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.

15. Signatories

Hinata's family was her own responsibility. The gates were locked against Naruto and Sakura, even if she could call them. The seclusion would endure until she became clan leader, until her father was in the air, until she had the authority to open the locked doors again.

She was dreaming, abstractly, about the fallen phone wires and power lines in the frozen village. She wished she could call Sakura, but the death meant that there would be no contact with the outside world. There would be ceremonies and vows taken and her bloody fingerprints on scrolls and contracts. She would become the clan leader, and then surely something would change.

Her family would want to do something about Sasuke, he would be their first order of business.She could picture the pinched look of distaste on her great aunt's face, the disapproval of the council, the disbelief on Neji's face that she could ever be so rash. Unspoken, behind that, that she was foolish to even believe that this could be real, or that it could come true. Even to put her finger on what she wanted would make her feel silly, having romantic dreams while she should be consumed with the administrative leadership of her clan. She thought that her first act of headship would be to keep it from happening again. Because Sasuke was an adult now, and he could probably handle it. But she didn't want to stand by and watch it happen. She wished she could call for Sakura, and Sakura would bring Naruto, they could walk in the south gardens under the sun and the two of them could help her understand about standing up for herself. They did it so well, it was like watching a master perform a technique before learning it yourself.

But the situation was what it was. Nothing would change that. This was Sasuke's phrase, nothing can change it, she had fought the urge to try to talk him out of it before.

Sasuke told her to rest, so she did. She gathered strength that she needed, with three days worth of tears siphoning off her own storm centers. Inside those born in the village was a flame, and inside her was the makings of a star. But outside she was the same she always was. She was not religious in the way the monks and Buddhist priests were, but in her own way she prayed for strength to come. The change would happen, soon.

She expected to dream of fire and it's fanning of destruction, rebirth, purification, the flame seal that would be placed in pitch ink on her scroll of legal instatement.

But instead she dreamed endlessly of water. It was up to her knees, the water mains had burst. All through the house, servants and retainers and family members all worked with jutsus but the water was bottomless and could not be bailed. She thought of a sinking ship, springing holes and taking on water. She saw the sharp focus of the dream, the detailed rough scabs of rust on the bucket pulling on her arm, Neji was beside her and the lamplight gave his hair a gloss of burgundy. She was uneasy, but aware that she was dreaming.

She woke and she expected it to be night. Chilly light pushed on her eyelids. She felt the ragged electrical edge of Sasuke's chakra, but he was not nearby. She slid back into sleep.

This time, like into an ocean. She flashed upon older memories of learning how to hold her breath and dive far under the surface. In the space between her sixteenth birthday and the end of the summer, she had trained specially to dampen her body's warmth and it's metabolic rate. She could imagine that she was a turtle sleeping under gentle currents on the riverbed. Down in the depths she could feel the darkness, and the crushing pressure that squeezed her lungs into little balls of crumpled blood vessels; the red leaves on the Japanese maple in her rock garden would shrivel to their broken forked spines this way, and she could picture it easily. Her vision would darken as the seventh minute was passed. Her body could be trained to go without oxygen. Her brain could not, so slowly the dim waters around her would start to spin. After ten minutes she would scissorkick herself to the surface, sharp and alert under a dripping cap of icy water. She would signal to her sensei on the boat to prove that she was awake and of sound mind. She would have to perform the exact sequence of hand motions, state the date and time, hold up numbers of fingers to show she was clearheaded. She had done it many times before.

The pearl divers on the coast trained to hold their breath for eight minutes, so she reached for ten. They dove to fifty meters, so she stretched for an even hundred. She needed to prove it to herself. That she could do this. Only the metaphor of change, her chosen way of rationalizing it's danger. But a way to bargain courage out of herself. She wanted to prove that she would do anything to change herself and no limit would stand in her way.

The underwater darkness was there for a second, a snatch of sensory memory. Cold and water pressure. She had learned to dream lucidly, but never managed to stand in the center of her dreams and recognize herself and her shadow, prove her alert awareness. But now she was too far under and she could only remember that there was something coming, far above on a snowy surface. Something was coming and anxiety became ripples. She saw the undersides of snowflakes feather to the water's clear skin, and then their splintered scatter. She couldn't remember the name of what bothered her but her subconscious understood well enough to reach for the fire, her fears of the funeral. It woke her up and Sasuke was still not with her. The light in her bedroom was as grayed and dampened as sound underwater.

She remembered because she had seen it before. The clan leader would put a torch to the coffin. The jutsus would be cast so that the smoke would rise in a white cloudy column, the pops of burning bone would be muffled, the mourners would only smell sweet grass and pitch, rather than kerosene and scorched meat. This was how a Hyuga ended their life. Their mistakes were erased. They became perfected in the fire. It was no accident that the hidden symbol of the family, behind the sundisk manji, was a tongue of flame.

Still, as a young child at her mother's coffin, she had not understood death. Her father pushed her firmly behind him, and heat from the torch in his other hand spilled and pressed hotly on the crown of her head. She ducked under his long sleeves. It was the clan leader's duty. Soon the clan leader would be her.

She thought that maybe she'd ask the council to blindfold her. Not that this would stop her byakugan, but it would keep her from seeing her father's face. She wondered if she could look at him and do it. And then, she had a strange, sudden vision of herself leaning over the pyre, ripping the cloth from his face and trying to see into him, pry open his eyes, get him to look at her, see her, notice her, now that he was dead and still- caught in time, unable to push her away or stop her.

She was not fully awake. It was the crack of the window hinges that woke her. She sat up and Sasuke was climbing back into the room, his hair hanging in his face. He looked up at her, shaking his hair curtly away from his face.

"They're home." he said, and winced.

"Oh.." she murmured. And then they'd kicked in the door.

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

Standing on the roof had been his first mistake. He let them see him. They picked him out instantly and then they were upon him.

They tore down the paper doors and others were behind them. He saw only fingers, hard hands, flashes of motion. In the past, maybe he would have assumed that the waves of retainers and almost-samurai and guards and the glut of the Hyuga family would be no problem for him to take down single-handed. But that was his younger self thinking. Arrogance. For all he castigated Orochimaru for his arrogance... and he'd stood and looked down on them curiously, let their brightly colored ornamental cloaks and strange foreign weapons take his attention and he'd lost the handful of seconds he had.

So the fight was over before it began. The room was already flooded with their white Hyuga chakra and the white heat in their hands. Hinata was only half-awake and through the thicket of armored hands and raised voices he saw a glimpse of her pale face, eyes wide and startled. He heard her struggle to raise her voice over theirs. "Stop! Wait!" She couldn't cut through the noise, she couldn't seem to catch their attention.

He knew this anyway, he told himself. He knew that he couldn't take them all on at once. He knew he'd lose the fight. He went down under their jabbing hands and didn't bother. Why make it worse? He was going to ache from this anyway, they drove iron fingers into nerve clusters, it would hurt more if he struggled. The key was to relax, not knot up his muscles against pain. The disadvantage was that he had time to think, and realize that no, he was not invincible, he was not the genius Itachi was; and frankly even Itachi would probably think twice before taking on the entire retainer guard of the Hyuga family. This bunch were cranky and tired from the road, they had no time to ask questions before the gentle fists came out. They forced him to his knees and he let them paw at him until they were satisfied that he had no weapons.

Hinata was screaming but he couldn't see her anymore. Thread ripped close by his ear, the shirt he wore split down his back and there were more hands, he was officially tired of being grabbed at, but the fight was over anyway, hands pinned his arms back, he had no leverage, his limbs were numb and mostly he felt like a pincushion, leaking tiny streamers of charka. He saw the flank of his own forearm as his head was bent back so they could jab at his neck. The tiny tracklines of pin-bruises snaked up and down into the inside of his elbow. Like tiny insect bites. And then his attention was stolen sharply by their hands on his wounded shoulder. He bit down on the scream and somewhere, Hinata was screaming for them both. The retainers ignored her. They pressed him to the floor, and a few of them sat on him for good measure. He had securely lost. Fight completed. He felt surprising nothingness. Maybe they'd shut off his rage with his chakra.

