was lost, always, and this time it was the hope of love. But she could hold on to her dream of pulling the house together...

She turned on her back and looked up at nothing. The soft warm shadows formed in lantern light across the scrubbed white of her bedroom ceiling. The familiar scents surrounded her, the slight bitter edge of green tea, the clean smell of sandalwood and the oil polishes the servants used on the wooden backbone of the house. The scent of paper, and of ink, both so subtle as to be whispers. And the soft backdrop of the storm's fury sealed behind glass. The purr and soft plumed tail of her sister's cat. And no Sasuke, none of his electrical halo except a crisp, clear memory.

Sasuke. A complex subject lost behind a complicated maze of mirrors. Her family, the prism her whole sense of self came through.

No more broken now then it had been this morning before she knew, or every morning before.

She could give herself a moment to indulge that recent memory. She could warm herself with the memory of Sasuke's half-smile as he looked up from the book. There was sincerity to it, caution, as if he wasn't entirely sure himself, but he wanted to try just for her. For her, for the useless heir of the Hyuga...

But she believed it. She knew that he liked her, and that she liked him. That was one certainty. She could remember the hard clarity of Sasuke's eyes and believe that he saw clearly.

She didn't know why he had taken himself into the darkness, she drew the fleeced sleeves of her jacket tightly around herself, remembering what he'd told her.

Not that it was her business, or her place to intervene. She bore witness, but didn't speak and didn't move. It was his, this problem. This struggle, whatever it was in his eyes that held him down so hard, that pushed him so far beyond exhaustion and reason, all those unspoken hints of why in Naruto's eyes, when he avoided this subject.

Of Sasuke. His absence. His violent flight from the village. The blood and tears that spilled in his wake, and all of it went on behind closed doors, but Hinata had not lived in her team with closed eyes, either.

Not that she knew the details. She only knew the outlines of the story. She'd passed years a few steps away from what was left of his team. She knew that he'd run. She knew that he'd been chased. He'd attacked, Naruto had fluttered back to earth in flames, and they'd held him in bandages and jutsu bonds for weeks in the hospital, as if Sasuke had broken every bone in his body.

Other things were broken, she could sense it around the edges of Sakura's half-glance, the quiet stillness of anger on her face. Resignation that was really anger, that was becoming anger beneath. And the day that Hinata stood at Kurenai-sensei's bedside, and drifted to the window. She heard the strain of Naruto's voice, and then the slow burn of determination in his eyes, glinting up at her from the courtyard so far below. Hinata didn't know what went on in the secret heart of that team. But her softness gave her intuition. She felt it.

Kiba told her to not get involved, that it would just come back to bite her. His exact words. Shino touched upon the subject now and then, with careful precise fingers. In the end, Hinata mostly followed them into the future, away from the missing space that she could feel in Naruto. There was nothing she could do. Slowly she decided that the best thing she could do was continue to strengthen herself, honor her memory of Naruto's strength.

She knew very little about Sasuke, just that he, too, had been strong.

And so clear-sighted, able to see through her shyness. Able to see her at all. That moment when he'd glared, and before it, when he'd looked up in surprise, and he'd looked young and boyish, his dark hair sticking up in places, as if he'd just woken from a long peaceful sleep.

Could he be wrong? Lost? He seemed too sure, too confident for that.

His path was dark, and it took him far away.. but...

Hinata accepted the dark places, the cold places, the new and uncomfortable places where change took her. She tried to. She stumbled, she quivered, but she had never turned back. She had never walked away and gone back on her word. That was the fingerhold of strength she started with. She tried to pull herself up from there. And maybe this flight from Konoha was just Sasuke's own change. Even if he had to change into a missing-nin. That was more then Hinata would have been willing to give up...

The strength of his convictions, she thought. That's what she lacked. She hesitated. And she didn't always trust herself...

But she found her place of comfort, her own team had shifted itself to a calmer, more contemplative mood. She and Shino formed two poles, and Kiba bounced off harmlessly, contained and quieted between them. Hinata remembered meeting Kiba for the first time. He'd towered over her, and for a moment she thought the fur spilling from his jacket was his own, he just seemed to have so much hair, furry hands, massive fingers, bright animal eyes.

"He's gonna bite ya!" he said gleefully as Akamaru bounded into Hinata's lap. And Akamaru did, with sharp, hard little puppy teeth. Hinata tearfully washed off her bleeding hand at Shino's mother's kitchen sink. She dried her eyes with the back of her wet hand. But even as she winced and hunched her shoulders in embarrassment, she felt a slow sense of wellness, as if everything at that moment was all right. No one was angry with her or looking down on her. Kiba was testing her. Shino calmly bandaged her hand. And Kiba and his dog, having marked her and licked at her blood, seemed to decide that she was all right after all.

Now she was part of them and they were part of her. The bonds they made as teammates went well beyond those of simple friends. She'd wondered about the mystical processes the Hokage and jounins used to bind together the magical groups of three, to make it work just right, so they could grow and strengthen one another.

But it wasn't a happy memory she could rest in, not with the shadow of emptiness in Naruto's team close at hand.

It had been a perfect match. All three bright corners of team seven. They should have held together. They should have made it. Hinata just couldn't understand how they ended up this way, torn apart. Sasuke refusing to return, and now refusing to see them. Not even mentioning them, as if he didn't remember them.

No.. as if he wanted to forget them.

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Orochimaru.

...snaked out of the wall. Coils of heat with rattling tails.. pins and needles in Sasuke's half-frozen fingers.. white noise in his ears. He swayed off his feet, and the walls caught him. The walls held him up, but his shoulders sagged, heavy with wet fabric.

So he just slumped against the wall. Let it happen. There was nothing he could do, Orochimaru would do whatever he wanted. Sasuke would endure. He just let his foot slip forward, his body drop to the floor. Hair falling into his face, cold water dripping onto his knees.

Orochimaru. There all around him, writhing snakes, silent rattles, crawling all over him. Darkness all around.

"If you want me so much," Sasuke muttered, exhaustion speaking for him. "why don't you just come get me?"

No reply. Orochimaru's jeweled reptilian eyes. Jeweled crescents. Perfect machined clarity of sight, his eyes reaching through the darkness to pin Sasuke to the wall. Sasuke could feel it.

"Why don't you?" he whispered.

He wished Orochimaru would speak, cross the line of dreams in darkness. In whatever this was... some part of Sasuke still felt the prickle of genjutsu. He was in the Hyuga clan's house, wasn't he? Orochimaru was in Otokagure.

But Orochimaru was more then just his physical body, he'd worked all of his considerable magic to reach this point, where those two things were not bound or equivalent. Sasuke felt that he'd carried Orochimaru around in him, some part of Orochimaru's beckoning hand, from the moment he felt Orochimaru's teeth sliding into his neck.

And after that, much after, when Kakashi pulled him from the chuunin exam; and the tangles of ink snaked up all around him, bore their way into him. Snakes in his mind's eye, under his skin.

"Sensei." he whispered.

Respect taken and sold. Power given. And when the transaction was done and the blood had changed hands, Orochimaru finally materialized and became real.

"Continue." Orochimaru said, lazily.

Genjutsu shimmer. Sasuke could feel that dark fingerprint of energy washing around him, blooming on the surface of his skin, black flowers like dark blood, snakebite.

"Why don't you just force me?" Sasuke said, almost desperately. His throat cracking. "You're stronger.." You'll always be stronger. "Whatever you want from me... just fucking take it!"

He shuddered. The heat just couldn't touch him.

"If I wanted that," Orochimaru said, an oilslick rainbow of subharmonics shimmering behind his voice, "I could have kidnapped you from the forest. Couldn't I?" Then his soft laugh. "My dear, sweet, completely unimaginative Sasuke." With that particular compelling rhythm...

"Persuasion genjutsu." Sasuke muttered.

"Close. But do continue, this is very interesting."

"I'm not coming back to you!" His own lips felt cracked, wet with nervous tension.

"I see." The voice came out of the darkness, on a million different writhing wavelengths. Legless and unidirectional, nothing that Sasuke with his tactical mind full of straight line certainties could grasp at. "Are we actually going to mean it this time?" And the silence was heavy with everything Orochimaru didn't have to bother to say. You need me and you want me and I have what you want and there is no other way and there's nothing else for you.

Just nothing and everything and absolutely hopeless to even try to answer.

"I don't even fucking know myself. You know that." You fucker. Orochimaru, who knew him better then he knew himself. That knew every inch of flesh, ever twitch of fury. Who knew him, all the disgusting little secrets. Who wanted to hear Sasuke say them anyway, so Sasuke could know his own weakness just a little bit more.

Orochimaru lounged in the darkness, the entire darkness was him, it made tendrils and writhing bodies, shimmers of ringed muscle, dark long hair and wan pale flesh. Glittering inhuman eyes. Orochimaru's painted face and his honeyed lips, the sudden razor hardness of his teeth. Sasuke's own blood, warm and immediate and sharp. The darkness made everything, the voice came to him. Perfect. "Genjutsu," he gasped, whispering to himself.

Magic.

"Well, do tell. What do you think I want from you?" Orochimaru asked. He would turn his painted eyes to Sasuke and watch him as if he was interested in the answer. Sasuke would clench his fists and stiffen.

"You're wasting my time." he snapped, here and now.

Airy, breathy. "Oh?" Unconcerned.

"With this!"

"This pleasant conversation?"

"Psychological torture." he snarled.

