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.

16. Reverie

So, Sasuke thought- decision made. Signed and put into law. Unbreakable. No going back now.

He was strangely calm about it.

He showed Hinata the scroll and the contract. "Legal protection from the 'great house of Hyuga.' " he said, reading the scroll's wording- and not without sarcasm. Hinata reached out with slow movements. She ran her fingers over the dried smear of his blood, as if tracing the whorl of lines stamped from his fingertip. Her face was motionless. She seemed too drained now for any kind of emotion. He remembered that, which meant that it would pass for her as it had for him. He pushed away his own nagging worries with that thought. They were useless and would only get in his way.

"Bath." he suggested, nudging her towards the small bathroom off his place of captivity- a guest room, he guessed. "To get that paint off your face." A polished black pine wood tub was there, smaller than the other one, but adequate. He'd examined it boredly while locked up and restless between dark bouts of sulking. The Hyuga clearly felt that the cheaper cedar tubs were just not good enough for their house, even in a distant wing and a lower guest room. Sasuke's clan had not gone in for this kind of determined luxury and he wasn't sure if he liked it, it made him feel a bit uncomfortable. But the hot water and steam would relax her. It wasn't as if he was going to accomplish that himself.

"You too." she whispered, which was fine. He stripped off his own clothes along with the latest ridiculously ornate set of kimonos her crazy family had dressed her in. They treated her like a puppet, costumes and stage makeup. He shook his head. He got the bath going, got the towels out of the linen closet, nudged her to get in- got in after her. Steam rose all around them.

Hot water seemed to dissolve the margins of skin between them, made it feel like she was part of him, where her wet skin pressed into his. They both turned boiled pink with the heat, which was cute on her. It was a bit silly-looking on him, he thought. He examined his rapidly pinking hands, water dripping off the dark shadow of swollen veins under his pink skin. No two ways about it. Pink. He'd probably had more dignified moments.

Hinata seemed too out of it to notice. This was not surprising to him; he'd walked around in a daze too, as if beaten into unconsciousness by the deaths and only mechanically still on his feet, mindlessly walking. She didn't say anything, or even murmur softly as he touched her. Just her soft, slow breathing. He looked down and watched her eyelashes flicker as she blinked through the heavy air. He hadn't thought of her as a cryptic person. But when she didn't speak, it was as if entire parts of her were hidden. You couldn't get a sense of who she really was just from looking at her. He'd thought of her as open and friendly, but now he wondered if she was just too polite to not conceal her own reticence.

"You're too much like me." he muttered, against her ear. Tactlessly, he thought. He was resting his head gently against hers so he moved slightly, kissed the scalloped curve of her earlobe. He meant that it was a real misfortune for her, for anyone. She would have been better off being nothing like him.

She didn't agree. "...I wish I was more like you." she sighed. Her voice was almost rasped, as if she'd already talked too much, worn out her throat for the day. She didn't want to talk, she just wanted to be with him.

So got them comfortably arranged against the wooden lip of the tub and held her in his lap. She curled up into his arms and tucked her head under his chin, against his damp shoulder. Steam turned into hot droplets on her cheek, sliding off the ends of her hair, trickling off the edge of his jaw, striking his fingers and then hers, where her hand tangled up with his. She moved only very slightly. Her breathing was so submerged and deep that he couldn't feel it.

Silence was easier, always. She had pinned her hair up, but eventually it slid lose and fell down into the water. She listlessly pushed it back, maybe once or twice. Finally he just pulled the pins out, ran his own wet hands under the nape of her neck. The pins were onyx and silver-tipped. Condensation had formed on the metal. She took them and dropped them over the edge of the tub, one by one, onto the blue tiles. Hard little clicks as they struck and bounced. One rolled under the tub and out of sight and she didn't seem to care. He still remembered the massage techniques he'd lifted from her with the sharingan. She was tense, her back was like soldered iron.

He thought this was a good time to get his head on straight, now while he was feeling good. His mood could tilt at any moment, there would definitely be something coming along to piss him off shortly. Hinata was as he had been a few days after he'd come home to the bodies- shellshocked and too quiet. He'd walked around like an empty-eyed ghost, just like she was. So he needed to handle things for her, now. There was not room for two people to freak out at once in that.. whatever it was, that relationship. Not then. So he had to be clear.

He thought that his tactical function would be to tell her family to go to hell. Simple.

Hinata was too... conditioned, something, to do it herself. They'd done a real number on her since the retainers jumped him. But he thought it was likely that her father and her cousin had worked at her for years, torn apart her confidence. As he kneaded the stiffness out of her back, she seemed to sigh and want to talk after all. She talked in a distracted, quiet, broken apart kind of way. Talking from stress, talking the way people did when they were over-stimulated, he thought. Bits and pieces. She was talking about her father, and it was all her father being harsh with her, her father being impossible and demanding too much, her father having no time for her, her father slapping her to the dojo floor and standing over her, yelling.

But she thought all that was fine. She thought she deserved it.

He did the smart thing and kept his mouth shut. He listened. Telling her that her father had been harsh to the point of ridiculousness would... well. How would he like it if she were to point out that Itachi was a murderer? That Itachi wasn't trustworthy? That Itachi wasn't worth the love and the hatred, all the single-minded attention? How well would he take that?

So he said nothing. He kept his opinion of Hyuga Hiashi to himself, let dead bastards lie. He rubbed her back in slow circles. She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against his chest. He saw the jutsu mark of her house, dark against the pale skin between her breasts, the ends of her long hair wet blue-black now, floating freely under the surface of the water.. "I wish he'd visit me." she said. Droplets of cooling water stirred from her as she spoke. She was talking about her father's ghost. "I think he's still here."

Sasuke thought that he'd have a few things to say to Hyuga Hiashi's ghost himself.

"I wonder if he approves..." she whispered. And then she wanted to hear about ghosts.

And he knew all about ghosts.

So he shrugged- a nervous gesture that somehow came out as aloof when he did it. It always came out wrong. Water dripped off his fingers as he ran a hand through his hair, another telling gesture of worry. He told her about the ghosts.

The ghosts.

"More then one." he said to her.

"How many?" her eyes were open now, she'd raised her head slightly to look up at him. Her eyes were a strange milky contrast to her flushed skin and the wet strands of hair that clung to her face.

"Three hundred and forty two." he said, without hesitation. Then, when she blinked and looked surprised by that, either the number or his precision, he added "I counted. And that's how many died."

"You see that many?" she was shaken out of her tired silence now. He wasn't sure if that was good or not. Maybe this would upset her too, talking about ghosts. Maybe they should talk about something else. And- he didn't see them exactly. He felt them. He heard them, whispering and talking, sometimes, snatches of words coming from other rooms and buildings as he walked by. He felt them, their hands on him. He felt their eyes on him. When he walked alone at night, he would hear their footsteps behind him. He'd train all day and stay away from his sleeping quarters in Otokagure, his apartment in the village. He used to come home from missions and sense that they were waiting for him behind the door.