Hinata stopped screaming when another voice came out of the hall.

The shock of the fingerstrikes had clouded all his senses, he couldn't see anything and the tatami mats were pressing into his cheek. A geta edge wet with melting snow was jammed into the back of his neck. His shoulder throbbed, deep and resonant as the steel temple bells. He had leisure to think about how he should have considered that the returning clan guard would have no reason to expect to see a missing nin. He could assume that he was recognizable, probably in the bingo book. It was strange to think of himself as a missing-nin directly, he preferred to edit his awareness of himself and his situation a bit more carefully than that. Clearly Hinata was not quite yet in command of this group of retainers. Her voice was nearby, but distorted by the waves of shock. He thought that maybe he should try not to black out. Then he thought that it wouldn't matter anyway, nothing really mattered. He could hear her, echoey with the shock, pleading now, tears in her voice as she said please, please! Please let him go! The retainers didn't listen. Neither did the newcomer, a woman with a commanding voice. The rage was nowhere. He thought that adrenaline must have blotted it out.

Amazing how fast it was, though. The rage was usually instantaneous, riding behind his reflexes, but it lagged minutes behind. Useless to blame Hinata, who was busy arguing herself hoarse trying to get this pile of retainers off him. Useless to blame them, they were just doing what any clan guard would do when they saw a criminal appear in the house.

It came later, when he he heard Hinata talking in the hall with that someone else, someone who arrived and parted the retainers, silencing Hinata with a word. "Quiet." Sound magic showed him it's heavy after echo. He heard the sound of the slap, and saw the angry red welt on Hinata's cheek as they pulled him to his feet. Her eyes connected with his and her lips formed I'm sorry. He saw the tall Hyuga woman beside her mostly as a flying hand. The crack of it on flesh like a clap of thunder. Hinata turned her face and hunched her shoulders as the woman raised her hand and he knew that instinctive reaction, he knew what it meant.

"Let's go." a retainer growled in his ear. They shoved him out of the room and didn't give a damn if he was angry or not.

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

Hinata's cheek stung. "She's hysterical." her great aunt had said. Her aunt had stood over her as she fell to the tatami mats of her room. Her great aunt's eyes had glared down at her from a great, snowy height. Main house servants had dressed her and pinned up her hair. They were her father's servants, or had been. She was entirely awake now.

She sat on different tatami mats, later in the same day, long petals of pressed linen trailing out around her like a discarded flower. The sun imposed her presence onto the mats behind her, it was a blazingly sunny day. The milky layers of paper screens on the shady side of the house had fooled her. Outside, icicles melted off ragged pine trees. Water dripped off the roof. The council had yet to acknowledge her. She sat before them, in a square pool of sun.

Numbness was normal now. The past few days were carved out with a bright margin in her mind. This was another life, and it was fitting, she thought. The death would demand a catastrophic change. She stared at her hands, folded in her lap and avoided the intermittent hail of all forty eight white eyes. Sometimes she would look at the documents in front of her instead. The paper was bleached to chemical white, waiting for the press of her bloody finger.

They had come through the walls, tearing through the door. Her room now was full of workmen hastily pulled from the gardening and outdoors staff. They were putting in a new door, repairing the hole kicked in her wall. She had left through a maw of ripped paper and splintered wood. But that would all be right again, when she returned. The entire council was in attendance. She had to be strong and stick to business. She would chose the moment to ask about Sasuke.

She had never seen all twenty four of them in the same room. She had never been invited to these secret meetings. Her father had sat in her place, facing them, and he had answered to them. Her father would have been at the crosshairs of so much piercing scrutiny, like the daylight that spilled behind them. It was hard for her to see their faces, she mostly saw the vivid coronas of fire that the sun made of their receding hair. And she heard their voices, she could guess who was looking her over even if she couldn't see their eyes. She wondered if her father had learned to deal with a chorus of shadows with fiery halos. He had to answer for his failure of a child, after all. He would have more to fear then her. Justify your bloodline, they would have said. Maybe they forced his hand. They pressured him, maybe, and maybe he didn't actually mean it. Not all of it. He chose her in the end. She had accepted a vague screen of contempt in place of her father or knowing him. But she had thought of her father as omnipotent, first. He had sat here and endured their questions for close to twenty years.

His own mother had ruled before him, and now her sister sat in the center of the shadow line. Sun gleamed off polished pins in her hair. She was talking to Hinata's grandfather, the father of her mother, and both of them were now the power center of this house.

They were discussing her. They did not address her, though she thought she felt the passing heat of their eyes. She looked down at the will scroll unfurled in front of her. There was her name, in her father's handwriting. Proving it was true. The council had reviewed all these documents before they even bothered to call her to the session. She sat across the wide polar expanse of tatami and felt the silence that hushed around them, a sacred circle of her family closed around her now. They would maybe never find her worthy, but they would protect her.

"You belong to us now." a councilor said. She didn't know him, he was a fifth uncle from another branch of the family. He meant that she would be their instrument, she would do their will. She was anointed by her father's hand, but they still had expectations of her. To change the house and move this regiment of elders would be a tightrope walk. She could plunge over either side.

But she closed her eyes and through the haze inside her now, she let herself think about what this meant. To be the clan heir of the Hyuga clan was to be finally recognized by your father, even if he had waited until his fatal heart attack to do it. It meant that the blood and the flame of the clan lived in you, so you were guided by all of the clan leaders that had come before you. You were their instrument too, and you would be moved by them, they would work through you. Your judgment was therefore somehow divine, it was animated by knowledge that had transcended all human limitation. The Hyuga were only human and imperfect so long as they walked the earth. At death, their flesh burned away. The clan cremated them only as an afterthought, a reminder to those still alive of their true nature. It was so dizzying, the sheer power of her clan.

Enough to forgot the blood on it's hands, the slow rot of a thousand cuts. It hadn't been just Sasuke, the council had written off Neji. They had written off her. They had authorized all kinds of strategic killing. Hinata sighed and thought that yes, they were ninjas. They killed, but they did so with a shadow that lived in the wake of the samurai's bushido; they simply did what the samurai could not do. They made bushido possible, and there was honor in that. She bowed her head and closed her eyes against the pierce of the sun.

They would open her finger and then it would be true.

In the meantime, they talked about other things, as if either her instatement wasn't important or it was a given and therefore not worth discussing. If the decision had been made, if she should be reading their unspoken cues, she couldn't tell. Her father would have had to learn this way as well. His own mother had died without warning. He might have sat here on a morning like this, the house full of foggy insinuations and whispers and death spirits flying all around him. He might have felt the way she did.

In the meantime, she had to obey. The strange euphoria was like a steel flame in muddy waters. But to even smile would seem wrong to the council, her father's choice had put her in an invisible spotlight. Sasuke wouldn't have understood this, he would have asked if the council could veto her. And no, they could not. Not without calling her father's judgment into question, not without claiming that the spirits that moved through her father were wrong, that they could be superseded by councilors still bound by human minds and human limitations. Sasuke would have crossed his arms. He would have wanted to know what the problem was then.

The problem was that she was a problem, she wasn't good enough for these people, she couldn't possibly live up to their expectations, she might be good enough now, she might be able to pretend for a while but what if-

Panic was something she had to lock up as well.

She thought she must have changed overnight after all, if she could sit here and be watched by all of them, feel afire with panic and excitement and guilt and horror and anxiety, and have none of it show on her face.

But her insides were disconnected now, anyway. A bright line between her face and her thoughts. It was like the technique she used to separate her conscious mind from a fresh injury.

The council said that they had put Sasuke away for safekeeping. They meant that the one to be kept safe was her. No, she could not see him. "Isn't that the point?" a councilor said. The question was rhetorical. Hinata understood. She nodded. Was it wrong or right? She couldn't tell.

The council talked about Sasuke, they said the things she knew they'd say- his bloodline and his family, the Kyuubi, the troubled history, the usual snide Hyuga commentary on Uchiha decision-making and Uchiha policies. The line to the sun was broken with them.