A whispery velvety, almost smoky laugh. Temptations of darkness and power, and of transgressions too. All the lines that Sasuke longed to cross, to cut straight through to Itachi. "Tsk. We've discussed your negative attitude."

The hint of a reprimand nestled in approval. Affection. His father. Itachi. Orochimaru made all things possible again, and Sasuke struggled to keep his feet on the ground. Dreaming, now... lost to this dream, and it would feel so good to just let go.

If he could just let go and feel good, for once. Just for a minute.

And after he'd drank that moment dry...

"What's the point of it?" he muttered. All of this. This song and dance. Orochimaru's lust for performance. "If you want me, just take me."

The darkness turned, beneath his eyelids. As if all the snakes moved in unison. Orochimaru converged, all his silks and perfumes and forbidden pleasures, his silky promises, his hard hands, his teeth cutting deep, his hands and his tongue reaching down deeper, trying to crawl inside, Sasuke knew, from the inside out. Sasuke couldn't stop him.

Looking down into Naruto's still face. The Valley of the End. The forehead protector lying on the ground. Rain dripping off his face, raindrops standing on Naruto's chilled skin.

Stop me, he'd thought. Stop me.

It was done now, there was no stopping it.

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Hanabi's cat climbed onto Hinata's splayed arm and walked up over her shoulder, onto her chest. It swished it's tail high over her head, settled it's warm furry body so it squarely aligned with the meridian of her ribs. It peered at her with slitted eyes and pushed one paw under her chin. Animals could feel things.. know things. Simple things, the right place to go and the right thing to do...

She didn't know what she could do about her father. She didn't know what, if anything, she could or should do about Sasuke.. about what he'd told her, those dangerous people…

..that few moments in the garden where he told her the barest outlines of the facts, in between breaths of freezing air.

Snow caught in his dark hair, making him look less threatening. The dark surface of his eyes somehow stark enough to show the last glimmer of daylight, as it retreated under deep ragged layers of cloud and the sky softened into deep, misty shades of blue, darkening into midnight blues and blacks. All of it made in that moment just to form a backdrop to the quiet shadow of sadness that fell over his face. Uchiha Sasuke, only eighteen, only a few months older then Hinata herself. And already he felt so deeply lost, to her. As if he'd seen further into the ugliness of the world then Hinata ever would, just in his short life. And nothing had been given to him. He came out of that abyss with no wisdom, nothing but a collection of fading scars. That distant look of desolation, resting in his eyes for just a moment.

Strange.. disturbing, to Hinata. She dreamed of change, she prefigured the darkness. She allowed herself to imagine the challenges and shocks of the future, she imagined them as brave voyages. Her favorite storybook as a child had been the tales of pearl divers who ventured far under inky waters, dodging lurking octopus arms and jagged teeth. But to fall as Sasuke had, to descend and come up with nothing, no glittering coins or hidden treasures...

She'd paused then, in the garden, watching him. They weren't yet close enough for her to ask. This was still something that she could only look at politely, as he hesitantly uncovered these parts of himself. She remembered the twinge of worry she heard whispering in his voice, as if he wanted her to know him, all parts of him, but he feared that she would hate what she saw.. or..

Well. She did feel sorry for him. But it wasn't pity so much as a formless little thought, a twinge of her own, floating unspoken. Wanting.. dreaming.. imagining.. knowing that he would go back to his life as it was. She would go back to hers. That his own team had tried and failed, certainly she could not save him.

So Naruto and Sakura held the splinters of their team tightly, like two sides of a wound pressed, hoping that it would grow together again. They held the empty space shut, between their clasped hands. Could Hinata's team survive this? The loss of Kiba... and she and Shino would join hands and search for him. They would keep their own quiet, unspoken faith. And, she thinks, that she and Shino would be able to bring Kiba back. She and Kiba would be able to bring Shino back, should he have fallen over that edge. And she knows that if she ever fell, if she ever ran, then she would look over her shoulder to see Shino and Kiba, their hands, catching her between them. Their team's three corners balanced and the center held. But something went wrong in team seven. Or maybe it's energy was just too unstable, that it tore itself apart, finally.

But she could swear that Sakura and Naruto could have saved him. That they should of.. that Sasuke stopped them, froze them in place. Somehow, so he could slip their grasp. Or maybe he just was so determined. Or maybe, there just had never been any closeness in their team. That was the half-formed thought that had bothered her, back when the ruin of Team seven was fresh and new. What if she only imagined the closeness of her own team?

But she only had to meet with them, see them, get lifted off her feet by Kiba, or to feel Shino's strong, gentle hand on her shoulder. And she knew she had imagined nothing. She didn't think that Naruto and Sakura could have imagined that bond that drove them so far...

And it just seemed to make no difference.

It was ironic that her family with it's ordered, fractured, clockwork heart could seem so simple in comparison.

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Shut up, Naruto. It was done. It had been done at the Valley, in that moment.

It was already too late.

He was lost in the memories. Orochimaru's beckoning hand. The arms that Sasuke felt opening up to him in the darkness. He left Naruto at the water's edge and ran, like a child. Into Orochimaru's waiting arms.

And now, the memories. Genjutsu. Sasuke was sure that it wasn't happening, but it felt so clear, and so real. The perfect impression of this moment, burnt into him. Of many late nights, like this one. Sasuke would be alone in his room in Otokagure. He would be exhausted, hurting from training. Pleased, because this would make him feel just a little bit closer to where he wanted to be. He would close his eyes.

The slide of silk on silk would alert Sasuke to Orochimaru's presence. He'd think of snakes with silken scales. He'd be in bed, it would be late, he'd be half-asleep and drifting. Orochimaru would slither through the crack in the door.

Sasuke would not open his eyes, but he'd hear the soft rustles and then the sound of clothes falling to the stone floor. Maybe the whisper of one footfall, as Orochimaru wanted to tease him with the process of climbing into his bed. Sasuke would feel the bed shift, the sheets open and then the sinuous ripple of cool-skinned living things suddenly in bed with him. He'd have turned over, obediently, long ago. And he'd be listening to the throb of his heart, breathing a bit hard already, because he knew what was coming... Orochimaru would pull down whatever clothes he was wearing, and then he'll feel the cool touch of lubricants, like the snakes, a cool, smooth feeling, reptilian and strange. And then, as he bit his lip, Orochimaru would make him feel whatever Orochimaru wanted him to feel... pain, pleasure, or a combination...

And Orochimaru's voice went on. Unwinding, like an endless river of blood.

"The question is..." The syllables like a caress from a hard bony hand. "...why do you want me?" On and on.. "You know what I am. You know what I'm doing. You know, and you stay... you chase me." Hisses, more like a fire. Impression in flame. Orochimaru. Sasuke's own heartbeat racing, the air shuddering in his lungs. "You come to me. You beg me for my attention." Insults flying past his head like blunt objects. None of them untrue. "You're a clever boy, Sasuke.. very, very clever..." None of it touching him. Safe from everything, secure and acknowledged and locked in the sights of Orochimaru's eyes. Mesmerized. Quivering, gasping for breath, silently rushing with blood under Orochimaru's heavy hand.

On and on and on.. if Orochimaru stopped, if Orochimaru ever stopped this, Sasuke would beg him to continue.

He knows this.

Stop me. he whispered to Naruto, but Naruto was out cold. The rain fell down on them both, and Sasuke was alone...

But Orochimaru never stopped, he held Sasuke perfectly tight. That hand would never deviate, and Sasuke exhaled in one shaky relieved rush. Orochimaru's voice wrapped around him like long skeins of silk, unraveling.

"And why is that?" The first lick of his smooth tongue at Sasuke's ear. Singsong with indulgence. "Why?" a breath of cool, clean air. "It's because I hurt you. I hurt you just the way you like... my fortunate son." The flicker of that tongue up and down Sasuke's neck as he strained, caught against the wall. Pinned and restrained so perfectly, weighted with the heavy embrace of tight coils. His own rough, harsh gasps for breath close in his ears.

Orochimaru would take him now. Now.. now.. now! And he'd shiver with horror and delight, Orochimaru would lift him up, turn him over. Fuck him hard and fast against the wooden floor, and his body would just be alive with crawling flames and darkness and power and that feeling, the one that was born in the blood smudge of the curse seal. When Orochimaru reached out to touch him. To claim him. The rest was just formalities, Sasuke was his.

Wasn't he?

Afterwards, wet and furious, tense with that fury. Thinking, now. Remembering back into that sweet, impossible rush of blood, headlong rushes to destruction. Remembering what Orochimaru said, coming back to himself.

"It's for the power, you piece of shit!" he hissed. One hand to his face, fingers clawing, trying to feel his own flesh, remember his own thoughts, remember himself after being wiped out so completely and perfectly.

And Orochimaru's silken laugh, smooth as honey now. All the jagged edges ground down and dissolved like glass.

"Well, I've trained you." Orochimaru said, knitting his bony fingers.

Clawing. His skin scraping. Heat and wetness now on the tips of Sasuke's fingers. His skin is dry, his hair is damp, how long has he been here? Caught in the coils of the illusion. His teeth set on edge. "You did that."

"You enjoyed it."

"Not as much as you did!"

A soft chuckle. "Granted. Ahh... my favorite toy. You know what I love best? I can reduce you to an angry teenager full of sullen accusations. I can do it less then a minute. You're so...so easy.. it would have taken me years to break Itachi down this way- ah!" A sudden brightness, delighted amusement. "That offends you!"