"They can only really get me at night." he said. He remembered that while this was obvious to him, maybe other people didn't know how ghosts worked- and he should mention it. "They have more power then." He yawned, stretching his shoulders and arms carefully under her and under the press of dull pain from his newly re-swollen seal wound. He said that casually, as if he were discussing the weather. Because they were like the weather to him, something that was just there, a part of the world around him.

Hinata seemed distressed by this. "Are they angry?" she asked.

"Yes." he said, shrugging. Wasn't that obvious too?

"Do they want to hurt you?"

"Of course."

This was all so normal to him. After all, why wouldn't the ghosts be vengeful? He watched Hinata settle herself back against his chest, her hair damp and warm, clinging to his lower stomach and his ribs. The cut in his side was now a thin little line, and it didn't hurt at all when she traced it with one gentle finger. Her fingernails were still polished- useless artifice for a ninja, she'd break them in the next real training session she had. He watched her stare to the side, out through the plumes of steam, into the notched leaves of a small hybrid palm plant that shadowed them, placed on the long shelf built against the tub.

She was quiet for a moment and curled herself closer to him. Water rippled and splashed as he moved to hold her tighter- and that was reflex. He wondered if he wasn't so hopeless at this after all. Surely he still had some basic human connection, there were things that he would just know, he wouldn't always have to think and plan how to comfort her. The skin on her shoulders and the back of her arms, her shoulder blades, it all felt soft and yielding, like it would give just a little bit under his fingertips. He couldn't help stroking her, feeling her softness. She closed her eyes and her lips parted slightly. "There's..." her voice had lost focus, turned softer. "...things you can do to get rid of them. The priests can burn sagebrush, the way we do to chase out the evil spirits." The 'we' was her family. Their current obsession with burning things.

"I don't know if I want them to leave." he said.

He leaned back, letting the smooth polished lip of the tub support the back of his neck. He felt her pressed against him, her arms curled up between her body and his, her heavy wet hair falling over his chest and down his side, pooling in his groin and tickling him. He watched the steam rise into the wooden slats that made up the ceiling. Water droplets hung low, here and there from their edges. She fell silent. There wasn't anything to say.

He liked it that way. He needed to think, and he thought better when she was with him. The ghosts could fade out if she was in his arms, the anger lost it's thrill as well as it's bite. He watched the droplets hang, watched a few of them finally fall to strike the surface of the water around them. He thought about what he was going to do, his anticipation of planned events. Double-checking his logic and his resolve, he pictured it all. Sequenced it.

Allegiance with her clan- already his family in some ancient sense and already accomplished. Weather the ANBU, weather Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi- should Kakashi choose to appear and- no, Sasuke decided, Kakashi was not the sort to be I told you so about it. Kakashi would be the adult, if the three of them couldn't.

Forget the Four, forget Otokagure. Ignore Orochimaru. Orochimaru would hate that, so Sasuke had come around to thinking it was actually a fantastic idea. Let Orochimaru be the Hokage's problem if he wanted to kick up a fuss about it. Think of it as good ninjutsu- hiding and cheating on a contracted exchange was practically a holy sacrament for a shinobi. Let Orochimaru whine to the Fifth if he didn't like it.

Cooperate with interrogation. Plea bargain and sell Orochimaru out. Get reinstated back in the village- somehow. Argue that they needed a full-blooded sharingan user. Argue that his judgment had been impaired by the curse seal. Be patient and prove himself again. Put up with all that crap and somehow keep his temper. Keep from ruining it. Keep from turning tail and throwing himself back into the darkness. Keep his self-hatred in check, hold the line. Hold it together. Make it work. He'd done harder things before.

Go back to her. Refuse to bow to masochism and solitude and misery, no matter how comfortable and familiar. Go back to her house, accept her warmth and her companionship, her maybe-love, the maybe-relationship. Try to be with her and love her. Try not to fuck it up. Protect her from her family. Avoid killing her asshole of a cousin and wait a while before kicking his ass. Stop being an angry child and grow up. Try to be normal. Help her. Accept her help. Kill Itachi and be smart about the attack strategy this time.

Rebuild his clan, link it with hers.

"That's how I feel about my family." she said, stirring him out of his thoughts.

It had been several minutes in silence and he hadn't expected her to speak again. He didn't feel her move or draw breath, her voice just rippled out of the air, vivid and close. "It's difficult."

He looked down and thought about how much was hidden, how many bloody little bits of pain and her own recriminations were tucked neatly in that, those simple two words. "But I don't want them to leave." She was still pressed to him, almost in a fetal position, her fingertips wrinkled with the hot water, pressing into his chest now like she wanted to feel his heart, feel closer to him. "I don't want to leave them." she said.

It was her way of apologizing for the way her family was. The bullshit they'd put him through already. The bullshit still to come. Her refusal to give up on them, no matter what they did.

"We're too alike." he said, again. He sank a bit lower in the water, shifted her a bit higher in his arms. She rested her wet cheek against his. Water dripped. Heavy, wet humid silence and the slow hot rain of droplets falling from the ceiling. The ghosts couldn't get near him. They changed the subject after that.

----

It was a lot of ghosts. A multitude of them. She wondered if they all waited for him. If he felt them all breathing down his neck, like death was constantly holding him in it's shadow.

But she felt bad about asking, pestering him. He had told her many times, in words and gestures and actions, that she shouldn't feel that way, that she should ask him things freely. He cuddled her in his arms and tried his best with talking. She knew he struggled with it. And it was funny, ironic, that of all the things she thought she was inept with, being close to another person wasn't on the list.

If anything, she'd wanted it so much. People mostly seemed to push her away. Or- her father did. So everyone did, or may as well have. So when people tried to get close to her later, she hid from them. From Naruto and Sakura, she held them at arm's length. Why? Maybe she wasn't as good at this as she'd thought. Maybe she had a hand in her own loneliness, letting Naruto wrap his arms around her, but still constaly pushing him away. Why? Because it wasn't right? Because the council said no. But the council was just something she used to hide herself with. Why? She didn't know. She didn't feel like she had the energy to even try to think about it just then.

She found herself tallying a list in her mind. Almost a ceremonial chant. I miss my teammates and I miss my sister and I miss my students and I miss Neji-niisan and I miss even Shikamaru with his cigarettes and I miss Naruto and I wish I could call Sakura and I wish I could open the gates. A litany of wishes and longing. She felt bad for it, she should be happier that she had Sasuke.

She was happy. But she should be happier.

Love, after all, was meant to fix everything. That was what the love stories said. She felt dully betrayed that it didn't. She felt entirely unlike herself, disconnected from her old self, like she could veer into any dangerous mood at any moment. She could come apart at the seams. Sasuke's hands felt like something that was pushing her gently back together, closing up cracks and fissures. But underneath it was hollowness and worse, a kind of black, cold feeling that didn't frighten her... so much as make her feel raw, exposed. This was a part of her that was meant to stay down in the depths. It could fly to the surface at any moment. "I'm bad company right now." she said to him. Warning him.

"You feel like me, then." he said. He could be very no-nonsense and yet strangely warm at the same time. "You put up with me, didn't you?"