She bowed her head, she held the idea of change in her head like a Zen koan, a concept that you couldn't get your thoughts around all at once. It had to be circled. She conjured Shino, his words and his warning. She couldn't take herself seriously, but she could believe him. He said that change would be unknowable, it would know no rules of scale or obey any anticipation of time. It would happen in margins between her worries and her missions and the mess her failure had made of her life. It could be slow or swiftly violent, she could never see it coming, it would catch her by surprise either way.

The council had moved on, as if nothing had happened. They were going to wait and hold on to Sasuke until after the funeral. Her family did not feel that the incidental dramas of a runaway Uchiha orphan should divert the course of house business. She nodded. Her face felt frozen from the heavy formal makeup. "Lets get on with it." her great aunt said brusquely. The sun had traveled. Sasuke was locked up somewhere. If they'd hurt him then she would have no way of knowing. Council attendants sorted the paperwork. The sting of a kunai tip and her fingerprint went into the printed record.

She stared at it, wet and small on a field of white, red in a forest of black ink. She held her breath. Her finger seeped blood onto the fine watered silk of her sleeve. The council had more business for her. She was the clan leader, just like that.

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

They put five guards on him. Two that announced themselves to him and three that did not. There may have been others, moving under hiding jutsus too esoteric for him to see through or just keeping watch from well out of range.

But he had no intention of resisting, so it just didn't matter. They put him in a room far across the house. He was too dizzy from the fingers of the gentle fist to watch which nondescript woodpaper corridor he was dragged down in turn. They had chakra leeches on him for a while but he recovered from the vertigo and realized that he'd hallucinated that, they'd just blocked his chakra. He couldn't open his eyes for a long time, but he felt the little strike marks. He was dotted up and down with them, like he'd be attacked by a surgical strike of wasp stings.

The five guards were about as interested in him as they were in Hinata. The three hidden ones took turns paying attention to him, but even their chakra emanation started to dull after a few minutes. He was being smart enough to be uninteresting, and the two that stood outside the door played cards and talked about idle village events. He noted it for a while out of sheer habit, until he could sit up again. But otherwise, he didn't care. Useless details. His injured arm was full of hot pins and needles, it was like a sleeping limb that never fucking woke up. Excruciating, so he found a way to prop it in his lap that only made him flinch for a moment.

Sleeping was out, not that he was tired. Adrenaline sat in puddles, nowhere to go. He could go through the door, he could bet on taking out one guard from surprise, getting the other from luck, running away to escape the other three when they came down on his head, but what was the point? There was nothing he could do but wait. He sat on the futon. He thought he could meditate. He could try to. But he managed to brood and feel sorry for himself more than anything else.

If his clan were still alive, manhandling him this way would be an act of war.

Of course, his clan was all dead. That was exactly the point.

There was no one asking after him, no one to notice he was gone, no one to come down on their heads, crack the whip the way his father used to, rally the forces of the Uchiha clan, be a real part of this village, a pillar, not just... Not what he was. Traitor and runaway, but the words were losing their sting, and he needed to know how much he'd lost, he thought. To grasp the scale of the killings was nothing, he could tally the dead as a small angry child. But to really understand the loss of the clan, it's ideal? It was something built so carefully, destroyed by Itachi in half a day. Less then that. Burnt to ashes.

So the Hyuga clan did whatever it liked, and was probably manhandling Hinata too, one way or another. Her family carried on with ridiculous honorifics, Hinata-sama like was the empress or a goddess. And the way they carried on with their self mythologies, they believed it. They bowed and they dressed her up, and underneath it all they despised her. He thought the Uchiha clan would have just done what they'd done to him- ignored her. The Uchiha clan at least knew how to get to the fucking point. The Hyuga were going to celebrate themselves for a solid week now that their clan leader had dropped dead. Sasuke had to be around to witness this. He rubbed his temples with the arm that hurt the least and considered pestering the guards for aspirin. Getting up felt like it would involve too much pain. They had learned about it at the academy, but no one ever mentioned how much the goddamn gentle fist hurt.

His body was useless, so he tried to think.

So the Hyuga clan didn't like him? Fine, he didn't like them either. He could probably take out the lock. But where would he go? He was right where he had to be. He could waste time. He could burn his energy up in rage. He could panic or he could face it.

He was changing his priorities. Nothing more than that, Itachi would still end up dead no matter how he got there, dead was dead. Sasuke knew all about that. To change his focus to his secondary goal would make Itachi's death even more necessary.

But it was happening too fast. He'd just met her. But it wasn't as if it was a marriage proposal, it was just reparation to her. She'd make it impersonal if that was what he needed from her. She was trying to make it so that he could get what he needed without having to be friendly with her at all, and he understood what she was trying to prove. It was a struggle to be worthy of it, but the die was cast. He couldn't have made any other decision then this. Go back to Otokagure? He thought he might actually not hate himself that much, for a change. He thought that he might almost have had enough of hate. She offered a way out and when he had his bearings, the rebirth of the clan might become possible.

It was tempting to think more about that beginning than this end, anyway, He was locked up far away from the library, but there on the small wooden bureau was that same old history book. Hyuga Tetsuya's writing, preserved over almost three hundred years.

So many others said that he was just a damaged Hyuga, a damaged byakugan, his ideas must have begun with adversity- and the shadow of a idea, just like this. Hyuga Tetsuya waited and divided the assets of the clan. And somewhere on that road, in the midst of his journal-writing, he chose a new name for himself. And for all his descendents. Sasuke did not consider himself a sentimental person, but it was something to see it written for the very first time, Uchiha, Hyuga Tetsuya's clean precision brushwork.

Because if Itachi had been born to destroy the clan, Sasuke would have to be nature's answer to that, the one who would close that circle and put the clan back together. If he couldn't be a genius like Itachi, a swordsman like Itachi, a ninja good enough for his father like Itachi, worthy of notice by Itachi, if he could never win Itachi's love and approval, then all there was left for him to do was be what he was. He could put things together. He could sustain incredible long slogs of effort. He could work in the dark and the cold and with no encouragement, fed only by the fires he lit in his own mind. If genius was Itachi's gift, then this was his.

Because the horrors he'd seen didn't have to change his loyalty. He had always believed. Something had changed Itachi, pulled him from that path. But maybe Sasuke could be the one who would not change, who would do this too, no matter what, no matter what Itachi did.

So he collapsed back on the tatami mats and stared at the diamond pattern of wood slats in the ceiling.

The situation with Orochimaru was well past the point of diminishing returns. Killing Orochimaru would also be a lost cause. A waste of energy. You didn't want to feed the snake, he just thrived on it. What had Sasuke's father said about this sort of situation? You both get dirty and the pig enjoys it. Hiding might be his best bet. Hiding wasn't that much of a shame for a ninja. Orochimaru could deal with the Hokage, Orochimaru could deal with Naruto if he wanted Sasuke back. Let Orochimaru have his ears yelled off for a change.

Orochimaru had already played through the illusion of his death once, anyway. Did Sasuke really want a reprise of that? The Leaf had been on his tail and Itachi had killed his three companions. The Leaf crashed in and Naruto made it worse. Itachi turned Sasuke's own sword on him- like it was nothing, like he was just sipping tea calmly, Itachi didn't even change expression. The Four hauled him back. Orochimaru turned out to be suspiciously alive, jeering that Sasuke hadn't even noticed, hadn't even suspected.

The truth was Sasuke had suspected, he'd felt a slow drip of doubt finally when he was weeks afield. He wondered why it had gone so well, exactly as he'd have wished in his worst nature, not in the swordwork or the fight, but the sharingan's other space. Too much as he'd have wanted, taking Orochimaru's prisons and his people, breaking his stranglehold over the village. And too unfamiliar anyway, building a team when he'd never wanted a team before, when these tactic weren't even his own, when Orochimaru was moving through him like a black snake in inky waters. Orochimaru ranted and raved about disobedience and Sasuke's insurrection in running out at the point of body transfer. But soon he tired of that, he put down his bamboo whip, he cut Sasuke down from his shackles, he smirked toothily and mentioned that- actually, Sasuke-kun- it had all be a big, splendid game!