And this could go on for some time. This useless push and pull of conversation. Orochimaru fucking him with words, with his tongue... fucking with him, to be exact. It was all the same thing, in the end. Orochimaru liked to play and he liked to drag these moments out.

"You did something to me." Sasuke whispered. His head pounded against his hand. The genjutsu was resolving to a migraine's low throb, changing shape in the darkness.

"Ah, about that..."

"You sent me back here."

In rhythm. Call, response. Perfect timing. "The opposite, really."

"Then why am I here?" Desperation flaring in his voice. Coated with a thin layer of anger, but..

"Three guesses..."

And Sasuke falling firmly into silence.

Orochimaru's voice. Catching him, cradling him. Holding him close, as Orochimaru wove his magic words in rhythms too arcane and complex for Sasuke to follow. Orochimaru whispered that Sasuke had been inattentive for some time. His heart wasn't in it.

"And where was your heart?" The lilting inflection, Orochimaru begging a question. "I suppressed your conscious mind, and off you went."

Something in Orochimaru's tone, that grassy scent of burning things. That hint of decay. The stench of his summoned snake, that afternoon in the Forest of Death, when Orochimaru had waltzed right into the middle of the chuunin exam. Like he owned the place. Ready to lay his claim.

"Right back home." Orochimaru whispered in his ear. "How sweet."

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But there was no urgency. Hinata lay back and watched the cat. She found her mind drifting back to what Sasuke told her, out in the garden. About the people he was involved with, far away from Konoha. Lost in some precision nightmare of his own, dressed up in the darkness of a dream.

At the time, listening to him, she was focused more on comforting him, assuring him that it was all right, that she still liked him. That nothing had changed.

And as she listened, and took it all in, it seemed to her that it really wasn't that different then what a kunoichi might be called upon to do in service of a mission. His new sensei sounded horrible to Hinata, but she also knew that her world of the ninja, the one that took place inside the guarded walls of her house, was artificial and pretentious compared to the reality of what really went on in this way of life. Maybe they did not, as a rule, procure and kill villagers for the pleasure of high-ranking ninja leaders in Konoha, but they still killed for money. The difference was just a matter of degrees... And she didn't like these rationalizations. But... it was true. She couldn't judge. Otokagure sounded like a horrible place to her, but maybe Sasuke needed to pass through horrible places, dark places, in service of his own path of change.

She wasn't skilled with seeing motivation and inner thought with her byakugan, not yet. But maybe some part of it registered, and her mind just couldn't grasp it fully. She was still sure that he was not malicious, he was not evil. He was not a bad person...

She sighed. Pulled herself up to a sitting position. Her hair clung to her shoulders, staticky from the pillows.

She'd have to deal with the tray before Sasuke got back, it would be incredibly disrespectful to let him see this, her ignoring what she knows is- in effect- a peace offering. A tangible symbol of what he can't say or provide to her in words, providing her with comfort in objects instead. Cushions, hot tea, a meal carried from the kitchen. Doing what he can, as best he can... she really did like him.

But she gave up on the tray as she watched Hanabi's cat gulp down the last bit of fish. There was no point now. She collected herself, smoothed the fabric of her jacket with one hand. She should go find Sasuke. She promised Miya that she would, and...

The lights went out then. Darkness fell, and Hinata heard the cat's soft paws whisper across the floor, out through the slightly ajar door. Into darkness beyond, the hall and the entire house yawning in warm, soft black space.

Familiar, more so even when it was unseen. When it all became her other senses, hearing and touch. Inviting her to imagine it exactly how she liked.

So off she went, into the darkness, to find him.

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Sweetness. The smell of something burning. That scent that clung to that grass-nin, in the forest. His grasping fangs. Sasuke shivered against the cool touch of Orochimaru's fingers.

"You're... you're up to something." He meant it to be a sharp taunt. It came out as a whimper.

Orochimaru only leaned in, looming over him like a swaying hooded cobra. "Mmm... my dear, sweet, suspicious little Sasuke..." A flicker of fire, Orochimaru licking his lips.

Sasuke turned his head. He was pinned, helpless...waiting, ready, panting with anticipation. The words wanted to come out a moans, as desperate whispers.

"You wouldn't..." His voice was rising. Orochimaru was pulling him tight, grinding his firm coils in just the right place, the right way. Finding Sasuke in his wet clothes, half-hard, and Sasuke yanked his head to the other side, trying to shake Orochimaru off, trying to pull him in deeper. "You wouldn't just let me leave... You'd never give it to me for free.." he gasped.

Orochimaru right against him then. Smooth scales gliding over his skin. Words dying in his throat, drowning in a welling of gasps, that sudden sharp feeling, Orochimaru's bony hand in his pants now, stroking him just right, perfectly.. and there just being no will to resist in the world. Nothing to do but feel it.

"You forget history, darling." Amusement curling in Orochimaru's close whisper. His hand getting tighter, more insistent. "Come on, then..." And Sasuke clenched up, his head jerking back. Trying to swallow that sharp flinch of pleasure behind his clenched teeth, half-succeeding, hissing sharply instead...

"You're not..." the air was rushing out of him, as the muscles at the small of his back twitched. "...you're not here, are you? Not really.."

Orochimaru answered with one long, achingly slow stroke. He waited for Sasuke to gasp, the flick of his tongue dancing over Sasuke's ear.

"Post-hypnotic genjutsu. I wanted you to decide."

Orochimaru's fingers clenched hard under one of his knees. Orochimaru had him cantilevered against the wall, one ankle in each tight hand. In the space of a heartbeat, Orochimaru was inside him. Moving. Slithering, writhing. His body was just a helpless instrument, caught in the sure hands of his master.

It was true...

..what Orochimaru said.

No one could make it hurt so perfectly and beautifully. No one else could ever hurt him and make it feel so, so good. And it filled up all the yawning black spaces for just a moment. And he never quite knew when it was coming... as the line blurred between punishment and reward, and now neither was complete, they pinwheeled yin and yang with the other.

Orochimaru finished, always, by leaving a sticky line on the small of Sasuke's back. Marked territory. And Sasuke would let that held breath out slowly, thinking that he'd have to get up and wash it off now, and telling himself that all he felt was irritation...

But his back was dry against his hand, now.

His clothes were wet, his skin was damp, but there was no stickiness. Sasuke only heard his own heartbeat and his own breathing. The darkness had fallen still and silent.

Post-hypnotic genjutsu. He'd never heard of that before. But... he groped in the darkness, found the floor, the wall, began to reorient himself... he'd definitely have to read up on it.

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Hinata paused at the doorway. The light from her window was so slight, there was nothing but blackness in the hall beyond. There was only the hint of incense to help remind her where the stairway was. Sasuke had gone this way, hours before.

A dark house in the middle of a raging storm. This wouldn't be a problem for a shinobi, even if Sasuke was unfamiliar with the layout of halls and rooms. Some part of Hinata knew that if Sasuke wanted to be back, he would be.

But she searched the hallway, feeling with her byakugan and her second senses, the ones that would make chakra flare up and down the tiny hairs at the back of his neck. They'd prickle, she'll feel him close. Or, she'd feel the hint of energy, the places where he's passed. Invisible footprints. But he's not here.

As she moved into each room in turn, sliding open rice paper doors onto new pockets of blackness, each room with just a slightly different tenor of stillness. The storm moves behind the scenes, and the familiar rooms form strange shadows in it's faint hint of light. It's not enough for her to see by, but some trace of heat in it makes it gleam like soft clouded moonlight to her byakugan eyes. She finds herself contemplating his absence. The yawning hole in team seven. The efforts to save him, the way that Naruto and Sakura could not, and a stranger like Hinata could never hope to. She knows she shouldn't, and she tries not to, but..

Well...

But maybe.. maybe his problems and feelings were too dark and tangled for her to understand. Maybe she shouldn't touch him. Maybe she'd burn her fingers, but she worried more about knocking him off balance with her fumbling hand, trying to steady him. Trying to make him feel better, robbing him of some essential driving sliver of pain. Maybe his entire path was predicated on pain. Maybe it made him what he was, and took him where he needed to go.

Which was away from the village. Away from Naruto and Sakura.

Away from sense and reason and everything that other wiser people would tell him. Into dark places, difficult places. Places he had to pass through. Difficulties he had to feel. Things he had to see, to experience. Not every path was a bright one. They were ninja, they were not samurai. They dealt in darkness.

If that was his path, Hinata could not- should not- interfere. Her own path brought her sorrow at times. If Shino or Kiba were to hold her back, every time she might be hurt, or worried, or troubled, she would get nowhere.

"Pain is life." Shino said to her, calm and certain.

Kiba laughed. "Life is pain!"

But they were her team, her friends, they went beyond friends into something else, something deeper and more complicated, something that would hurt so badly to lose. Maybe that was why, that Naruto and Sakura just could not lose him, they couldn't stop feeling and protecting and loving him. He was their teammate. Nothing would change that.

And there was no one in these rooms. Even the faint distant presence of the servants had faded. They had moved to another part of the house. Hinata could feel their echo.. here.. where the lemon oil scent was just a bit stronger, because the oil had not yet dried. This was recent. And there was a hint of body heat here, just a subconscious memory, but her byakugan could see it.

There. Sasuke's half-footprint. Toes and the ball of his foot, he was moving quickly, rushing. To what? The energy marker was here, fading and hours old. She half-knelt, drew her fingers through the faint quiver of chakra. Here. He couldn't be far.