She stared numbly at his skin next to hers, the tautness of his chest, the spare darker crumple of one nipple. His hair was wet now from the steam, the longer bits of it around his face tickled her neck. He was such an efficient, focused, disciplined fighter, an unbelievable talent. She thought so... everyone else in the academy had thought so. He didn't think so. She thought he was too hard on himself, but at the same time, she understood it. She knew how that felt. She couldn't see her own skill either. It felt like indulgence of her own weakness to even acknowledge it. It was a bit disorienting, too, to be this close to him and feel him as another person, warm skin and a heartbeat, not an impossible virtuoso, someone so unapproachable. It was hard for her to believe, it was such a hard contrast. She was hopeless, after all. It was an engrained way of thinking for her. She could never be anything like him. It was hard to stop feeling that way.

Sasuke tried to engage her in conversation. In his own quiet way. She thought that she sort of knew him now, she was coming to be able to decipher his gestures and read between the lines of what he did say, start to get a feel for what he didn't. He wanted to talk about their plans for the next day, what would lie between his arrest by the ANBU and where they were at the moment. She couldn't focus. She nodded, but she couldn't keep up her end of the conversation at all. "I'm sorry." she whispered.

"We don't have to talk." he said.

But it was easier to talk with him. Easier then it was with anyone else. It made her feel guilty for not appreciating it more. He was trying so hard and she should... she couldn't think, or pull any kind of reasoning out of the restless clouds in her head. She used one of his techniques. She straightened and fastened her arms around his neck. He opened his eyes, he'd been leaning back, his hair spilling dark and wildly spiked over the white skin of his neck and shoulders. He looked at her in mild surprise, and a touch of interest, so she kissed his forehead, the tip of his nose. He made a soft questioning 'hmm?' sound, but she fastened her lips to his, His hands came up her back, wet with hot water, dripping heat all over her. She planned in the second or two of forethought for it to be a gentle kiss. Affectionate. Kisses in lieu of words, for when she couldn't find the words. But as he stroked her back and his lips parted under hers, she felt the breath rippling through him, the brush of his tongue against hers, she leaned in. She didn't think, and it was that lack of thinking that made her able to kiss him, with a kind of ferocity that she didn't see in herself, not outside of the orchestrated fury of the sixty four palms, the things she was taught to do. This came out of her, the darkest parts of her. He groaned softly, breathing harder between kisses, snatches of fire that flashed between them behind her closed eyes, then a long sigh of contentment as she got a good grip on his wet shoulders and kissed harder, deeper. She didn't know what she was trying to do. Melt into him, maybe. Forget herself.

She didn't plan it, but she kissed him and kissed him and ran her hands restlessly over his chest, rubbed her breasts against him until they were both panting and he was hard and arching under her, her nipples were stiff and tingling with the wet friction Inexplicably disobedient, the council had said. She couldn't tell what she felt anymore, she just wanted him.

He pulled her down, and she angled herself onto him. The hot water pressed in on her, making her feel full to bursting with him. He was hotter then usual. Maybe a bit bigger this time, hot water opened the blood vessels and blood flowed thickly. The heat of his flesh went high up inside her and she gasped, sucking in the steam, couldn't stand it, she had to move furiously. His hands gripped her hips, his head back and she wanted to drag the both under the water, drown with her lungs full of heat and her body full of him. His eyes were closed and she watched him breathing, hard and slow, his lips wet from her tongue and her impatience. His hands tightened on her hips. She was embarrassed at herself and all of this, but she couldn't stop.

She meant it to be gentle, loving sex but it ended up being wild, panting, and physical, water slopping out over the rim of the tub as they gasped and moved together. She thought distantly through the thick of it all that it was still awkward, they still weren't really relaxing, comfortable with one another; it was still a bit like touching a stranger. Or a strangely fond memory, half-forgotten. Romantic or not, she really didn't believe in destiny the way she should have. He turned her over and wanted to be gentle, hesitated, but she gasped for him to go faster, drive harder, feed the restless energies inside her. She felt her hands aching, white-knuckled and muscles tired, clenching his shoulders, his lower back, her fingers slipping, bursting with the feeling of him moving firmly inside her, rattling her heart, shaking the air out of her so she was lightheaded with it.

It wasn't the sort of thing she was supposed to do, have screaming wild sex in her father's house, on the eve of her father's funeral. The orgasm came before she could think clearly at all. And then she stung a bit, he was far inside and moving harder and deeper then before. The thin edge of his hissed breath was sudden cold on her wet cheek. She saw his eyes tightly shut, his face flushed and the tendons of his neck tightened and vanishing, resurfacing as he thrust hard- once, twice, and then he must have come, she was too hot and wet inside to feel it. But the deep creases that formed for a second around his eyes, the sharp hitch in his breath... She wasn't used to seeing him like that, unguarded. He opened his eyes and they were wet and black, almost reflective. He blinked, and held her gaze.

Maybe nothing needed to be said. She couldn't seem to get air into her lungs, not enough, the humidity made it slow and laborious. Her heart pressed and beat against the inside of her chest. He exhaled hard, his wet hair fell over her as he sagged onto his elbows and into the inside wall of the tub, pressing her back against it. His hand slipped- then caught- on the wet edge of the tub. She wondered what he felt at this moment. She wasn't sure what she felt.

Half the water was on the floor.

She was already embarrassed. She remembered screaming and moaning and her cheeks burned hard. She thought quickly, trying to guess if anyone would have been in this wing of the house, would the guards have left? Would they have stayed, just a bit out of sight, to keep an eye on him?

She hid her burning face under his arm as he peered out of the tub, sizing up the damage.

"I didn't..." she didn't mean that, she didn't mean to take that out on him, whatever it was. "I don't.." she didn't know what was wrong with her, why she was behaving this way. She couldn't seem to get a complete sentence out. "I'm sorry. I.. that wasn't directed at you." she whispered. "I wanted..." She wanted to be loving and kind to him, because there was this ache in her chest, gnawing at her to reach out and just love him, try to make him happy. Love as action, rather then a gauzy glamorous distant fantasy, decked out with a castle and a handsome stranger.. and all the trappings. Love as something between flesh and blood people, in imperfect times and in the midst of difficulties and stress. Imperfect and unable to solve her entire life for her. But better for it, somehow.

She shook her head, finally, giving up on making any sense. Her hair clung wetly to her shoulders.

"You can direct that at me anytime you like." he said. He stretched out, relaxed and nuzzling her. It reminded her of the lions she'd seen in a zoo once, in a faraway central city of another country. They lolled and stretched out their long springy backs, happy and satisfied. She must have lost the ability to keep her feelings off her face, her worry must have shown. Because he opened his eyes again and sat up. He shook the wet hair out of his face and tried to comfort her... in that way he had, soft hesitant touches and a searching look in his eyes. The questions, the absolute focus of his attention on her, both exhilarating and a bit frightening, unfamiliar to her to have anyone be so attentive and focused on her, as if he wanted her so much. Why else would he do this? It was real. She couldn't get her head around it, but it was real, he really might fall in love with her. She might fall in love with him. "I'm fine." she lied, badly. She tried to smile and failed. She buried her face in the wet hollow of his neck. Hiding and getting closer to him, trying to do both at once.