I sensed that you wanted to kill me, Sasuke-kun. Orochimaru said sweetly. He was decked out in full geisha costume, his body completely transformed to that of a slender and elegantly tall woman. The irony was that his limbs still had their full strength, he could crack the whip hard enough to split flesh deep into the muscle. He laughed with a geisha's demure giggle. Aren't you surprised? Ah, the look on your face... Kabuto came to suture Sasuke's back closed. Orochimaru giggled to himself and reapplied his makeup. Orochimaru's usual coterie of bloodsuckers swarmed around, fawning over their master. Sasuke watched, closed his eyes, thought damply about his life, what he'd wanted. What it had come to.

So Sasuke should have left Orochimaru then. He should have backed out by the end of the first year, when Orochimaru finally got down to business, you could say, and his sweet mask came off. So did the gloves, so did his pants, so did everything else. He should have never allowed this, he should have hated himself less. He should never have gone in the first place.

But he had no way out and no energy or time, no space in his own head,. The swordcuts in his wrists weighed on him for half the spring and by then Orochimaru had him again fully. His escape routes were all cut off, Orochimaru had changed reality around him, locked the door behind him. As the summer after his eighteenth birthday turned into an icy rainy fall, Orochimaru seemed to stand back and smirk at him from a distance. Sasuke looked up at him, across the polished space of the dojo floor, and thought that Orochimaru was different, his tactics had shifted. But what kind of games he was playing then were far beyond Sasuke's understanding, he never had much taste for all this Byzantine intrigue anyway. He did what he always had done when he was depressed- he worked harder and finally did almost nothing but work. He felt like he was training for nothing, but there was no reason for anything, anyway. The universe was merely cruel and arbitrary. The world turned grey. Itachi's trails went cold. Somewhere in that he lost track of Orochimaru and forgot to keep watch. Or maybe, he just no longer cared. Maybe it was in the depth of that winter that Orochimaru hatched this plot.

And maybe Orochimaru would come all the way to Konoha to get him, but that didn't seem much like Orochimaru's style.

Better to have Sasuke come to him. Or maybe, better yet to have Sasuke glimpse some little tempting edge of a happier life, and then snatch it away from him.

Or maybe, Sasuke thought, this was all genjutsu. Maybe he was still on that dojo floor, minutes away from waking to the agony of his broken arm and a concussion.

He didn't know what Orochimaru's game could be, but he never understood Orochimaru's games. That was the fun of it for Orochimaru. Maybe Orochimaru's new game was to use the depression, kill Sasuke's will to live, so that he just knelt at Orochimaru's feet and begged for some semblance of a honorable death. The seppuku cut may have been significant, Orochimaru loved the ruse of a hidden clue. He loved to gloat his superiority over his prey's stupidity, their lack of focus, in not seeing or understanding in time, getting themselves caught.

And now that Sasuke thought about it, Orochimaru had another game. He said he wanted the sharingan and he indulged Sasuke's ingrained faith in his own clan. Sasuke had grown up in it's shadow, after all. He believed because he'd been taught to believe. The Uchiha clan of Konoha were noble, they were true aristocracy. Orochimaru nodded and seemed to agree. And then, with deftness, Orochimaru had shown him what real aristocratic families were, what the royal family was really like, and that the mercenary ninjas who lived in shabby little villages and anaesthetized themselves with fantasies of nobility...

...were really just the throwaway contracted servants of the real power players. Even the Hyuga, with all their money and all their self-importance, they were ninjas too. Their sacred clan head could be bought and used as a tool. Their entire house, the entire village, all of it lived by the whim of the feudal lord of the Fire Country, and of the shogun above him. Your little clan, Orochimaru said with controlled glee, is not even wealthy enough to join the merchant class.

And it was true. There was a reason ninjas secreted themselves away in hidden villages. There was a reason they begged the favor of the shogun and the daimyos. There was a reason the Hokage invited the daimyo to the chuunin competition and bowed at the man's feet.

So maybe the Hyuga were significant, but Orochimaru couldn't have planned for Hinata to find him, that was far too random. Would Orochimaru have watched her, learned her habits, sent Sasuke tearing into her path, all his puppet strings torn but still live and connected to Orochimaru's hands? No, that was too much work for Orochimaru. And- it would be boring. Orochimaru would find Hinata boring, the Hyuga clan would put him to sleep. You had to remember what Orochimaru really wanted. You had to forget the rules of logical planning, you had to understand how Orochimaru thought.

Maybe to put Sasuke back in enemy hands, then. His worst enemies in the world, the ones who could change his heart and shake his absolute determination. He'd had to run from Naruto, from the things that Naruto said that were the truth and were too painful and too impossible to face. He couldn't be anything other than an agent of vengeance, he couldn't imagine his life any other way. He could do that or he could carve his own guts open, bleed to death and let his ancestors berate him for never putting it right.

And now it was the same. He felt down his side, found the little red line of pain in his side. He could break the window, use a shard of glass. Open the seppuku cut and do it right this time.

He could do that, or he could run.

Maybe he would have run anyway, even if Orochimaru hadn't cooked up this latest game. Flight over forests and frozen rivers to Konoha's outlying territory. That seppuku cut in his side. A little taste of his old village and his old companions again- and this time Sasuke would be injured and unable to run from them. He'd have to stay, and he'd have to think, and he'd have to live with the searing guilt of it all- but maybe Orochimaru hadn't bet on him going through with it.

Orochimaru might have planned on Sakura and Naruto- of course, they would hear of Sasuke's return, they would descend within the damn hour! Sasuke would have no peace. Maybe Orochimaru wanted to force him to be cruel to both of them, rub his nose in it later.

Or maybe Orochimaru was simply tired of him.

Sasuke was tired of this. He needed a way out. It wasn't just Hinata, she was a random chance. He liked her- fine, he did. It might be just hormones and rushing blood and infatuation- fine. They'd work that out. He needed to be squared by the ANBU. After the ANBU ripped Orochimaru's serpent coils out of him, washed out Orochimaru's toxic seal, stitched him back up again- then he'd know what was what. He needed to get to know Hinata slowly, without her family shrieking in one ear and Orochimaru hissing in the other.

She worried, but it was just her family, messing with her.

Her idiot family was wrong. It wasn't the sex, wasn't the cheap fucks or his stupid reputation, wasn't the dubious 'pleasure' of exploiting a kind and gentle girl, one who was only trying to help him. It wasn't all the things her idiot family and her idiot cousin said about him.

Sure, he loved being inside her, but so what? Infatuation. And harmless, beside. He'd love to have her inside him, for that matter, if that were possible. The way Naruto's sannin-sensei carried on, it probably was. Everything was. They could do all that later. There were things she had, her house and her respectability, her approval and the way she made the world seem manageable again. He wanted them.

Not more than revenge, no, but revenge wasn't exactly something he wanted. It was something that was necessary. His mistake had been going after Itachi without the weight of the clan behind him. So what if it would be the Hyuga clan at first? The Hyuga had become the Uchiha. So what if Itachi sneered at that, Sasuke would see it through. That was what he did. Revenge would be made into a planned and supplied operation, he would think more like Uchiha Tetsuya and less like Uchiha fucking Madara.

For a change.

Maybe he needed the voice of ancient authority to condemn Itachi, Uchiha Tetsuya's words in his journals, his plans and his recorded progress of founding the clan. Indicting and condemning Itachi by implication, because how Itachi have any moral authority, when he had trespassed against the will of the clan founder?

So maybe it really was different this time, Sasuke thought. The sun was slanting low in the sky. Hinata would have to be released by her family soon, they couldn't keep her all night. She would come to see him then. They would work something out. The ANBU were not insurmountable. He had allowed himself to commit all these dangerous acts of closeness and actual genuine human emotion. The world hadn't come to an end. He closed his eyes and slept.