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He was eighteen and not seven.

This house was bigger, warmer, and didn't smell like his old house did- like blood his mind immediately filled in for him- and he had to smash both hands against his mouth to keep from throwing up again.

Outage. he tells himself sharply. The fucking power is fucking out. Understand?

Orochimaru's half-forgotten whisper, caught in the coils of genjutsu.

Here's a clue for you. Where's your sword?

Sasuke told the illusion that Orochimaru had knocked it out of his hand. Sasuke had heard it strike the floor of the dojo, it's heavy ringing impact. Orochimaru had seized his hand, squeezed hard fingertips cruelly into pressure points, and twisted that arm behind his back.. and it wasn't as if Sasuke was going to forget that, it had been fucking embarrassing, being caught and disarmed so easily. Letting Orochimaru wear him down to exhaustion and slowed reflexes, waiting hunched over in Orochimaru's tight hands, wondering if Orochimaru would break his wrist, just to teach him a lesson...

I wasn't using a poisoned blade, he told Orochimaru.

The lesson being pain for it's own sake. The lesson being the punishment for slowness, for loss of power, for just not being strong enough in the first place, and now Orochimaru would do anything he wanted, and Sasuke would simply be unable to stop him. The same lesson Sasuke had learned very well at Itachi's perversely soft hands, it wasn't something Sasuke had to learn over and over again. Orochimaru just enjoyed it.. that sick fuck.

I wasn't using a poisoned blade. Sasuke argued. The infection in his side... it was a wound consistent with a botched attempt at seppuku, maybe. Maybe if Sasuke was that fucking stupid, which he liked to believe he was not. Samurai affectations were Orochimaru's sick little fantasy, not his. And it couldn't explain the infection, so Orochimaru could just shut his ugly wide mouth.

In the end, in the dying tendrils of the illusion, Orochimaru faded into his own echoes of soft laughter. So unhurried, as if Orochimaru just knew that Sasuke would run to him, and he would just have to sit back, enjoy it, watch it all happen. So you ran. Orochimaru whispered, as Sasuke gritted his teeth against the warm swipe of Orochimaru's tongue. You ran, and you ran.. and you ran. Always running.. Orochimaru knowing him better then he knew himself. Orochimaru being privy to every hidden secret of his body, using every way and means now, to get inside it, to revel in what he just knew would always, always, be his.

Running. Orochimaru licked the word into him, wet swipes of his tongue on Sasuke's neck, his chest. Suicidal. And it just made him so fucking angry, he struggled in Orochimaru's tightly coiled arms. The genjutsu fell apart.

And he was back. Dripping wet, dropped back into the world of the living. A second had passed here, maybe less then that.

The ice was melting from his hair, dripping into his eyes. His clothes hung on him, soaked and clinging to his skin. He was lying by the wall, just where he'd fallen. His cheek was pressed into the metal grate of a heat vent. He opened his eyes and found himself staring down, the deeper darkness of the furnace vent staring back up at him.

He pulled himself upright. More darkness, different shades of darkness.. the room was there, the layout of the house could be guessed.

He needed a moment to rest, because something about that bit of genjutsu had reached in just a bit too far. Orochimaru knew how his mind worked, so he liked to keep the goalposts floating. As long as everything was in motion and nothing was certain, Sasuke had nothing to hang onto, and he'd never really be able to get a fix on the situation...

Orochimaru was teaching him, he was getting stronger. No one in Konoha would have ever taught him these sword patterns. Or these genjutsu techniques. He was learning, ever the dutiful and obsessive student. And at the end of the day, maybe he just wanted a little bit of approval, a little bit of something between recognition and affection. Orochimaru saw him, all right. Orochimaru knew exactly what he was, and how he was and was not like Itachi. And Orochimaru doled this information out in little bits, little brief breaths of air. So that Sasuke would hang on, desperately, waiting and needing and dying for more.

And Orochimaru divined, then offered up, exactly what Sasuke wanted. Exactly.

So who the hell knew what Orochimaru was twisting him into. With all those hidden hands working behind the scenes, working too fast for Sasuke to notice and follow. Orochimaru swept him off balance, and moved to keep him there. So Sasuke really had no idea what Orochimaru wanted.

Or where this all was going.

I don't even know what will happen to me, he said to Naruto, that moment at the falls where they were close enough to feel one another's breath on their wet skin.

It was true. He'd had no idea. He still had no idea. Maybe he was just used to the idea of the future being dark, threatening, bleak and impossible to think about...

So what was the problem here?

He couldn't walk away from Orochimaru. He couldn't deviate from his path one inch because then the ground fell away and he had nothing, it had all been for nothing, and he just couldn't do that. He couldn't let go.

There was also the fact that Orochimaru would never let him go, but that was kind of a formality at this point, wasn't it?

He was tired of sitting in a damp lump against the rapidly cooling wall, so he got up. He started walking. He'd find Hinata, which was the proper course of action. She'd know where to get dry clothes, where to find candles. They could talk, or they could just watch the storm. He'd feel better being around her at this moment. When he was with her, he felt like Orochimaru's bony hand was just a bit further away from his throat.

And she was fine. Safe. It was just a power outage.

Walk. He told himself. Find her. It was simple enough.

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In every room, up on the highest floor, in every neatly constructed paper space, were candles. Candles made with green tea and lemon myrtle. Pale green wax.

With the wooden matches in her pocket, she lit them. She marked each room. As she doubled back on her tracks, visiting rooms already passed, she saw the faint warm light burning behind the paper, lighting up the entire space with a hint of warmth. Even with the furnace off, the heat fading. As she retraced her steps through each wing, east, west and north, the flames sank into the wax and burned pear-red in it's liquid heart. The candlelight faded from a bright yellow to a soft gold. And each greeted her, silently. A whole floor full of silent, hopeful candles.

Her house was strange when it was empty. She was used to it being full of whispers, and closed doors, secret meetings.

It felt like an exorcism, lighting all these candles, bathing each dark corner in soft light.

Quiet contemplation, the soft feet of other housecats on the rafters above her. The silent curl of a sleek tail glimpsed between wooden slats. And once, in the distance of the long main hall, the luminescent green of blinked eyes, finding her in the darkness, seeing her byakugan and slipping away, unsettled.

The cats in this house never did get used to it.

And by now, Hinata knew that it was less a matter of searching then introspection, putting her history in last orders and rites before she took this step. Imagining that in the darkness, Sasuke moved closer to her. That he was waiting somewhere, poised catlike on the roof, lost in the howl of the storm. Hinata herself already lost to her own completely inappropriate fantasies. Thinking.. imagining how his gentle callused hands would feel on her bare body. How he would feel inside, if she dared to go that far. And she thought that she might. Time was short. Time was growing shorter, the candles were burning down. Soon enough she'd have nothing left of him but memories. So... there was no time to hesitate.

The cats shadowed her steps as she crept downstairs, moving through perfect darkness. She left the candles burning behind her.

Down on a different floor now, a different level. Dividing her house in her mind into stored memories, feelings, intentions. The house itself was a temple of memory. It held the whispers of energy from her ancestors, the full unbroken line. The traces of light from every star in their constellation.. she found another trace of chakra, Sasuke's footprint pressed to the bottom stair. Here. She bent to touch it with her hand.

All her life, she has been taught to appear clear, calm, still. Perfect.

And inside her, a tiny patch of warmth. Like she imagined the storm that pressed in on her from every window, every subconscious shiver of the walls. She had her byakugan open and ready, it maked it easier to search in darkness. Sasuke's body heat would shimmer into focus, iridescent.

Her own would feather out in blue waves from her as she moved, a lightweight heat shadow through the cooling house. The color was going out of these walls, moments earlier they held a rosy pink-purple glow, a footprint of radiant heat. Sasuke was not here. Methodically searching, taking her time...

Because this was all happening so fast. A few days. Less then a week ago, she was just proceeding along with her ordered life. She was not sad. She was not happy exactly. She enjoyed her job. She had her usual calm, measured hopes for the future, won by example and experience. She could not hope for spectacular leaps and bounds, but she had seen that she could take small, steady steps forward. And she continued. She moved forward towards her father, and to Neji. Towards Naruto and Sakura. Some of those steps being conversely away from Naruto, prying herself loose from her feelings.. trying to learn this lesson, slowly and easily, trying to be patient with herself. Naruto did not love her. Maybe she had not loved him..

But she had.

Naruto was a star. It didn't matter what other people said. Hinata heard the whispers and the stern hisses of the parents as they pulled their children away from him. She saw something else entirely, he lit her world up like wildfire. His blue eyes cut through the classroom with sizzling energy, it pierced right through her... and it woke her up, shocked her awake in so many ways. She'd leave at the end of the day, quivering with as much excitement as anxiety.

Being close to him was strange, and new, and fun even though it was scary. He was so different then everyone else she had known. She was used to the calm, cold focus of her family. Their decisive words and actions. The sharp turns of their ordered fighting form. No surprises.. no smiles and nothing like Naruto's infectious energy. She couldn't understand why everyone didn't love him. In her own shy, quiet way, with her quietly broken heart, she loved him as best she could.

He was, at the time, really the only thing that made her feel alive at all. Otherwise she was just the forgotten daughter. Another silent child in the house of Hyuga. She had yet to meet her team. Hanabi and Neji still drifted far away, lost in their own lonely orbits. And even after she drew closer to all of them, Naruto still pulled him into his circle of influence. He made her feel there was hope and there was a future. He made her believe that things could change. Shino directed her, he steadied her hands as she fumbled towards change. But Naruto was the spark of inspiration. She would be lost in the darkness, still locked up in her family's house, lost alone in the world, if not for him. Childish or not, she had loved him. She loved him now.