Sasuke took over. He was good at that. He thought they should go downstairs for dinner, and she agreed. It was nearing the right time, past time, but she hadn't eaten since midday. He gestured disinterestedly at a tray of rice balls and tea left in the bedroom. She was surprised that he'd volunteer to be around her family, but he shrugged and said that he was tired of cold food, it was still too cold in the house.

And it was. The power was supposedly back, but it came in patches and delays. The furnace was taking time to build up steam and suffuse the full house. She watched him get out of the tub, the long smooth muscles the moved under his skin. He kicked at the spilled water. "There are maids to clean this up?" he said, looking back to her. Naked and un-self conscious. It was different. It took her a moment to locate the change in his body language, the way he usually held himself, tense and- she shook her head. No. She had to.. she wasn't sure what she had to do exactly, but answering the question, not acting like a dazed idiot would be a start. She crumpled herself against the inside of the tub. She told him that servants would come to put the room back in order. She saw him, his penis all pink and calmed between his legs, satisfied. She might have giggled, just because it was silly of her to even look. But her mood was too heavy.

She watched him fasten a towel around his waist, and the way it hung low on his hips. Water droplets clung to the tight muscles in his lower stomach and the shadow of dark hair that just peeked up under the cotton fluff of the fabric. He held a larger towel open for her and she went to him. Moved into his arms as he wrapped it around her.

It should have made her happy, the way he was being so careful and gentle with her. She was happy. She just couldn't seem to act the way she should, there was a ragged hole right through her. She tried to explain to him and he said "I know." He knew how she felt. He carried her, towel and all, back to the futon in the bedroom. So her feet wouldn't get in the cold spilled water, he said. He sorted out her kimonos as she watched from the futon, twisting her toes anxiously in the rumpled sheets.

"Do you have to wear all.." he counted quickly, raising the arm he'd folded them over "..nine of these?" His eyebrow was up again. She shook her head. She put on the red under kimono, and then chose the black lotus-patterned over kimono from the set of eight. Sasuke fastened the obi, his hands lingering. She reached up and stroked his hair, his cheek. Her fingers brushed the softness of his lips, something she would never get used to, she thought, it was so strange on someone who seemed so invulnerable. He fastened his arms around the base of her back, and she pressed herself against him, feeling his heat and his affection, basking in both. They couldn't seep through the cold empty place inside her. They could only skirt the surface. But his kisses were gentle, soft touches to her cheeks and the line of her jaw. She was glad to have him here. She couldn't seem to get her feelings out, show him how much she loved him for this... for all of this, all this effort and intense attention.

She was supposed to understand this. For all she'd wanted it, and dreamed of it... But this was... it was 'love' as something felt in passing, a strong desire and a welling of deep affection. But she felt unqualified to feel anything, to understand what she felt accurately, what she should feel in response to anything. This love might be too ordinary, she thought.. too everyday, too much like the warmth she felt for her teammates. When she should be consumed with passion for him. Grief disconnected everything. Mostly herself- from herself.

And, she thought, catching sight of the water on the bathroom floor, passion wasn't even lacking.

Some other kind of love, something reassuring and deep and.. timeless, she wanted that, she wanted it to last forever, she wanted to finally be wanted by someone. Sasuke wanted her- he showed her, and he even said so. It was making her happy but she felt she should... She sighed, against him. She felt she should feel like the heroine in one of the romance novels she was not supposed to read, because they were trash. He father had said so. They were about things like.. strange foreign cowboys in desert towns and pirates that sailed ships and kidnapped noblewomen. They weren't anything like her own life, so it was so silly of her, so immature, so impossible for her to want it. Did she want it?

He wasn't the prince on the white horse, he was real. He was usually angry and he hated her cousin, it was a fact. He hated her entire family, she could feel it. It wasn't perfect, she wasn't swept away on waves of bliss. Her life wasn't transformed, she was still the same old Hinata, making slow but unremarkable progress, day to day. Unable to allow herself to see the change long-term. Unable, maybe, to allow herself to be happy. Maybe she'd push him away too, hold him at arm's length. It was beyond strange, unexpected, to think that someone like him could be vulnerable to her. That she could break his heart. She hadn't even thought that Uchiha Sasuke, the Uchiha Sasuke that she imagined when she only knew the space in the conversation where Naruto and Sakura stopped talking... she hadn't thought that person even had a heart. She hadn't understood their devotion... she worried about him leaving her and hurting her, because that's what she was told to worry about. But maybe she would hurt him. She wasn't all right, not really. She could pretend that things were all right, but that was just... that was just what she had been taught to do. Her noble clan's manners. That was what had helped her with her father, pretending it was all right, that things were fine... She needed to love him. Sasuke. She needed to love him now, fully and perfectly, she needed to be able to do this and be what he needed, help him. She couldn't get herself back together, that hole in her was as vast as a volcanic crag in mountain rock, a permanent scar on the landscape. She might hurt him, lost in her own pain and disconnection. How long could she keep her manners in place? How could she be sure?

She was breathing fast and panicking. Sasuke had noticed, she had missed that in the rush of it. He was holding her tightly, kissing her. Kissing her because he couldn't find the words either. She needed to love him for this, pay him back for this now, she needed to not betray him like her family had.

Sasuke didn't seem surprised by any of these violent lurches in her mood.

"I know how you feel." he said. He looked at her and she felt the sadness behind his eyes. Deep inside him, somewhere. The same hole that was inside her, now. Unhealed, over twelve years.

She breathed, forced herself to calm down. Sasuke stroked her hair, his fingers were still damp and rumpled from the water. He whispered to her. His voice whispering her name, and it burned through her slowly, making her heart quiver and waves of heat and weakness wash down over her knees. She knew that she couldn'tmake herself feel what she had to- to do what she needed, what he needed. She needed time to sort out what kind of love was what. She felt so inexperienced with it.. for all her dreaming. It didn't prepare her. Love was supposed to be wonderful, it was supposed to magically conjure up it's own happy ending. Love was a lot easier when it was happening to people in a book, she thought. She could close the book, any time she liked.

Smarten up. That voice that was in her head when she talked that way to herself, angry with her own softness- it was her father's.

"We should go." Sasuke said to her. The gentleness in his voice was never not a slow shock to her. "You'll feel better."

I wish he'd visit me. she thought. But she felt pressed out of the room, pushed on her way. Not by Sasuke, who was calm and patient with her. Something unforgiving in herself.

Downstairs, the furnace's heat was stronger. Her family had lit the white lanterns, to cast out the evil spirits who would be attracted by the death. For so many of her relatives in attendance, behind doors and in snatches of conversation, quiet dinner groups that sat in scattered tatami rooms together and lingered over hot sake, the house felt too quiet. Ghostly. She thought that she should remember some part of her manners and show Sasuke the parts of the main level formally. He listened. He steered her inexorably forward. Gentleness. She was not going to cry. She had cried enough, and for better reasons.