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

It was as she expected. They didn't approve, they didn't understand. They didn't want to understand. The clan demanded her explanations for her actions, and she recited them. The council made their ruling. She was clan leader. But there was nothing she could do.

She had to keep herself entirely in check. She knew that they were waiting for her to betray her own bloodline, cry and scream and argue, insist on her heart when she had to be a hard-headed instrument of her clan's will. Her father had to be put to rest. Her house had to be put in order. She wanted to see Sasuke and she thought that she would demand that he be put in comfortable surroundings. She asked and the council said that he was fine, he was just a little upset right now. They hadn't hurt him.

"It's not right." she whispered. But she couldn't find the room in the rules, the clan laws, the ceremonies of perfectly inscribed sequences of words and movements to interrupt and assert her own will. Her own little flame. There was simply no time.

She wanted to see him but they had their plans for her, ceremonies and documents that had to be signed. She had to be present and give her sincere attention, because now it was her life's purpose, it was something that should be her top priority. She couldn't just leave Sasuke, but the council heard her request and her fifth uncle shook his head, her great aunt said "Your mind should be on the clan, not this missing nin. " Her great aunt told her she should know that. She was taken away and there was a flurry of activity, all the travelers were back. She was taken from the council to the welcome meal and then there were meetings with advisors and she wanted...

But it was a tide and she couldn't swim against it.

As the unsmiling regiment of servants undressed her from one ceremony and for another, she thought about her father's heart seizing, like jammed clock wheels. She had seen it happen once, the elders of her family and the aunts and uncles, the cousins and the entire house moving as one to summon their ninja healers, to put her father back on his feet. The whisper rippled through the house, who would lead the clan if.. and she fled the meeting room. She went out to her little rock garden and tried to get out of that crowded atmosphere. It had been early winter, near new years day. She knew what a heart attack felt like, she had been through one herself.

When Neji put his hand through her chest. His aim, completely accurate, and he aimed to kill.

But to put those two pieces together, to try to find out where her father's perfect health had somehow sprung leaks, where her grandmother's had before him, why the clan heads didn't seem to make it far past forty, and even how common it was for women to die in childbirth anymore, with those same ninja healers, with all their magic and medicine, in this day and age?

She knew, she thought. She'd tucked the idea away and decided to not look at it.

And now, she covered it with another image. She could assemble the scene. Maybe her father had sank to his knees again, his hands pressed to his chest, grasping at flesh and sinew fruitlessly, his fingers seeming to go numb at the last moment. She had been sitting close to him the first time, she saw the spasms that ricocheted up and down his strong forearms. Maybe it had been just as sudden, this time. Maybe there was no one around him. Maybe it was only a few other members of the family. Maybe he sensed that the end was near, and like a forest predator, went away by himself to die all alone, far away. She consider it, weighed it, decided that she could believe it.

Justify your bloodline, they would have said to him. And he would have had to deal with what his child, his blood had made of the ancestral line. Maybe the hand that cast her out wasn't entirely his. She had never thought about the clan's web of power, it's coaxial lines of influence tugging on her father's sleeve, pulling him in all directions. She had never been told how it was, she was not ready. She was too young. And her future was maybe in doubt, until her father could make the mistake of her mother right again. Divert responsibility. Put it on the other parent, and then wipe it away. She thought that she'd known, and she still didn't want to see. There was no point in seeing. Selecting what not to see was a key Hyuga survival skill. She had to live in this house.

So she sat in her private little bath and stared at the high tower of smoke. The winds whipped it up so far that the dark fragments of flying ash turned silvery against the clouds. All things could be burned away in the fire. They were burning sagebrush to purify the house before the funeral and the cremation. The fires would burn well into the night. She'd sleep under the columns of smoke. She'd get up tomorrow and she would be the clan leader of the house of Hyuga. She would wake up in the house as it's leader, for the first time. She had looked at herself in the mirror and tried to see the change. "Please leave me." she had whispered to the servants. She had undressed alone. She had wanted to go to Sasuke, but not like this, tattered and exhausted, the red stain feathering from the edge of her cracked lips.

She could imagine the things her father had done, things that she didn't even know about yet. She would have to stand in his place now- and if it had been her choice, and she had to die or Neji did? If to refuse the Rain village would mean war? Now she'd carry around heavy things like that, nothing less than an entire clan, an entire village.

And maybe someday, when her own child put the torch to her body, she would have done terrible things too. And she would need to be purified in the fire. She was his flesh and blood. She would have to do things- hard and terrible choices. That was what a clan head did. She would have to, because the only difference between her and her father now was time.

She wanted to go see Sasuke, but the new, unsmiling servants were back. There was more paperwork. There were more demands on her time. Her attention was dwindling and she was interrupted the moment she left her room. She was taken to a fitting for more special clothes. a new kimono for the cremation. Cloudy grey flames embroidered along the hem like the torch she would carry. She held her arms out from her sides obediently and was so tired she could barely keep them up.

After that, the small temple at the back of the house. The coffin was there. It was surrounded with points of flame. She pictured it, anticipating what she would have to see. The house yawned in front of her. She recalled her dream of water. The split mains. The flood had come through the temple floor.

She had to go. The servants flanked her, and she had no choice.

Before they burnt him, she was to go and sit at the altar and pray. She was to do that at evening, when the sun began to set. In the bath, she had known this was coming. She made up a secret plan that she would steal away from the house at sundown. She would evade the new servants, and go to the temple at the river's mouth. She would ask the priests to help her. She would burn mugwort and meditate. She would perform the old sacrifices to the kami of her family, and ask them for a vision.

She would not tell Sasuke about this, even if she could see him to do so. She knew his courage and his hardness and his iron determination; but right then she sensed that she needed to shy away from his cynicism. He disapproved of religion. His skepticism would destroy her bridge of faith, kill the connection to her father before she could even make it. She was too soft and too easily influenced. But this time her softness had to be nurtured. Sasuke pulled her away from it.

..and he would understand, too, the secret need behind this. It would be just so much bizarre misbehavior to her family. But Sasuke would know. Hinata wanted.. needed.. to see her father again.

But in the end, the day drained away. Her family closed in around her. She couldn't bring herself to care enough, suddenly, to evade them, slip away. She was a hollow shell of skin and bone. Inside her was a star.

And everything she did in this life may be completely meaningless. She may be preordained, cast into her paces before her birth. Before that of her father, before that of anyone else. It was too late and she was too tired for these thoughts. But she couldn't find any satisfaction in tidy answers. Neji would tell her that thinking this way would never bring her peace. And he would know. But she couldn't help herself. Not now, she was cracked right open and couldn't pull herself back together. Her father was in that coffin, that floated in a murk of lantern light and brazier smoke. The servants had dropped away, in reverence for this moment. She was alone. She knelt. She waited.

If all she was, in the end, was a star, a Hyuga sun, a Hyuga heir, the newest Hyuga clan leader, then she would rather shed her flesh right now and go live in the sky.

It would be better there than here.

She did what she was told. She looked up at her father's shrouded body. Her byakugan went through the oak coffin like it wasn't even there. She looked at the clean cloth that hid his face. She thought that he looked so empty, somehow. Something intangible had gone. It wasn't her father anymore. It was just a dead body. It was her father gone forever, and nothing but ashes left in his place. She would never love him now.

"I need to see him." she said to one of her new servants. She couldn't tell if she meant Sasuke or her father. Both. But they took her arm and steered her to bed. Ashes, she thought, watching the smoke from the windows, all the way upstairs. There was nothing left in her to argue with them.

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

So.

He spent some of his next day in captivity contemplating torture and interrogation.

And- not really caring. Pain was just pain. He'd almost be relieved. Guilt was much worse than punishment. Criminals felt relief when they were caught. They were glad because they didn't have to run anymore, or worry. This was one of the many things Sasuke's father had said-

-to Itachi. Sasuke had listened quietly by Itachi's side, and his father had continued talking as if Sasuke wasn't in the room at all.

Which, in his father's mind, he probably wasn't.

What was the phrase? An heir and a spare?