But he married someone else. And Hinata was friends with that someone else. She admired Sakura. Sakura was strong, and she managed it in a way that allowed for compassion. Sakura was harder then she was, too, Hinata knew. She'd felt Sakura pat her shoulder comfortingly when she'd come to her, worried about her father. Her father had just collapsed at a family meeting. The house had been full of whispers, rumors. Neji had been tense with her that morning, not wanting to look at her. And Hinata had just had to get out of that house, of that close atmosphere. It felt like a room rigged with hidden explosives. She couldn't wait for the triggers to be struck. She ran to Sakura, and Sakura calmed her down, in her own hard-edged way... Hinata remembered.

And Sakura would have helped her with her family in other ways, had she asked. Sakura and Naruto were there for her. They invited her to their wedding. They invited her to dinner.. and they all talked, and drank a bit too much, and they almost felt like adults, Hinata thought. It almost felt like she was growing up too, right along with them. She was still shy, and beneath her rigorous training in etiquette, she was uncertain about friendships. But they were determined. Even when she fumbled the hints they gave to her, invitations and smiles and pressed hands.. they kept trying. And she was a bit more confident now. She could call them her friends.

She couldn't hate Sakura.

She loved, in fact, the way they looked together. The way they'd looked in their wedding photos, both of them flushed and bright-eyed with excitement. Naruto's face-splitting grin, his brilliant blue eyes. That victory sign he flashed to the camera, the look written all over him, how much he loved her and couldn't believe that she was his. Sakura.

So much happiness. The kind that you could feel in the air. You could touch it with your hand, and it would go through you, like a warm shiver. Bittersweet, too, because Hinata did not have this for herself. But she kept it tucked away. When Sakura handed out the photographs, Hinata kept that one. She tucked it into her favorite book, pressed it with pages full of violets and lavender. She waited until spring and collected the flowers from the yoshino cherry trees in the east garden, when they bloomed like floating late winter snow. She pressed those white blossoms nearest to that hidden photograph... and she loved them both. It was taking time, that was all. She just had to resolve that love into friendship. To separate it from her own girlish crush. But it was more rewarding.. it would have to be. She'd rather be a strong, supportive friend at their side then a lonely girl nursing a broken heart.

And maybe someday, she would have this for herself. A love like that. Not something from a fairy tale, necessarily. But something warm and steady, and real. The look in their eyes in those photographs, secure and happy and relaxed in love, even as that love lit them up with excitement and promise. Just like that. She had to believe she would find it someday.

Or, if that was not her path..

..that she would at least live and travel close to it, all her life. That she would be by their side. She would be with them, and with Kiba and Shino, close in her own way, close to her own centers of warmth.

She often wondered if she was secretly like her mother. Her mother.. who had struggled to bear her, then finally died in the process of bearing Hanabi, as if she sensed that her usefulness to the family had come to an end.

Her mother was a hidden secret, unspoken of by her father and her family. Not to be mentioned. Hinata reached with her byakugan and tried to discern her mother's spirit. She tried to remember her mother.. her mother's voice, her mother's hands. But Hinata had been taken from her so early, placed into the harder, colder hands of her family elders. They had converged around her, coaxing the blood out of her. Their byakugan eyes all around, staring down at her from so high above.

And there was almost no trace of her mother now, not in this house. Sometimes Hinata would imagine looking at her father, imagining that somehow she could use the byakugan and he would not mind or notice. She would search the embroidered coils of his trained, perfectly shaped chakra for the memory of her mother. Once he had loved her... he must have. Hinata didn't want to believe otherwise.. and...

..at least she had herself, and her sister Hanabi. Both of them carried the blood echoes of their mother. She could look into Hanabi's eyes and start to piece together her own brief, distant memories. She knew Hanabi had been handed over to the higher ranks of the family even sooner. Before she could walk. They waited for her to be weaned, and then...

But Hinata never felt closer to her mother then when she looked at Hanabi. When Hanabi was sitting beside her, squirming or complaining, more often then not in the middle of an adolescent sulk about something. But Hanabi was her link to that hidden secret of her past. And as she thought of this, she felt it again. That soft half-shock of realization, feeling how much she loved her little sister. It always felt strange.. and good. Another hidden secret, a pocket of hidden warmth in a house so full of scrubbed, sterile hierarchies and iron-clad traditions.

Even if her father did not love her mother, she could believe that Neji's parents were in love.

From what she remembered of her uncle, he seemed a bit softer then her father. She could imagine him looking at his wife with affection. She could imagine Neji springing from a place of warmth and love.

Though, of course, it was not something she could ask him. They were not quite close enough yet. And it was difficult. She looked into his eyes and felt the curse seal upon him. She wanted to put her hand on it, cover it. Show him some trace of this unfinished regret she felt.

I would never do that to you. she would say.

But they were not close enough. Not yet. Touching was not allowed unless in the context of sparring. Too much familiarity was a delicate line to walk. She knew Neji was trying, but the weight of history hung low between them.

And that reminded her. There were many things her father had done that she simply couldn't accept.

But she had to accept them. She had to live in this house. She could fight to become the heir, she could fight to change the way of the family. But in the meantime she knew she did what she was meant to do. She 'accepted' it in a way that was more about burying it in her mind as quickly as possible. Reaching for the thousand polite obfuscations of the Hyuga, who, after all, had been doing these things for centuries. They were skilled in hiding this ugliness from first glance.

And from themselves, Hinata thought. Most of all from ourselves.

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Orochimaru. That genjutsu, triggered by post-hypnotic suggestion. It hadn't come for nothing. It wasn't just the trigger.

As a twelve year old, making very hasty and stupid decisions, he'd run away, run away from Konoha and from Sakura, and mostly from Naruto. He'd run right into Orochimaru's open arms.

And now, Orochimaru maintained his leashes and tethers in underhanded subconscious ways. Orochimaru knew that anything concrete, anything Sasuke could pinpoint was something he could start to work on breaking. But if it was all subliminal.. underhanded.. manipulative.. conditioned...

The problem was that when he was twelve, firstly, he hadn't been thinking. And secondly, he'd somehow thought he was stronger then Orochimaru, that he was smarter, that he could outrun this mess unscathed. Or rather, that it was all so abstract and hypothetical after the fact of Itachi's death that he didn't consider it an important subject. So he threw his future and his life into Orochimaru's gaping throat, nothing was too good to throw away. He really had been fucking suicidal, he hated it when Orochimaru was right like that, all the time. It was sickening, it was terrifying and it was so fucking unfair. No one had put out their hand, no one had stopped him, and...

...and. He really did think that. He caught himself thinking that. That no one had tried to save him.

Well, he was eighteen now. Maybe he still wasn't thinking. Maybe he was still a stupid kid- book smart and sharply analytical, levelheaded in some essential way- but just fucking incapable of dealing with his own life or problems. He didn't know. He just was not going back to Orochimaru. He wasn't running into those open arms, those jeweled eyes that knew and saw and understood too, just as Hinata did.

Orochimaru would come. He'd come to collect. He'd bring his contracts signed in blood. And he might tear down half of Konoha. He might just split Sasuke open like a blood sacrifice on the Hyuga's well-swept stone stairs, slurp up blood and internal organs and whatever else he wanted. Slice the sharingan out of Sasuke's eyes, have it stitched right into him, sitting there on the bloodied stairs, Kabuto working wet-handed, quick with the needle. But Sasuke was not going back.

At least... at least, Orochimaru was a missing-nin who far outstripped anything Sasuke had ever done. He could turn state's evidence against Orochimaru, bargain against his future, give them all the little pieces of slimy information that Orochimaru had paraded in front of him. Assuming that Orochimaru had ever shown him anything for what it was- unlikely, Orochimaru had an addiction for the misguided and misdirected. But Sasuke would fall back behind the lines of Konoha's defenses. He would put those hours in as an informant, he would serve his time in their interrogation rooms, he would go to prison if that's what they wanted, he would do this because he had to get out.

Or so he felt in this moment, walking dizzily through Hinata's house, fighting another panic attack down.

And it was his fault, he had fought and kicked and screamed at everyone who'd lined up to warn him off.. and now he would pay for it.

Still...

No one understood what this felt like. His own brother. No one would know those afternoons in late summer. The sun would be dipping down close to the horizon, and the cliffs of Konoha would turn dark. He'd run through the fields with Itachi. Itachi would carry him after he ran himself to exhaustion. Itachi would curl his small hands around the shuriken, showing him how. And he'd feel safe and loved and perfectly right in a way that he never would again.

And maybe if he killed Itachi he would become just like him. Maybe it was what Itachi wanted... and of course it was what Itachi wanted... but it was what Sasuke wanted too, and he'd wanted it more then anything. He knew it wasn't right, but he was broken, he was just as fucked up now, Itachi had seen to that. Maybe there just was no other way for him.

Or maybe the final, crushing irony was that Sasuke just wasn't as fucked up as Itachi was. He wasn't fucked up enough to save himself from wanting to go back, make his peace. He couldn't just be an emotionless killing machine like Itachi, maybe he finally just didn't want to spend his entire life this way. Not when Itachi's death drifted in and out of focus. When Orochimaru just pushed him so fucking far. When there was just no point left to anything, after everything Orochimaru had done- and would cheerfully continue doing, for absolute certain... Maybe Sasuke just couldn't make himself that small, petty and sick anymore.