The servants put them in one of the cheerful little rooms on the south side of the house. The folding screens were placed to cover the blackness from the cold garden outside. Through the painted cranes on the silk, she saw the faint glow of bonfires and signal flames outside. Neji was there, and so was Hanabi.

"Hi, oneesan." she said, around a mouthful of rice. She spotted Sasuke and scowled. "Mean." she said. Neji lifted his head behind her and Hinata saw his elegant features crease into a sharp, narrow-eyed frown.

Her feelings mixed and she couldn't feel simply worried or simply pleased. It was a relief to see them both, and she felt herself warming up. She felt like she'd been missing an essential piece of herself, her life and the world around her, just from being away from them. She would have liked to hug them, but that was not something Hanabi would appreciate- "not in front of people, oneesan! Geez!"- and, of course, there would be no hugging with Neji.

But there was a problem. Because Sasuke spent the rest of the meal glaring. At Neji. Neji spent the entire meal, solidly, back to back, glaring at Sasuke.

Hanabi giggled, her eyes alight at the sudden awareness of all this silent, jagged antipathy. Hinata knew her sister would be delighted if there was a fight. She reached under the low table and tapped Hanabi's knee with two fingers. She shook her head discretely when Hanabi's alert white eyes flashed to look at her. "Aw." Hanabi mouthed, silently. Then she composed herself into a sweet, innocent little smile and went back to watching Sasuke and Neji glare daggers at one another. In the midst of that, Hinata felt she should try to make polite conversation.

Neji and Sasuke stayed quiet. Hinata nervously drank cup after cup of tea. Too fast, she burned her tongue. "How was your mission, Hanabi-chan?" she said.

"Boooring." Hanabi declared. "Boring! Choji-sensei didn't do the thing." She meant Akimichi Choji's family jutsu where he turned himself into a massive rolling ball and steamrolled his opponent. Hanabi and her teammates thought it was hilarious. "No fun." Hanabi said, flicking her wrist dramatically, in that theatrical way that made Hinata frown, displeased, though it was hard for her to articulate why.. Hanabi's eyes restlessly moved to Sasuke's face, then Neji's. Back and forth, as Hinata watched, her teacup frozen halfway between the table and her lips.

To ask Hanabi to stop feeding the tension would make a scene. Of course, it would be unthinkably impolite to address their behavior directly.

"Were the old farts mean to you?" Hanabi enquired, speculatively. "I bet the oldest fart was." Hanabi cast distinctions between which of the council elders was the biggest old fart. Hinata couldn't follow her reasons, they seemed to shift with the winds. "I bet the old witch was," Hanabi said, giggling. "That old witch is so mean, I hope she's next."

"Hanabi." Hinata scolded her, frowning.

"Please, oneesan." Hanabi continued, refusing to cooperate and now throwing herself into an imitation of those horrible disrespectful attitudes she saw on television. Her eyes tracked Hinata's, judging and calculating how far she could go, how much disobedience she could get away with. It was a game to her. Hinata shook her head curtly, and took her eyes away from her sister. The signal was that she would not participate, and she would not play the game. This was supposed to improve the behavior, according to the book on raising young teenagers that Sakura had given her. So far it wasn't working at all.

She heard her sister's giggle, Hanabi had seen the alarm on Hinata's face. And now, Hinata thought, her sister seemed a bit worse then usual, as if energized and filled with unstable currents of mood, picked up from the tense, strange atmosphere of the house. As if shaken by her own grief- she must just be doing it in a strange, oppositional, defiant thirteen year old way.

Hinata gathered her disapproval and corked it up. It was not the time. She could not spare this energy.

"I'm glad he's dead." Hanabi said alight with defiant glee-

-and the words went through Hinata like an arc welder's torch flame, white fire, she squeezed her eyes shut and for a moment, just tried to force herself to breathe. Don't react. Breathe. Sasuke's arm came around her, and she was pulled closer to his side, his hair brushed against her forehead, the warmth of his body heat settled against her. Neji's sharp intake of breath and then, low-voiced "You take your hands off her."

"Make me." Sasuke's voice was different, haughty and cold, a sharp little half-chuckle preceding the words, like Neji was so contemptible- and then she heard Neji set his teacup down hard.

"No," she whispered. She heard the rustle of Neji's linen pants and jacket as he got up.

"Sit down, you're not impressing anyone."

"Am I boring you, Uchiha?"

"You're embarrassing yourself."

"You're not going to be bored in a minute."

Their scornful voices circled. She could feel that tension between them spitting like cobra venom, like an arcing current of lighting. "No!" she said, opening her eyes. They both looked at her, instantly, Neji on his feet and Sasuke coolly regarding him, his arm slung around her shoulders as if it were casual, and it wasn't a direct provocation. They looked and even Hanabi's gaze flicked to her, but she couldn't stop. "No!" she was shouting, screaming. The word was ripping out of her, sharp and fast like the flying edge of a shuriken, ripping through the air. "No!" she was on her feet, slipping free of Sasuke who looked up at her, a kind of helpless astonishment dawning on his face.

In her peripheral vision she saw Neji's sharp eyes lock on her, concern and that same impossible barrier between them there, that wall of distance and anger that he held between them, she couldn't stand it. "No!" she was crying, but she felt the tears on her cheeks before it could register that she was. She stepped back from them. Hanabi stared, for once the lazy teenage disrespect off her face. Sasuke reached for her. "Hinata," he said, concerned.

"Hands off!" snapped Neji, throwing down his napkin.

"You leave her alone, you've upset her." Sasuke rounded on him, his voice shifting to absolute steel so fast, it made her dizzy. She couldn't stand this.

"Oneesan!" Hanabi called after her, like she didn't understand what was going on. Like something completely unexpected and new had happened. Like she didn't love it, the disorder and chaos of it, for once.

Hinata heard their voices- Sasuke taunting Neji, accusing him of the mess that had happened back at the chuunin exam, Neji angrily shouting back, she could almost feel the ripples of furious tense energy that bled out of the room behind her- and faded, as she tore down the hall and almost slipped on the freshly polished floors. She heard the whisper of Hanabi's swift feet over the tatami mats, but she moved into the warren of the back third of the house, through narrow paper hallways, twists and turns. Away from even the other members of her family, scattered languidly as they were, the constant quiet motion of the servants. Where was she going? She didn't know.

She was fine, she was fine, she told herself, the voice of her inner thoughts whirling around the words, going nowhere. She was fine, things were fine, everything was fine, Neji just hated Sasuke and Sasuke hated Neji and Sasuke hated her family and her family hated Sasuke and her father was gone and he wouldn't reappear, he wouldn't come to her, it was unfair and she ran blindly, tears blurring the disjoined snatches of corridors and paper doors. The blurs of candle flames tore past her. Incense glows prickled out their hidden orange claws, here and there, they seemed to circle too. But it was her who was running in circles. She sank dizzily to one knee, her hand slapping graceless over polished wood, scrabbling for balance.