Hinata's parents had done this too. It was standard practice. Not that Itachi would ever be eclipsed- by anyone. Certainly not by someone like Sasuke, who was merely excellent at everything he did. Excellence was nothing. What he needed was to be extraordinary. But only Itachi was, and that was what made Itachi so rare and special. He was a genetic fluke, a one in a million chance. Legends were written about people like Itachi.

And did anyone write about the legendary warrior's little brother?

So, he brooded about that. About being lesser and inferior. And in his mind, that was something worth punishment. Hinata tried to put a good face on it, but he wasn't fooled. They avoid the subject- until they couldn't avoid it anymore. And then Hinata would knit her white fingers together and bow her head. She would immediately veer into guilt as if somehow it was all her family's fault. As if he'd never made the fatal decision himself? To recast him as the innocent victim of a larger clan's venal injustice. She did it to turn the subject away from what they both knew was there. And- she feared. Rationally, she feared it. Because pity would set him against her, wouldn't it? It would arouse his anger. And nothing could be served by that. So they talked about it in the strange light of her revisionist history. Her family's guilt, and therefore it was suddenly a discussion of her crimes- her family's crimes- and they could just gloss over his.

He knew she did it to protect him, and because she didn't want to hurt him. He didn't hate her for it or even hold it against her.

Because-

as always, the only person he was interested in hating was himself.

And being alone, poked apart, surrounded by fresh heavily armed Hyuga retainers every three hours, he had plenty of time to luxuriate in the full sting of that self-hatred. Pain was a kind of relief. He felt better for it. He really did wish that Itachi had just killed him. Killed him along with everyone else- but, he was alive. Despite his best efforts, he was alive. He was going to have to talk in a few hours or a few days, either way.

To Naruto.

He hadn't seen Naruto in a good two and a half years. He'd managed to duck the both of them, and Kakashi too. Not that Sasuke could ever really be entirely sure what Kakashi had seen, or what he knew. But all of them had been securely out of his hair for a long time.

Since- the lost year.

When Orochimaru was supposed to take him. And instead Orochimaru decided to twist reality around him, tie it in knots.

It was a game, of course. Orochimaru tore it down around him. Still so unimaginative, Orochimaru said, shaking his head.

And Sasuke finally realized that what Orochimaru wanted wasn't his body, wasn't his loyalty or his fear or his anger, or even his respect. It wasn't the sharingan, that was just a brightly colored toy to Orochimaru, a kind of bonus. Orochimaru didn't vivisect the villagers to learn anything. He didn't sacrifice the prostitutes for pleasure, sometimes he didn't even bother to undo his pants. He didn't do anything to Sasuke for the logical reason, the straightforward reason. He said there's nothing more satisfying than taking something beautiful and destroying it, Sasuke-kun.

And- you're just like me. You're exactly like me. You already are me.

Not that I have to destroy you, Orochimaru said, chuckling. You've already destroyed yourself.

Destruction being a clumsy word, for the total dissolution of something rare and precious by itself. Whatever made you alive or human or somehow worth something, even if you killed for a living and trained most of your life doing nothing else. The point of dissecting the girl was to take the spark of her life and snuff it out. Simple. The point of taking him from his village and indulging his tawdry little chase after his brother was the same.

Wasn't it?

You assume that you were worth something to begin with. Orochimaru said.

Anyway, Sasuke had laid low after that.

And avoided the Leaf and everyone in it.

And more or less sidestepped Orochimaru, vanished into himself, continued with his training and wondered in some deep hidden part of himself what it was all for anymore.

His family was gone, and it was like they had never even existed. Itachi, too, had been in and out of sight, fingerprints and clues and a vague record of spy intelligence on his whereabouts and activities. It added up to a long swell of radio silence, and not much else.

Itachi had left Sasuke behind. He was interested in other things now. He had new people that drew his attention. Sasuke was an afterthought to him or- quite possibly- something Itachi no longer thought about at all.

And maybe it was all stupid. All of this. Maybe he was just kidding himself. Maybe it was real but he'd fuck it up anyway. He'd convince himself that love was weakness and that closeness with other people was excuses and stupidity. He'd decide again that somehow he was no longer like everyone elseeveryone else with their friends and their family- he was a fucking avenger.

Like that meant something.

Like it would solve anything.

So here he was.

Sitting there, under captivity, not even fighting back. His younger self would have exploded in fury at this. He would have-

Never mind. His younger self was fucking stupid. His younger self had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

He could refuse to see Naruto and Sakura. It was possible that the Fifth, being Sakura's mentor and therefore probably a soft touch, would let Naruto bust in no matter what the rules said. But- Sasuke didn't have to talk to him. He didn't have to turn his head and acknowledge Naruto's presence at all. Naruto could shake him and yell in his face all he wanted- Sasuke wouldn't bat an eyelash. All Naruto would have was his wretched body, and really who the hell cared about that anymore? Who cared about anything, he was finished. Used up and spat on by his own mentor, who lead him on for what amounted to a dirty joke.

Sasuke really didn't have much to say to Naruto anyway.

And if he was going to do that, what the hell did he think he was doing with... well, whatever she was now. A lover or a girlfriend, the words really didn't mean very much. He had no business pretending he could have a normal life. Did he?

Itachi could be dealt with through the Hyuga clan, but that wouldn't fix this.

Not that Naruto could be successfully ducked. Naruto would come and he'd demand that conversation, he wouldn't care if Sasuke wanted to have it or not.

And at the end of it, he'd have to face Hinata. She was intertwined with the two of them. Naruto and Sakura were her friends. That was obvious. Sound magic or none. Naruto-kun. Maybe they were a bit more then her 'friends.' Sound magic had something to say about that, about the way she said his name.

A mess, therefore.

More then he could have dealt with on his best day. People weren't his forte. Socializing wore him out. Talking made him want to go sit on the damn roof again. Thinking about it made him consider going up there and never coming down.

He'd be cruel to them. He wouldn't be able to help it, they just pushed his fucking buttons so hard. They did it on purpose- Naruto sure did! Sakura was another story. He didn't want Hinata involved in this. Hinata was already involved. Naruto would come for him. Naruto would corner him. He wouldn't be responsible for what happened!

He didn't want Hinata in the crossfire. Naruto could take the back of his hand, his scorn, but could she? She'd never speak to him again. This thing between them, whatever it was, it was new and fragile. He could destroy it. He could do it by accident, on defensive reflex. He didn't want to, but he was all raw edges. He could slice her to ribbons just for being close to her.

Orochimaru would have laughed at him for this, he thought. He scowled up at the ceiling, the watery marks the meltwater made as it flowed down the windows. Orochimaru would have said... And what did you expect? I know. You expected her to love you. And then a chuckle. You. Orochimaru would have had a good laugh at that. You still don't understand, Sasuke-kun. You think your life is worth something.

As Itachi had said, his miserable life, and his inability to give it up. Hinata's voice being the lone quaver of dissent in his own mind, against a full-throated chorus, all his favorite demons. Itachi, Orochimaru.. the wandering hungry ghosts of his clan too, on a really good night. It was hard not to believe in it. Hinata believed otherwise. Her evidence was her actions.

She'd held him, she'd slept on his chest like she wasn't afraid and he wasn't some disgusting criminal who'd ripped apart children and raped prostitutes, and more- because Orochimaru's crimes were all his now, it was an act of complicity. She'd accepted him, taken him into her body and found nothing in him as horrible as she should have. Her white eyes had pierced right through him, and she'd never found it, that deep evil nature that Orochimaru insisted he had, that made him a part of Orochimaru, their acts one and the same, that made Orochimaru a part of him.

So maybe it was lies. But did he want it to be true?

It might be a lot easier to think that they were both stressed and they were both lonely. And while Hinata should have probably known better, he was a broken pathetic excuse for a human being. He was so inept at using any part of himself that didn't involve his ninjutsu that he'd had no idea how to distinguish lust from something deeper. And it was all just the two of them fooling themselves, getting drunk on the promises of happiness and togetherness that were just never going to materialize.