Or maybe, when he was thirty, maybe when he was sitting on trial for deeper charges of treason, maybe then he'd look back and think that he'd been a stupid angry teenager, unwilling to let go of this last childish thing while he still had some chance of judicial pardon. Some people would have toys and picture frames and living relatives. Sasuke would have an empty house and hundreds of bodies and crystalline red memories. Did he need a criminal record too, just to make it all perfectly horrible and complete? Maybe he just couldn't stand to let any of himself come out unscathed. Suicidal, Orochimaru had said. Survivor's guilt.

But it was the best he could think of. He was not going back.

And it was definitely what he deserved. He'd walked right into this, thinking he had his eyes wide open. He'd chosen this.

And now he paid. Simple as that.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. Maybe Orochimaru had just shaken him so hard that he was forgetting himself. Losing some essential part of himself. Maybe this only felt right, to want to stay here. To prefer this warm house over Orochimaru's cold cinderblock hovels. Maybe Orochimaru would never let him leave. Maybe he was just losing it, finally. Maybe.

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Her own history, too, is difficult.

Hinata was born in the depth of winter, in the darkest time of the year. The sun had disappeared into the winter solstice. The family reverently touched their carved manji and worried that this was an omen. She lacked their crisp icy clarity. She was not a classic Hyuga in body, in face.. and most of all in mind. Her father was less concerned with the fact that she was not a boy. His own mother was the clan head for a glorious twenty years. The stories of her still remained. But Hinata was untalented, dark, born in shadow. The family waited in silence. They waited for her talent to awaken. They waited longer, Hinata thought, then they should have to... while Neji grew stronger. Neji was sure and swift, his mind was crystal clear. He was the Hyuga sun reborn, perfectly formed.

But he was of the lesser house.

Hinata's father belted her across the face. The side of his hand had shifted to solid iron. She fell back, skidded across the polished wooden floor of the dojo.

She looked up and saw the afternoon sunlight cut in slats across his face.

"Useless." he said.

It felt less like a condemnation, like a punishment. To Hinata at that moment it just felt like a statement of fact.

She was useless. To him, and to the Hyuga.

Her mother was pregnant again shortly after that.

Kurenai-sensei came. Hinata waited outside the dojo, and tried to see nothing, hear nothing. Feel nothing. She remembered looking out at the garden. The gardeners were clipping the hedges, and the piercing autumn sun glinted off the edges of the blades. The sheltered paper face of the house was soft and stately against the vivid blue sky. It rose into it, three stories, up to an elaborate weaving of dark stained wood and ceramic tiles. She looked at that, the way the roof poked it's dull nubbed teeth into the clouds, and felt a slow wave of homesickness wash over her. Her father was sending her away. He was all but disowning her. She raised her head and tried not to cry, because she knew that when she bowed her head to him then, it would be for the last time.

And in the end her father did not want to see her, so she didn't get to say goodbye.

She remembered that moment. Loss of family, of house, of name. Loss of her whole world. The ground was no longer solid under her feet. Every guiding star in her world had broken from it's path, and now everything was slowly floating away.

It made her think that she could almost begin to understand how Sasuke felt. Even if she was luckier. Her family went on living, and she found another day much later, when she could gather those broken pieces in her hand and begin to patiently put them back together again.

She wondered if Sasuke wasn't just doing the same thing. Rebuilding.

In her own mind, she was able to take that lost farewell to her father, and transform it into a hint that he was not yet ready to let her go. She was able to move through that opening and start to approach him again. They had never said goodbye, so it was not goodbye, not yet. It was slow, very slow. Her father did not respond easily or quickly. But Hinata kept her hopes alive, and at the bottom of these efforts she found a glimmer of strength. It made her feel that she had some small amount of agency in her family. She was rebuilding. It made her feel like she was the heir. It was the first time she had ever felt that way, like she was part of the Hyuga. Someday it would lie in her hands...

And..

It was slow. It was almost glacial. But something moved in her father's heart. Hidden wheels.. the secret meetings he had with the factions of her family, things that were so high over her head that they may as well have been carried down from the heavens. The Hyuga were warriors that became stars, they burned bright, the lit up the world. They ascended to the sky and formed a perfect constellation, in perfect lines...

Somewhere, her father made his silent decisions. Somewhere, the paperwork was changing hands. Her name was being signed into law. She was named executrix of her father's will in some quiet mystery, one that unfolded entirely without her. She was off in foreign lands. She was protecting Naruto. She was making her stand, divining the direction of his attacker's blood with her eyes and working to turn his forces against him. All of this was far away from her father; but somewhere, as the cold waves of magnetic force danced with terrible force, her father was quietly aligning with her as well.

His reasons would remain mysterious, no matter how close he allowed her to draw.

And sometimes... Hinata had to admit that it did hurt. Her father would turn away. He would dismiss her. She would want his attention so much. She would be holding that last bit of rare affection to her heart. And then there just would be no more. Not today. She would hope for tomorrow, but... well. At least she still had her father. At least he was still alive.

There was still time.

And, in the meantime, Hanabi was growing up. Hanabi had cheered and pumped her fists in the air at the academy graduation. Hinata had stood beside her father and felt him stiffen with disapproval. Hyuga children were meant to be well-mannered and poised in public. Hanabi was jumping around with her friends, their bright little girl voices piercing the stillness of the evening. Hinata had put her hand on her father's arm...

And he had stopped. He hadn't mentioned it to Hanabi later. Hinata had counted a small victory.

And, another time. Another small spot of brightness. She had been teaching for less then a year. Her father had asked her in passing, and she had told him that she planned to teach the children about the advanced bloodlines the next day. She told him that she would show them the byakugan, and she waited for his disapproval.

He did frown. But the next day, as she called the children to the front of the classroom, and knelt down to their eye level; as she formed the seals, and the entire world sprung into high, sharp focus. Beyond her students, their bright cluster of eager springs of chakra, the miniature suns of warmth that bloomed in their bodies, she saw another glimmer. A complex one. Cut and faceted. Diamondlike. Her father, veiled from her eyes but not her sight. He was there to watch her. He had come.

She continued with the lesson, and did not speak to him. She waited for him to come to her, and when he did not, she still carried that warmth with her. She imagined that there had been a smile on his face, that he had been proud of her.

And somewhere, in the midst of that slow change, Hanabi turned her head.

Hanabi had been a quiet child. That was what Hinata had been told. Quiet, obedient and talented- why couldn't Hinata manage the last as well? That was the question posed, held to her, in her white house full of piercing white eyes. Hinata had barely been allowed to see her sister. Not at first. Then Hanabi was just a pale, dark girl, just like her. A smaller version of her, glimpsed across the room, held under her great aunt's arm, being steered and focused...

Hinata still did not understand the way these battle lines formed in her house. These lines of separation.

But even as a small frightened child, she felt them. She saw Hanabi through a dark mirror, herself as she could have been. She wondered if Hanabi was as miserable as she was, and then...

..as the high family council relaxed their grip, Hanabi was there with her. They were able to have tea together. They were sitting in terse silence, Hinata, Neji and Hanabi. She saw the bruises on her sister's frail arm from training, and saw the look in her eyes and knew that Hanabi was miserable. But not like Hinata herself was. Hanabi was angry.

It was strange, Hinata thought. They both shared the quiet desperation of their ornate cage. But where Hinata bowed her head and subsided into silent depression, Hanabi snatched up her kunai and prepared herself to fight.

It made Hinata wonder what her sister was fighting for, if not for her family and her house. If not for their father. But Hanabi carried her secret motives behind her angry pout. And Neji vanished behind the prismatic blur of his eyes. Both of them were hidden, parts of them were just out of Hinata's reach. But she felt them close at hand, beside her. Hanabi plopped herself down at Hinata's elbow when they attended dinner together. And she could believe that someday she would reach for Neji, and he would be there.

But, for the moment.. all she had was that promise of time. At least she still had it.

Hinata sighed. She was in the tatami rooms of the main floor now, cushions gathered at her feet. The places where the family elders met. Where Hanabi had refused to sit properly, just a month ago. Their father had eventually had her dragged from the room. Hinata could probably find that cushion, the one with the maple leaves embroidered on it's slick surface. The one that Hanabi had kicked at their father, striking him in the face with surprising accuracy.

...her sister was so strong. Fierce. She would rise and fight again, no matter what happened. Her sister had begun to defy the will of the family elders.. and.. somewhere along the line, Hanabi had turned from their father. She said nothing, that was to be expected. But Hinata caught the sly little glares of distain Hanabi aimed at their father's back, little glittering senbon whistling through the air. The way she rolled her eyes, and she didn't smile when he spoke of her. She didn't even raise her head, she'd just push her teacup around with her fingertips. When their father would tell her to stop fidgeting, she'd look at him in a blank, sullen way.

And Hanabi drew closer to Hinata. As if she'd had chosen her side, finally.

Hinata knew that their father must know this, he must feel the current of unspoken anger in the air. But he said nothing.

He trained Neji. He trained Hinata.

Hanabi began to refuse to train with him.

"Speak to your sister," their father said to Hinata, stiffly.

Nothing more was said about the matter.

And the currents of silence and lines drawn remained. The house of secrets and light.