The soft heat of candles brushed her wet cheek, and she blinked the tears from her eyes.

She was in the temple. Behind her, the heavy wooden doors stood ajar, she'd flown through them, tearing them open. The white shrouds hung to ward off the evil spirits hung lopsided.

One of her fingers stung, she'd torn a fingernail in her haste. She raised her head, not wanting to look further into the temple's cedar-walled sanctum. Not wanting to look, but she found she couldn't look anywhere else.

The coffin stood, dead and heavy, abandoned by the living. The candles burned around it. Meaninglessly, she thought. Her byakugan flashed upon the six gold coins placed in her father's limp hand. On his chest, on the angle of his dead heart, a black iron knife. More proof against bad luck and wispy insinuation. Her family was too hardheaded for the full act of faith. Her family's legends were just a handful of words to her. Death was an abrupt ending, and her father was completely dead.

She slowly got herself upright again. She made a clear decision, bright margins in thought, not to think too hard about this. Neji said that to her. Don't think. Don't open that door in your own mind. He meant the cold dark place in everyone where they put things that they couldn't handle thinking about, day to day. Not just death.. and who thought too hard about their death? She was going to die, everyone was. She didn't think about it, and in a way you couldn't think about it. It was too far away. It didn't seem real. Don't. Her memory of Neji's voice, his quick, clipped words. Don't- you'll destroy what little peace you have. He made that mistake himself. He thought.. and thought and thought, and couldn't let go of his father's murder, and it almost destroyed his own life. Don't. She rubbed inarticulately at her burning eyes and her wet nose. She rummaged in the obi for a tissue. She didn't have one. She hadn't packed one, hidden it, knowing she would need it later. She'd been too distracted. Unwilling to leave Sasuke's arms for a second.

She used her byakugan to peer down the dark hall behind her. She couldn't take her eyes off the coffin, it weighted her down... like the cast iron blocks they attached to water traps, to drag them to the ocean bottom, she thought. Inside was something that was not her father any longer. The byakugan could pierce too deeply if she wasn't careful, reveal muscles and strange gristly juts of bone, livid white jelly in the gaps of his spine and blue blood vessels under her father's safe, normal face. She couldn't stop herself. A dead corpse, she thought. She could see the start of decay. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressed the heels of her hands against them until ugly purple spots flashed before her.

She put her hands down by her side, because she was making a scene. She was being a bother.

There was no one around, and she still felt she was making a spectacle of herself.

Why am I even here? she thought, her shoulders tightening. Making things worse.. overreacting. Running away like that.. she shook her head, clumsily fast, wrong somehow... in the tense awkwardness of the gesture. Why am I here? She walked past the coffin. In the wrong direction. Deeper into the temple rooms. Turn around, she thought. She felt mostly apathy, bone-deep. That same sense of absolute futility, the shadow of what had taken Neji, his destructive obsession with his unchangeable destiny. Her own absolute mortality, that of her family, her father gone- and absolutely nothing she could do about it.

She was being ridiculous. Childish. She was a ninja. She was almost a jounin! She was.. she had to be.. she had been taught, trained to be comfortable with death. To work, sometimes, you had to think of yourself as already dead. To kill the people she had- three of them- she had to do that to herself. It was how soldiers thought, people at war. It was how you protected yourself. It ate you up otherwise.

So she should protect herself now.

She wondered where Sasuke was, he would have chased her. She knew him that well.

She had heard Neji's voice, their argument, she had heard a scuffle behind her. Maybe Neji had stopped him.

She wasn't sure if she wanted Sasuke to come to her or not.

To have him here with her, standing by the coffin, walking past it to get to her... wouldn't she feel his cynicism as an outrage, an insult to what was here, what she believed? What she should believe. Where was her belief now?

Her hands found the double doors, the storm windows were damp and the room was dark even with their wide glass panes. It was not yet eight and it was heavy and black outside. Not long past sundown yet, but the sky full of heavy clouds, purple like deep bruises. She opened the doors. The cold bite of the wind slapped her in the face, stingingly. Numbness, like before. Everything could only skim the surface. Nothing could get at this cold part of her. She stepped outside. The door rattled in the wind behind her. She didn't know where she was going. She was going nowhere, that made sense. That made as much sense as anything else did.

Dark skies overhead, cut by the darker ridged line of the roof. The chimneys from the woodstove network, the furnace, they gleamed tarnished tin-silver in the lurid dampened firelight. She looked to the west and couldn't see the glow of the village center at all, just a damp crumple of clouds, like the wet clumps of kleenex she had left everywhere- that almost stuck to her now, damp with her impossible, undignified grief. It took her a moment to realize that it was dizziness, again, shaking her from her knees before cresting over her. She reached blindly for the balcony railing. It's cold bit at her fingers. Suddenly there was a hand on her shoulder.

Sasuke. she thought, but it wasn't Sasuke, it was a larger, wider hand. It was a warm solid chest and thick grey woolen robes over pressed white linen, the clean soap scent and the strong arms of her-

No! she thought, but the thought drowned far away from her. The wide hands raised her face and his eyes were somehow different, not how he'd been in life. The curve of his smile reminded her of the edge of the horizon, for it's strange serenity. No heavy creases under his eyes now, no pinched look of harried impatience, none of his anger. Half-remembered faces behind him, glimpsed and fading away from her, warm in candlelight. His words, different somehow then she remembered,

Then a voice that was sharper, louder, different- she was used to this other kind of voice- so close to her. She startled but she couldn't move, her body was numb and heavy. "Hinata! Hinata...!" Sasuke. Panicked. "Hinata!"

Neji's cold voice, clenched in anger. "Stop it-"

"Get away from her!" panic, the sound of raw fear in Sasuke's. "Don't you touch her!" The sound of a hand being smacked away, the sharp crack of flesh.

Neji, exasperated. "You're hysterical. The great Uchiha Sasuke, screaming like a hysterical-"

"Shut up! You did this to her!" The hard rattle and the shake of the balcony under her, a wet grunt of air rushing out of Neji, Sasuke must have shoved him against the railing, the thud of his body striking it. Sasuke's hands on the front of her kimono, pulling it apart and his fingers feeling frantically for her pulse.

Neji's voice was ragged with his labored breathing, when it came. His contempt was stinging and acidic, she would have flinched. She couldn't move. "Tell me again that you aren't crazy, Uchiha."

But it was Sasuke's breathing that she heard so close to her, finally slowing- as he realized that she was still alive.

"We're being very dramatic, aren't we boys?" That was Miya, and she sounded like she had the situation in hand. It was sometime later. Time wasn't working right. "Act your age. Both of you." There was a cold wetness, soft nubbles of a cloth on her forehead. Her head pounded slowly, long deep drumbeats.

"Your fault." she heard Neji's whisper, further away.

"Shut up." Sasuke's, just as furtive.

"Leave."

"You first. Asshole."

"Traitor."

"Coward."

"I can hear that," Miya said, her voice almost amused in it's sternness.