Some people got reprieves. Some people got second chances in life. Some people started with nothing and the force of their irrepressible personality just made their dreams come true.

But he wasn't one of those people.

And Naruto was an even more complex subject than Hinata.

He had no patience suddenly, the feeling of Uchiha Tetsuya's hand on his shoulder had evaporated. He was locked up alone and he wanted to know what the hell was going on. The guards wouldn't tell him anything. "Wait." they said. For what? For more guards, apparently. For guards who were going to take him to meet with lawyers.

Lawyers, soft paper-pushing bureaucrats from the village center, who were the only ones who acknowledged him. The Hyuga stood back and looked out the window. They were having a quiet conversation about gardening and which type of azaleas should be planted in the next few weeks. There was one Hyuga, a much younger man closer to his own age. This family member sat with the lawyers and looked Sasuke over, but never spoke. The lawyers explained. They handed him scrolls. They said that, legally speaking, the two clans were almost the same thing anyway. But to come under Hyuga clan protection, they would need his signature. They said that his estate would remain in trust. They pushed aside his questions about money. They put a small knife in his hand. Now that the decision was at hand, he stared at the words and felt for a sense of certainty in his choice. He couldn't find it. The guards drew restless, the lawyers packed away papers. The young Hyuga who sat with them adjourned the meeting. The other Hyuga at the window never even turned around.

And the guards grew bored with him again. They took him to a more crowded part of the house to read, to sign, to make his decision. He had never been anything but swiftly decisive.

But this was new and he thought that he could walk the same path he always had, he could stay safe in his rage and his misery. He could make another choice, and suffer the consequences of that, too.

He was disoriented anyway, because he'd been ready for them to try to screw him on the money. That was the only thing that could matter to a noble clan, that could pull this much of the bureaucratic war chest of Konoha into the family's house and it's sacred space. Or maybe these were Hyuga family lawyers. All the more reason, then. Strip the orphan of his money. Do it while he was too confused and distracted to see it coming.

And it was what the Four had used on him, too. Their simple argument- you give up something to gain something. He weighed how much he was willing to let them take from him. Maybe that tall old Hyuga woman had calculated on that. She would be the decision maker behind this, he was sure of it. He'd barely seen her, and already he knew who was pulling the strings in this house. Hinata was eighteen and would do what she was told.

The Hyuga were all around him, superior looks cast at him by people who had never been in Orochimaru's mausoleum and watched him cut apart a small child. People who had never been shoved to the ground by their sensei and spat on, never had to be anything but insulated in their arrogance. He shivered, caught in the warm cross of space heaters and candles. It couldn't touch him. Six eyes tilted at him from the arranged points of his guards. He had the knife in his hand so he could look resolute, and convince himself that he was.

"Time." he growled at them, when they wanted to pull him back to the other side of the house. He needed more time. He pushed away their hands. "Let me think." he hissed. They locked him up again, scroll and all. Could they do this to a Hyuga clan member. An official member? Sasuke wanted Hinata back, he needed her to explain these people to him.

"Where is she?" he demanded, hanging in the doorway of the paper room they put him in. The guards looked up boredly from their hands of cards. They looked at him like they'd planned on slacking off and he was ruining it. "Where's Hinata?" he said, again.

"Busy." one said.

"Pipe down." said another.

Sasuke slammed the door. As hard as you could slam a sliding paper door- which wasn't very hard. He felt a bit better. He kicked the pillows off the futon. He considered putting his fist through the wall. He considered that conducive to his thinking process, you could say. He considered going out and wringing the first retainer's neck he could get his hands around. He considered just ripping up the scroll and throwing it in the lawyer's faces. He considered the window and seppuku again. He considered growing the hell up and what it would actually mean at this point.

"Fine." he growled, at no one. "Fine!" He stalked the small length of room and kicked the pillows aside. He picked up the scroll. And he snatched up the knife.

---------

Time moved on without her. She felt it's indifference, and that of the world. The sun would still rise and set. The seasons would still turn, nothing would really change, no matter what she felt now. And really, she thought, nothing she did was even close to significant. She thought she'd feel better if she could see Momoe, or Neji, or Hanabi, it was hard to be in the hands of the council at the best of times. They didn't have time for her feelings. It went without saying that she couldn't see Sasuke, and that she should not yet ask about him. An attendant from the council shook her awake.

When she sat before them, it was harder than ever to keep it out of her mind. Even if it was true, it didn't change anything. Her father had done horrible things before. She turned these from crimes, into decisions. She absolved him of guilt in the retelling. She made it a hard choice he had to make. She did not believe that her father had hated her. She didn't believe that her father had hated her mother, or Neji for that matter- when he bent to burn the curse seal into Neji's forehead. It was sanctioned action. It was probably an order that he couldn't refuse.

Neji cried all night, afterwards. He was racked with seizures, hidden away- but Hinata heard the servants whispering. Neji was four years old. Soon he was back on his feet. There was a band of white gauze around his small head. There was something impossibly hard in her eyes. He knew that the clan had killed his father. That her father had killed his. But surely her father had no choice. The council ordered him to brand Neji. The council ordered him to kill Neji's father. The council ordered him to kill Hinata's mother. He obeyed. And she obeyed. They were exactly the same, now.

"I want to see him!" she said to her great aunt, her own perfect Hyuga mask slipping, and only for a moment. Shame welled in her and burned under her ceremonial makeup. Her great aunt's eyes could freeze her blood, strike her down where she stood. The slap was just a signifier, something for her to remember. She remembered it, she could never forget this. Her great aunt's eyes fell on her like a deadly warning. Senbon tips, needle-points flying right at her, head on. She bowed her head. "I trust there will be no further disruptions, Hinata-chan?" That was the dry voice of her grandfather.

"There won't be." her great aunt said. Hinata kept quiet.

When they told her to speak, she did.

The council reviewed her actions and she told them what she had done. They were not happy about what had happened at the cottage, but the evidence was plain on her face and in her chakra, she couldn't hide anything from them. "Cooperate with us now," the musical voice of her seventh aunt said.

"This is inexplicably disobedient behavior," a fifth great uncle remarked, to murmurs of ascent.

"And an inauspicious start to your tenure, Hinata-chan." another said.

"We should have seen it coming."

"It's an improvement on her last-"

"Not much of an improvement."

She saw the kitchen staff packing up steaming pitchers of sake and considered just dulling her senses directly.

"Well, do we want her involved with the outcast?" It was her great aunt who had spoken. Silence fell in the wake of her voice.

"That one never went anywhere." The soft voice of her grandfather. "Thank goodness for that."

A tapestry of their voices, like ripples and streams of water. Or like the constant soft sound of the melting water outside. They talked, and they weren't exactly unkind to her. They knew her, they had watched her from birth and annotated everything she was and wasn't. They had put her fingerprint on the golden chain of clan leaders. And, she thought, when they said she was foolish, well.. they were just being truthful. They were just trying to protect the clan, and do what they could with her. She was theirs. Ultimately, they wanted the same thing.

And they didn't want her to be with Naruto, she had always known that they would never have allowed it. She knew that her affection for him was seen as the seeds of disloyalty. That they overlooked it was a small miracle. They were satisfied when she formally told them that she would not have anything to do with him. Not in the way they meant, the way that would harm the bloodline. She could be his friend, she could socialize with him, she could exchange letters, she could put her personal reputation on the line to save his teammate. She could even sleep with him, but if she dared to marry him or say that she wanted the future clan leaders to be his children, well...

"At least this one's not from the gutter." The murmur was polite, sweet-voiced. She turned her head, found the face and the gentle steeliness of her third aunt, a distant relative.

So it was a kind of relief when he married Sakura instead. When he dated Sakura seriously, when it became obvious to everyone else and not just her, because she was watching carefully. It made things simple, because the decision was made for her.

"So he's your problem now, Hinata-chan." an even more distant great uncle said. "You'll have to decide what we do with him."

"Until you open the gates," another said.