But. It was strange in and of itself, her family and it's house. It was built like a dream, perfect in every way, but inside it was a nightmare. It was artificial and unreal, but it was still the only reality she had. It was her only world. It took her months away in warmer, greener places with her team to fully understand just how strange it was. Kiba's family, with their house full of barking dogs and running paws, sloppy tongues and rough affection. Shino's parents, their calm dignity and the relaxed sureness of the love they had for him. Hinata could feel it, see it, when Shino's mother curled down the cowl of his jacket with one hand, kissed his cheek.

Her family did nothing of the sort. There was no touching. There were no kisses.. certainly not in public. Never before strangers, at that. Hinata stood to Shino's side and twisted her hands with embarrassment. Her family just was not like this.

But maybe she and Hanabi and Neji were a new kind of Hyuga. Maybe they can change things, together. Hinata had her secret dreams of joining their hands. She had her own private feeling towards the crest stitched into her back. A morning sun, a new day. Not just a rigorous, lifeless golden standard of excellence.

She believed that. It made her want to hold on. Maybe she and Neji could be different. Maybe she really could change the house. She'd spoken without thinking. Her heart had gotten it's way and spilled it's desires.. but she did want it. She wasn't sure how she could get there. But she wanted it.

And she wanted him.

Sasuke. There for a moment. Alive for a moment. Due to vanish back into the night, and Hinata would tear the sheets from her bed, Miya would gather the clothes that he'd worn, the traces of blood, and they'd burn them in the incinerator. Hinata would turn her back on the flames, she'd have to run back to her room to wipe Sasuke's fingerprints from her windowsill, because her father's eyes were just that sharp. She'd spend a few hours completely destroying ever visible hint of him, so that he could pass through unnoticed. And the ANBU would not darken the door. She'd pause at the shrine in the yard, and scatter water. She'd wish for his safety, and know that it lay well out of her hands.

A few hours, maybe only a day or two, that they would have together. Brief even by the uncertain lives of ninja.. and her house and it's secure lines of blood had taught her to nod her head to the warnings of sudden death, but secretly expect to live long and have her own family, her own husband who wouldn't turn away from her the way her father turned from her mother. Her own children who would not know the loneliness that she had. She really did like him, and maybe it would have been love.. she could picture loving him. She could even begin to imagine the feeling of his love in return, and it was so hard to put a time limit on that. Even if it was all there was, this time. And even if there was no time to be wasted with idle thoughts, she had to prepare herself to see him. They had to take action..

She had to decide. She wanted him, but she didn't just want his attention, or his warm hands, or whatever they could give one another of their bodies. Even if that would be easier, to just give themselves that simple, natural completion. She could do that.. she would not cry, she told herself sternly, and wiped away the hint of tears. She was a kunoichi. She had been taught to use her body in many ways. It was not just a gift to be given to her husband in the future, if she would ever have one.

She was only eighteen. She would have one. She would.

Nothing was ever truly over, or lost, not while her house still stood, and her family still lived.

And she had paced the entire house, run her fingers through all these thoughts and memories. She'd only touched upon them, distractedly worried and too shaken to face them clearly. Sasuke still hadn't appeared, so maybe he really was on the roof. And she was halfway up the final flight of stairs when Miya caught her arm.

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Ghosts with pinwheeling eyes. The first time, he startled, and realized only a moment later that it was his reflection caught in a mirror, hidden in the darkness. He didn't know the house well enough. The Hyuga liked to place these mirrors at the ends of halls, suggesting a whole other wing to the house, reflecting back behind the glass.

The second time, he felt the mirror with his fingertips, saw the shadow reflection of his own hand, and knew it was nothing.

But now he was upstairs, having found a long passageway full of paper walls that smelled just a bit older and dustier. Inside those rooms was stale air, no traces of recent use. The sharingan could not help him, but it reassured him. There was no enemy to conserve chakra for, he kept it in place.

And at the end of the passage was a long flight of stairs. Constructed strangely, twisted onto itself, as if made as an afterthought, an escape from the upper floor. And when he arrived, soft light parted out of the darkness. He saw rice paper walls glow like huge lanterns, each containing one tiny flame. He glimpsed the traces of red. He grit his teeth and dug his fingernails into the side of his neck.

No. It was just an empty house. Hinata was here, somewhere. He was sure he sensed her.

She had a lightweight presence. A silent snowfall. A held breath, nothing more then that, but he was certain he felt her near.

So, the third time, when he was certain he caught that flash of red, something more intense and piercing then the warm reds of the sunken candle flames...

...it had to be his imagination. Shadows leaping out him. His own heart overworking, pressing too much blood into his veins. He leaned against the cold outer wall, felt the storm vibrating though it.

There were footsteps up here, though. There were little feet. Soft, silent. There was that persistent hint of redness, just dancing outside of his field of vision. As if Itachi moved to stalk and strike for him- no, that wasn't it, he was just losing it, losing his fucking shit over nothing more then a fucking power outage, carrying on like a pathetic little child. He had to restrain himself from putting his fist through that glowing paper wall.

And the little feet continued. Moving in the darkness, all around. Whiskers at his ankles.

Cats. He exhaled, shakily.

He often wondered, anyway... what would have happened if he hadn't opened the wooden double doors to his parents' bedroom? Would Itachi have come upon him silently, chosen to just cut him down with everyone else? Sasuke imagined the wet blood on the edge of Itachi's blade, and shivered.. and wished that it could have been true. He would not be here now, if it had been. He wouldn't be all alone, he wouldn't be feeling like this.

He pictured Itachi sneaking into his bedroom, coming upon him turned over in bed, his face pushed into the pillow. Sleeping on his stomach, which he never did. But he couldn't handle the idea of meeting that wet blade with his throat, he wanted Itachi to hack through his spine first, kill him quickly.

And he would be just one more Uchiha ghost. He would have no burden. It would be better then this, then life in general..

And the cat feet moved, sensing another presence. Sasuke felt it too, his feet snapped into the ready position, bracing himself. He heard the heaviness of those feet, too heavy to be Hinata. Too sure, precise to be the old woman with her sideways hobble. No, they were heavy. Workboots. Itachi. Traces of red, fourth time, eyes coming out of the darkness, pinwheel red and it was not his imagination. A hall full of paper and oil and wood, tiny lit flames, and Sasuke would blast those walls down, he'd see them erupt in flames, seconds and heartbeats away, as his hands formed the seals, he drew in his breath, Katon-

Hands of iron on his mouth, prying apart his hands. Pinned to the wall, effortlessly. Itachi. He struggled- hands came out of the darkness. Slapped him across the face. Light coming. Dark eyes. The gleam of a forehead protector, and behind it young faces, women's fringed eyelashes casting spidery shadows against smooth cheeks.

"You snap out of it!" the old woman hissed. A crack of her hand across his face. Hard. Harder then she should be able to hit. "Stop it!"

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Miya caught her on the stairs. Hinata turned, and for a moment she didn't recognize the hardness of Miya's hand.

Then she saw the gleam of metal at her forehead. And Hinata relaxed from her tense, halted spring up the steps. But it was still confusing. The family retainers, the ones who stood guard personally over herself and Hanabi, they didn't show this part of themselves. She'd only seen it once before, on the night her mother died. She turned to face Miya, and said "But.. you only wear that-"

"To show loyalty." Miya said. She was rushed. Hinata saw Kimiko behind her, and the whisper of Momoe's feet down the hall.

She blinked, confused. "But, it's just a-"

"No." Miya said. She gently pulled Hinata down to the step she stood on. Then, slowly, step by step, down to the foot of the stairs.

"Go find the boy." Miya said, and Kimiko and Momoe slipped away. Hinata waited, frowning in consternation, wondering why, surely it couldn't be... but...

"The family will be returning tomorrow evening." Miya said. And Hinata knew.

"My great aunt?" she said finally, closing her lips on the slight gasp. It was coming, much of her family was old. "Or.. my grandfather?" There were many older relatives who could have passed. It could be any of them.. and Miya just looked up at her, the candlelight tracing the gleaming metal lines of the carved leaf. "I sent the letter with Kimiko. You haven't read it?"

Hinata remembered it, she had thought it was from the academy. "I... well, no.."

And Miya had no time for shyness or excuses, she was already pulling Hinata's jacket open. "Pull up your shirt." she ordered, and Hinata did hesitate, finally, lost as to what was happening.

"But.." she whispered.

"Read it in the morning." Miya said. She pressed Hinata to the wall, and Hinata was shocked enough, caught by surprise, her feet had just slipped back. And now Miya was forming seals over her. There was no time for Hinata to speak, the chakra flared and cut. And sealed...

Miya's hand pressed to the bare skin between her breasts. Hard against the bone. Something hot under it, branded deeply. Hinata couldn't speak, and Miya said sternly "You can't stay in this house. We're already sealing it. I need you to go to the hidden cottage in the east. Stay there, you'll be safe."

There was no time for argument. There was a death.. Hinata knew that, she remembered. They were sealing the house to protect the family from attacks... other clans who would hear of the loss, and seize this moment of weakness.

Miya zipped her up again and Hinata didn't open her jacket to look, not even after she'd run out into the storm, torn through the east garden, pushed through the snowy fur trees and had forced the lock. She leaned against the inside of the door, listened to her heart pound in her ears.

She didn't have to look. She knew what it was.

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It took a minute. The genjutsu was woven tight. All he could feel was strong hands on his wrists, the old woman's hand jammed against his mouth, his head pushed back hard into the wall.