Hinata lay still and tried not to disturb her pounding head. Water flowed down the side of her forehead and soaked into her hair, against her neck. She tried to remember, to hold in her mind to grasp.. as if she'd forget, it would fade like a dream... the words. The words that weren't, because they had no sound. The change in her father. There was no language to attach to it. She tried to put together what he had said, put it into words.. when it wasn't words at all. It was feelings.

Or something close to that, something more fluid and quicksilvery. There's no mistake and take care of the house and I understand now and Hinata-chan said with more affection then he ever had in his voice before. Intimations of mistakes that he'd already forgiven himself for, mistakes that he'd forgiven in her so completely, do your best and I know you will.

She tried to fasten it to some mnemonic, so that it would float, buoyed in her memory even when she lost consciousness fully. She did, almost immediately.

-----

Neji was lucky he still had all his teeth. Neji was lucky that his nose wasn't smashed into his face, the shards of bone driven up towards his brain, lucky he didn't have the top vertebrae under his skull shattered into dust, lucky he didn't have two black eyes, lucky he wouldn't be walking with a limp for the rest of his life. Lucky he walked away alive at all. The curses, the bad words, they didn't come close. Neji was- Sasuke found Hinata cold and turning blue, not breathing. Neji was lucky he still had his arrogant face in one piece to smirk with, all the bones under it still intact and in the right places, his beady little white eyes not pounded until they were punctured, as his eye sockets gave way. Lucky that he wasn't strung up in razorwire and flayed alive. Neji was lucky that Hinata gave a damn about him at all.

Sasuke actually didn't want to talk about what happened, he didn't want to even think about it.

The old woman's ninja girls and some of the same group of retainers intervened before he could slam Neji over the steel railing, shatter his spine over it.

Too bad. he thought, savagely. His fists clenched.

Hysterical?

That fucking asshole! That fucking asshole! That-

The old woman made him go train. The fucking retainers backed her up. They 'escorted' him to a Hyuga training yard in the middle of the house. Sasuke took it out on the bare wood, his own knuckles, the bones of his hands. He'd done this recently- too recently. He could only throw this kind of tantrum every so often, and let himself heal up between them. His body was there to absorb the fury of his emotions, which couldn't get out any other way. Other then killing- and killing had to be a disciplined thing. It was too soon. His hands felt hot with pain afterwards. They swelled.

"Aah, you keep doing this and you'll have arthritis when you're my age." the old woman scolded. She taped up his bruised fingers. She made him soak them in more strange-smelling herb potions first. He glared- and she didn't give a damn any more than the rest of them. It felt personal, somehow, when he'd fucking trusted her.

"You want me to lie to you?" she asked him, with a knowing smile that should have absolutely ignited his temper, sent it roaring through the ceiling. But instead, he felt tired of fury. And a bit embarrassed, besides. How long could her carry on like this, acting like a spoiled and petulant child? He was almost twenty. So he just shoved air out of his lungs, trying to calm down. "I'm not going to tell you you're right when you're not, dear." she said. Her hand patted his uninjured shoulder, she'd already had her way with the other one. He had to admit that it hurt less.

He put his head down to help with the square breathing, and also so he didn't have to look at her. Because he was still not very happy with her and it was something she should know.

Hinata was up in her room, so he went to stay there with her. She was out from exhaustion and she had a slight fever- that was why she had collapsed. But it was not serious. It was just standard stress and the effects of days of slow rundown, not enough eating, crying, grief taking it's physical toll. She would wake in a few hours. He must have slipped, triggered- she had been breathing. Shallowly. She must have been. Orochimaru still had genjutsu coils all through him. Timed explosives. He had said- persuasion genjutsu. And Orochimaru had replied- close- operant conditioning. Post-hypnotic suggestions, so really... and of those hidden genjutsu bombs could go off, shake his sense of reality, any time.

But he felt more like himself now. He paused outside her door, making sure.

And then- he checked to see if Neji was there.

Beating Neji into a pulp wouldn't solve anything, wouldn't get him closer to his goals, wouldn't make Hinata feel any better. And hurting her would make him feel worse. The pleasure of breaking Neji into bloody little pieces wouldn't make up for that. Neji was not there. There was one lamp burning by her bed. There was a ruffle of feathers- night birds outside her window, stirring the melting remnants of snow. It was warm enough that night for the melting and the dripping water to continue through the darkness, and permeate the wood and paper walls. But Neji's peculiar chakra was not there. The room was empty of all chakra and breath except that of Hinata herself.

So he went and sat by her futon. She lay in the center, on her back with the quilt pulled square and straight over her, up to her chin.

Since she was okay, he could brood again.

Or, that was, he couldn't not brood.

He hated that.. his skin crawled with the hatred and he didn't hate lightly. Hated having panic attacks in public.

Which is what it was, he told himself dully. He wasn't in the mood to mince words.

He knew because Orochimaru had given him the literature and he'd read it. Orochimaru had diagnosed him- battle fatigue. They used to call it soldier's heart, they called it something else now. Post-traumatic-something. He couldn't remember, he'd stopped reading the scrolls on it, he'd gotten too depressed to continue. Orochimaru had ruffled his hair, standing over him. You're a lucky boy, I'm a licensed trauma counselor. Orochimaru said, sweetness and little shoots of malice in his voice. Among my many, many other glorious achievements. Why don't you tell me all about it. Tell me, how do you feel? Sasuke clamped down on his throat, concentrating on not being sick, not all over Hinata's pretty indigo print quilt, the quiet serenity of her bedroom. He calculated the steps to the bathroom in the hall, how soon he'd have to get up as soon he knew for sure he was going to throw up.

He usually would throw toxic little curses at the memories, try to blister Orochimaru out of his head with the words. But this time, he just slowly rested his head back against his hands, where he'd folded them carelessly over the edge of her futon. It was starting to feel useless. Worse than useless. Orochimaru loved his hatred, loved it because it was passionate and Orochimaru wanted to shatter the stoic mask Sasuke tried to hold between them. Hating Orochimaru just fed him, like the bloodsucker he was, the maggot- Sasuke paused, breathed. Square breaths. Got himself back under control. No point to it, to any of these thoughts. Hating Orochimaru was useless because it just gave Orochimaru what he wanted.

That was probably what Itachi wanted, too.

You haven't destroyed me yet. Sasuke thought. He closed his eyes for a moment.

Oh? Orochimaru didn't even have to be there for Sasuke to picture his reaction. I think he's beaten you, Sasuke-kun. Don't you agree, Kabuto-kun? Orochimaru's chorus of crawling toadies. Sasuke got up to splash some water on his face, get out of this train of thought.

Thoughts followed him, walking like the ghosts in his wake. Sakura, white-faced and her eyes almost gleaming, bright as gemstones with sharp daylight caught in the facets. Caught in a subterranean shaft of white daylight. Dust and blood smeared across her face, holding one scuffed black fist up to him, speaking in a growl that seemed so unlike her, furious with him. Hurt yourself- hurt yourself if you're so determined to do it! But don't you ever hurt him! She meant Naruto.

He made himself be cold about it. Wonder why she was standing between Naruto and himself, forget to wonder what had changed, forget to think about what she said.