"It's too late, she's already allowed him to touch her." her great aunt said crisply. She looked at Hinata as if from a great height. Her eyes were like distant points of starlight, hard and indifferent.

Hinata raised her head to look at her. And then, with courage that flowed suddenly, like electricity, she met her great aunt's eyes. To look another Hyuga in the eye was always significant. It was tantamount to a challenge. It was a statement, no matter how it was done.

And her great aunt smiled, for the first time. "Good." she said. "Now I can see the blood." Hinata looked away before she could see her great aunt's withering scorn. "Finally. It seems Hiashi wasn't entirely a fool after all." So Hinata forced herself to look back.

This was the sister of her father's mother, who had been clan leader before him.

Now Hinata was clan leader after, and her aunt's quiet gaze spoke a multitude of scornful judgments. At the bottom of each she thought she could glimpse the smoke signal of a worry. The clan moved through it's clan head. The sprits of the clan heads before her moved through her. It was as if her great aunt stood atop a sheer cliff, black against the sun, her eyes hidden in shadow. But felt, like two clean blades through her skull. Killing accuracy. The power of her clan, Hinata thought, and it's double edge. Her heart's damaged murmur turned to a skip. She looked down. She forced herself to look up...

...as if from underwater, and Hinata looked back from a great depth. She could pull back into the slow meditative thoughts of the diving sea turtle. As her lungs crumpled and oxygen turned into a network of icicles through her blood, she could slow down and understand things. She could see, and she could understand.

Her great aunt had never really approved of her father either, he married the wrong person and he was too brash, he was too much of an indefinable something. Maybe no living clan leader could ever really be good enough, they were still limited by their human minds and human bodies. She heard snatches of conjecture and put together her own picture of what was going on, behind closed doors and in rooms and meetings that she was never meant to get wind of. Now she could be outside of herself enough to see what her great aunt saw. A romantic girl who couldn't afford this pointless drama.

"He'll hurt you, if you give him the chance." her great aunt said, holding her gaze. "This is his chance."

She nodded once.

"Go then." her great aunt sighed. She waved her hand like she knew nothing could stop it from happening.

Hinata bowed her head.

She got to her feet.

"Don't worry, obaa-sama." she whispered.

"Protocol, Hinata-chan." her sweet-voiced fourth aunt said.

"We're wasting our time even trying to discuss this." The rumble of a much older uncle. "Let her do what she wants with the Uchiha runaway, it won't last half the year."

"Better than the other one."

"Barely."

"At least she's strong enough-"

She closed the door and cut off the welling of their voices.

She walked and her body moved, but there was nothing left of her. Something was being built in her place. She leaned against the long windows on the south side of the house, saw the smoke reaching far into the sky. She had dreamed that the house was full of a black wind that she couldn't see and that no one else felt. She was directed to the far east wing of the house, and she told the guards at the door that they were dismissed. Their eyes said that they were not used to taking orders from her. The nodded and one shrugged. She was calm on the outside and she felt the weight of the fancy kimono layers, she wished for her simple ninja's clothes. She was calm but her heart raced under her unbroken skin, loud enough for her to feel it's murmur, the damage Neji's fingers had done.

But this time, they heard her. They obeyed. She was the clan leader and it was her decision now. She would not have Sasuke walking around her house like he was a prisoner, watched and locked up, chakra leeches and accusing Hyuga fingers poking into him. There were lines she crossed that meant things only to her. The secure wooden door was opened and stood open as the guards left. Beyond it was a closed door and a darkened paper partition around the small bedroom.

His shadow was in front of her, behind the door, and she'd missed it in her hesitation. Just like before, he could move close to her, completely undetected. He waited for one second, the space of a slow breath, and then slid the paper door back. She stared, a ghost with a little flame dancing in dark inner space, and her eyes rested on the strange familiarity of his face. She didn't mean to look him in the eye, but it was gravitational. His eyes on her, his attention and his concern, it felt like the warmth of his hands.

This was the moment she was supposed to go to him and she felt it, she saw the readiness and expectation of it in his posture. His eyes and his expression were as serious as ever, but he seemed different now, he had changed something since the day she first met him. She looked at him and she thought that it must be her father's hand now, her father's clear-eyed judgment that worked through her. Because she couldn't think of how a boy who'd come to deceive her would have to struggle for the words the way Sasuke did. She couldn't see a skilled liar blushing and looking away, getting tangled up in his own frustration. If he had meant to use her, he would have known exactly what to say. He was trying as hard as he could. She should go to him. She wanted to, and she wanted to go hide in a crumpled little ball of tears in the corner, too.

"I chose to support you." she said, and looked at her feet in their little split-toed socks instead. "Even though the council disagrees." Her voice was hollow and inside it was a hiss of smoke. It was as if now, as the clan leader, she could be nothing else. She had to reach for clan business, treat him like a member of the lost Uchiha clan rather than Sasuke, it was hard for her to track how her idea of who he was had changed. It would have been unthinkable to imagine the Uchiha Sasuke from her academy classes with warm hands, or forgiving her for anything. "You should be angry with me!" she blurted. She wanted to put her hand over her mouth, she was just saying utter nonsense. Like a wind-up doll, the chain of ceremonies had released her and now she didn't know what to do. "I have to put the torch to my father." she said. For no reason. She swiped her fingers over her eyelids, wiping tears that weren't there, doing it on reflex.

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. She watched him shake his head. "Your family is crazy." he said, simply. She saw that he disapproved too. Everyone disapproved. "Not your fault." he said, when she tried to apologize for the retainers and their rashness. "No," he said, when he saw her expression. "No. Not your fault. Don't blame yourself." His voice was as stern as those in the council chamber. "Hinata." he said, when she looked away.

That was so easy for him to say. "It shouldn't be okay." she whispered. She eyed him, almost nervously. Her face was a painted mask and her body was an instrument weighted with the chain of clan leaders before her. She felt immoble, but she worried that she would collapse in tears. Would it be right, the Hyuga clan leader bawling at the feet of anyone?

"I said it wasn't your fault." he told her insistently. She heard worry working it's way through his voice. He frowned at her, looking her over. Finally he just took hold of the long square fold of silk at her wrist, then her forearm, then her shoulder, his hands far more gentle than the sharpness in his words, his frayed nerves- and who could blame him? Two days, and only now she was freeing him.. He pulled and she stepped into the room. "Why aren't you angry with me?" she argued, but he just reached behind her for the deadbolt.

"You know how brainwashing works?" he said sternly. He was unfolding her from her layers of kimono. "Isolation. They separated us for a reason."

"They wouldn't let me see Neji or Hanabi," she whispered. She was staring up at the ceiling because he was so close and she couldn't bear to look at him. She was certain she'd cry, and then she'd be completely useless.

"Of course not." he said. His sarcasm had an acid bite, even when it wasn't directed at her. He'd never directed it at her, but could she bear it if he did? He saw her avoiding his eyes, and then his hand was at her cheek. He nudged her down and she couldn't avoid looking at him. So she looked...

..into him, into his focused, aligned, deadly serious cast of chakra, into his strange dark eyes, into the nervous static of his affection, which was there. She could see it.

"I don't know what's wrong with me." she whispered against his shirt.

"Same thing that's wrong with me." he said, steadily. His hand was on her cheek again, rubbing the makeup aside. She saw him frown dangerously as he found bruises, split capillaries. "And also that your family is crazy." he added. He almost smiled. "I'll deal with them."

"What do I do?" she whispered.

"Not what I did." he said. "Not what I did in the first place. You're not going to make the mistakes I made. I decided not to wait." He averted his eyes, locked them on something across the room. And then back to her.

"I'll help you." he said. His almost-smile. Then he smiled at her, a glancing brightness of hope she'd never seen from him. Not a polished lie, It was a completely unguarded twinge of emotion, there for a fraction of a second- gone. His chakra unfolded behind it, sunlight cut at colored angles, light sliced by a prism, diffracting as if through high powered binocular lenses. Exact and precise and focused, in every move he made.

"They can't get rid of me now." he said. He held his hand open to her and she felt the wetness of blood on his finger.