The candles faded in. Not the tiny red ones, but the ones they carried, the old woman and her two older girls. The girls held him, their iron hands were sealed gloves, treated with chakra leeches. The old woman held her hand to his face long after the fire had died on his lips, and he hated it, but he was distracted, why the hell was she wearing the leaf? The forehead protector, and the girls did as well. He could imagine that the girls may have been ninjas, they were young enough. But the old woman... pressed and immobilized, impossibly so, he watched her. Her movements were different now.. completely different. The wrinkles seemed to have eased from her face. He watched her hands zip through a complex jutsu that he couldn't follow, he just didn't know enough yet, this was something that he'd never even seen Orochimaru do, and...

..finally, she took her hand from his mouth.

"Ready?" she said. Her voice, too, was iron. Focused. The candlelight gleamed in her eyes.

"You're a jounin." he finally mumbled, embarrassed to have been fooled so easily, caught in his own preconceptions. Genjutsu for her hobble, for her face.. all of it to disguise her true nature.

"I'm a Hyuga family retainer," she said brusquely. "Do you think Hinata's father would leave her unguarded? Now, calm down and stop fussing like a fool. What have you done to your hands?" She had his cut hand now, seized in her own tight fingers. The girls held their candle flames close. Sasuke snatched his hand away.

"I'm.. fine." he hissed. And then tried to make it seem less frantic. "Really. I'm fine." he added, awkwardly, trying to level his voice out.

She just arched one dubious eyebrow, her sharp eyes held him fast, even though the girls had released him. "Go seal the front doors." the old woman said to them, tilting her eyes briefly their way. And they melted away.

"You were under genjutsu." she said to him, and he had to stop himself from rolling his eyes, because was just so fucking damn obvious.

But the anger was brittle. The humiliation of this.. it couldn't shield him. There was a dangerous quiver in the back of his throat. He didn't trust himself to speak.. and, a few moments later, the old woman made him sit down on the tatami mats. She poured water from a stone pitcher set on the low tables at his feet. She made him drink, and he fought to keep his hands from shaking.

That recent, sharp, intense sense of horror, breathing down his neck... The body couldn't know any better then the mind, and the mind was fully convinced by the false realness of the illusion. Itachi was not there, but he may as well be, for the echoes of him which still crept around just outside those paper walls. The candles still burned, Sasuke could see their faint glow, transmuted through leaves of stretched paper.

He smelled alcohol before he could look up to watch her hands.

"Sake?" he muttered hopefully.

"Scotch." she said. "Looks like you had a pretty good fright. That fire jutsu would have taken the whole wing out. Burned it down in a flash." She poured shots, he saw the candlelight linger on the heavy rim of the shot glasses.

Even better. Getting drunk suddenly seemed like a decent idea. He watched her hands, which still hadn't returned to their decrepit illusion. Her fingers were achingly nimble. And soon the glass was in his hand. Her hand was warm on his shoulder.

"It won't happen again." she said. In a way that made him believe she knew what she was talking about.

"Hinata's fine." she said. "We're just sealing the house. She's been sent away. There's been a death in the family."

His own breath sounded too shaky to him, too close to a sob. He closed his throat down around it, held himself in check. It would be so easy to just shove her away, refuse this bit of comfort. Remember that he didn't like her, and he really didn't. He didn't. Easy... and the storm was just a subconscious wisp of white noise, now, the faint hiss of his own blood rushing through his veins, his heartbeat coming down from that dizzy peak. The cold air moved over the floor and nipped at his bare feet.

"Maybe now you want to tell me what's wrong." she said.

Her bony ribs pressed against him. He could feel the old muscle in her arm, taut and still strong, even if she was frail and short compared to him. He couldn't match that lifetime of skill. He couldn't believe he'd failed to see through it.. he couldn't believe the speed of her hands as she formed the jutsu to cut the illusion, tear it right out of him.

Her hands. Precise with that needle, warm on his shoulder. Stripping Orochimaru's fingers from his throat, wiping Itachi out of his mind, if only for one moment. Itachi being Orochimaru's trump card, his favorite illusion.

"I've raised seventeen children." the old woman said. "I've seen lots and lots of messed up kids. Especially in this house, with what goes on here..." she snorted. Her arm was tightly around him. The candles whispered all around them, soft voices of flame.

Silence. Waiting for him to push her away. Push away the helping hand that reached for him. Like he always did. So he could go back to Orochimaru, to pain and fear and recrimination. To Itachi, endlessly building bridges to Itachi. The logic coming apart in his hands, because he just wasn't twelve anymore. He couldn't lie to himself, lose himself in this anger, not with the same purity of intent. His hand weeping blood in his lap, eleven years of this now. Emptiness. Hatred. Itachi never coming close. Orochimaru coming too close now, breathing down Sasuke's neck. Coming to take everything he had, finally. To prove that Sasuke hadn't lost everything, not just yet. Not until now.

"I'm in trouble." he whispered. The glass tipped to the floor, heavy in his hand.

Her voice was rough and close in the semi-darkness, her throat wet with the alcohol.

"I'll bet you are." He didn't look up, but he felt her sharp eyes on him. "Good thing you've got a large and powerful family to help you out." she said.

He looked up at her, glaring angrily, wondering if that was some sort of disgusting joke.

But he was worn out from rage and fear and recrimination and sorrow. He drank the entire shot, felt it burn hard down his throat. Thought vaguely of breathing fire, katon in reverse. "My family is dead." he said, finally. His voice felt like a flat, dead weight.

And to his surprise, the old woman had nothing to say to that. She just stared through the walls, into the distant smudges of flame. She poured him another shot, and he drank that too. One long cool breath of fire. When he lowed the glass, his head was just starting to spin a little bit.

"Your ancestors are here." the old woman said.

His breathing sounded wet and ragged, even to himself. He closed his eyes. He felt the tears pricking, and bowed his head, his hair falling down.

"My family is dead." he said, again, whispering to try to keep his voice level.

He wasn't looking at her, he was too lost in himself to listen for her or monitor what she was doing. He heard her voice say "You read the book I sent to you?" And he put the pieces together, but it was all useless as always. Nothing was going to change. He'd seen those letters.

"Her father would never allow it." He swallowed hard. Tried to clear his throat. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Hmph. Well, luckily for you the Hyuga clan is currently under new management."

He didn't even know what she was talking about. It sounded like inter-clan political bullshit of some kind. He didn't care. He didn't fucking care. He told her so. "I don't care about that." he said. "I can't find Hinata."

"You couldn't find your own hand in front of your face, not with genjutsu like that." The old woman's voice was gruff. He reached for the bottle again. She moved it out of his reach.

"That's 80 proof. We'd have to carry you out of here."

Like he fucking cared.

He didn't want to go back to Orochimaru. Not when Orochimaru's hand was just wrapping tighter and tighter around his throat, and the walls were closing in.

Not that he had a choice. Nothing was going to save him, nothing could, Sasuke knew that. But he knew six years of hard, backbreaking effort, letting Orochimaru use him in every way. Gaining power, getting stronger, but none of it making any difference. Itachi was still no closer. Kakashi.. fucking Kakashi, asshole! Fuck Kakashi for being right. For not stopping him. For not trying to. For letting him fuck this up so badly...

"Easy." The old woman said sternly. Her hand tightened on his shoulder. "Breathe... no, no more scotch for you, you've had enough."She took the glass too, pulling it from his limp, apathetic bleeding hand, bloody fingerprints on the rim.

Not that there was any way back. Not that it mattered.

"Hinata is fine." the old women said. And then, close to his ear "It will never happen again, do you understand me? I will not watch it happen again."

He shuddered and tried to pull away, but she had him too tightly, her fingers pressed into points of chakra in his wrist. Then she pressed others, trying to pull heat back into him, stop him from shivering. "You'll catch your death," she muttered. "..hold still.." More jutsus, stripping the water from him. The candle flame moved, shoved aside by the currents of energy moving suddenly through the cooling air.

She gave him the key. She sent him with one of those servant girls, and Sasuke numbly watched as she cast a perfect suiton around them, the wind and ice drenching the water sphere as they walked across the wet snow.

The girl knelt and removed some sort of concealment jutsu, one that Sasuke had seen before, but not used like this. The heavy, snow-laden evergreens branches parted, and he followed her to the little paper tea cottage beyond. There was firelight in the windows.

And Hinata was there. He could feel her energy, just beyond the door.

He looked behind him. The girl had veiled, pulling herself into the storm. And now frozen rain hammered at his back. He turned back, lay one cold hand against the oak door. His other hand drifted to the latch. But it opened in front of him. He felt the slow backwash of heat, first. Then Hinata's soft, warm hands taking his. He blinked, and found her eyes. He'd missed her. He hadn't realized how much he missed her. Lost in all these old nightmares, most of them still in progress... but maybe if he could just forget, just for a minute.

"Come in.." she whispered, her hands curled around his. Pulling him into the heat, the warm darkness, the firelight.

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A/N: There were several grievous grammatical tense errors in the first draft that I (accidentally) shoved online. Those have been (hopefully mostly) corrected. But I always miss a few. I'll get them all eventually.

Random fact: while scribbling this chapter, I had the songs 'Disintegration' by The Cure and 'Do It Again' by Steely Dan stuck in my head. The first is more appropriate. This monstrosity of a chapter came out just like it- over-long, messy, visceral, slightly hysterical and completely impervious to pruning.

Thanks mucho to everyone for reading and sticking with me so far.

Oh, and I don't own Naruto. I always forget the disclaimers.