He laughed, tonelessly. It was just a brief, ragged half-snort. Stupid of her, saying that. He'd already hurt Naruto.

Bravado, he thought.

And behind it, guilt. Crushing.

Fucking Naruto would be here in his face, anyway. Stupid to feel guilty. Stupid of him. He rubbed his eyes. Couldn't stop himself from thinking.

Their little reunion. He was venomous already about it and it shouldn't have surprised him. Bound with blood to poisonous snakes... bound to be cruel to them, to maybe really end it this time. One way or another, he thought that it felt like an ending to him, already, this would be a line that could never be uncrossed. It would happen, whether he liked it or not.

It was going to be ugly, he could feel it. He had to stop thinking and casting around for ways to avoid it.

He heard movement in the bedroom behind him as he leaned over the sink. He shut off the faucet. When he slipped back to the doorway, he saw one of those ninja-girls walking across the room.

"Music." she said, when he came in and gave her a reproachful look. These girls- or this one, anyway- were always cheerful in a slightly wise, joking way and it annoyed him. He crossed his arms. "It helps." the girl said, shrugging off his glare. "It helps people wake up."

"She'll wake up anyway." he pointed out as the girl knelt and sorted through a box of cassettes in Hinata's lower bookshelf.

"This'll make her feel better when she does."

A band he didn't much like and was surprised Hinata liked, honestly. -died in the church and was buried along with her name- Actually wait- he knew this song and he fucking hated it. This was going to make her feel better, a depressing song like this? -wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave- He slipped back into the hall, he didn't need this aggravation. The sound fell to a murmur as he turned the corner, absorbed by the worked paper hull of the house.

And in it's place, the hushed distant sound, the mechanical lungs of the furnace, it's metal grates and it's slow creep of heat.

The house was dark, like the darkness outside was heavy and no light could get through it. He stopped at a window in the solarium rooms on the east side of the wing- and saw that it was just fog, from the looks of the blazing firepits on the grounds below, and the way the flames and their light it faded out before it hit the evergreens in the gardens beyond. Different, but it reminded him of the way the house had been just before the ice storm began, when freezing rain had pounded at the storm windows and servants scurried on floors above and beneath him, locking window frames and pulling heavy curtains. The rain was gone but the house was full of whispers now. The empty wing seemed to stretch on forever behind him, like a spatial genjutsu. He could walk around in circles, see no one. Only a little of the fire's glow could make it up through the fog, there was only a small golden glitter of it on the bottom facet of the windowpane. Even the cats weren't around- hiding, he thought. The furnace shifted through the house, switched on and breathed hard through steel vents at his bare toes. He shivered.

He knew what he wanted.

He wanted to be back in Hinata's room, to get into bed with her, to wrap her up in his arms. To just lie with her, and feel that she was alive. It wouldn't have to be sexual, just the sheer pleasure of not sleeping alone for a change. The heat and presence of another person. He had starved himself of it forever, decided that he didn't need it. And- that would make him strong. He who could stand alone, need no one, attract the same kind of attention for it that he'd always disliked but fed on- refuse to accept any of it.

Affection or closeness. He wasn't ready to take it from Naruto or Sakura. He needed time- and he got close. Orochimaru ended it. Before that, he pushed it away himself in the first brutal beatdown of grief. And by the time maybe he was ready to be more reasonable about it.. well, by then he'd formed his iron definitions of strength and power. There was to be no room for deviation on any part of them, they had to be followed to the letter. To do otherwise would be to admit to weakness, admit to being exactly what Itachi had said. He couldn't allow that. He couldn't afford it, to be exact. He stood alone. A person alone had to depend only on themselves. No mistakes could be made- ever.

So, he thought that- given his track record- he ought to have refused to allow himself anything of the sort. No warmth, no cuddling with her. Only his hard precepts of strength. He paused and walked down the line of solarium windows. He stepped carefully around the heavy brass urns, none of them were filled with potted plants, not this time of year. He saw the eerie green speckle-glow under one of them, turned on it's side. A cat, and it's silted eye. He had grown up with them, and knew their ways. If this one wanted company, it would come out by itself.

He thought about her. His eyes had lingered on her soft hair and the gleam of even the dim incandescent lamp playing in it. Almost purple against the deep indigo dye of her bed sheets. Her cheek looking soft and by then, with a bit of color back in it, reassuringly alive. He should have just gone to bed with her. He should have refused, decided to deny himself that tiny bit of comfort- just because. The paradox of pain was that it had a little thrill attached to it. He knew that- from experience, the paradox of depression was that he found it too depressing to study at any kind of length. He had to make guesses. He probably wouldn't allow himself this, his mood was too strange tonight. It would be right in line with the rest of his behavior to date, wouldn't it?

Well, it turned out that some of Hinata's crazy relatives were in the mood to discuss just that. His behavior.

Their words, not his.

There was a flurry of servants outside the solarium's open doors. They made a racket, so even the slowest student in his old academy class could have heard them coming. It amused him to think that actually, the slowest student was Naruto. Even Naruto would have perked up an ear.

The three of them were not ninjas, they were too unguarded on their feet, and too loud with their chatter besides. Sasuke watched their shadowplay of hands from behind the paper walls before one stuck his head in the room. "Uchiha Sasuke-san?" It was a young man, maybe five years older then he was himself. A manner that reminded him of the civil servants, their complete lack of training. It annoyed him, somehow, to have them address him by name.

So he turned his back on them and walked to the faint golden glow at the bank of windows. After a moment, he decided to not respond either.

The messenger plowed ahead. "Hyuga Yasuo-sama will see you now."

Sasuke scowled, and caught the glimmer of it in the window. The half-light made faint reflections on the glass. He didn't recall asking for a fucking audience with this 'Hyuga Yasuo', whoever he was. He considered not turning around, and he heard the shuffle of the two others in the hall. All three of them would be no problem, but they could call for retainers. The retainers were jounin, and they generally meant business. Sasuke could probably deal with them- given luck and timing that didn't allow them to swarm on him, given speed and adrenaline and the willingness to fight lethally if it came to that. But if he was going to plant his feet, refuse and force them to get rough- well, if he was going to do that, he might as well just walk out of this house now. Save himself the trouble of getting thrown out- pin-cushioned all over again- later.

So in the interests of getting the hell on with it, he went with the three of them. They were dressed as ridiculously as everyone else in the house, all the Hyuga strutting around in their ceremonial clothes, dripping with their wealth. The two guards outside Hinata's private wing looked him over with a mixture of boredom and dutiful focus. He felt like holding his hands out to them, showing them that he had no weapons. Then flipping them off. That would be fun. But- about that.

These Hyuga looked at him like he was nothing.

Worse than nothing, beneath nothing. It wasn't as if he was simply a normal villager, they seemed to have a lot of those on hand. There were the ninjas that made up the guard, and the hidden ninjas like the old woman, but there were also plenty of civilians around, working as staff or as administrative attendants to various pompous Hyuga family officials. The various Hyuga seemed to treat these villagers reasonably well. Their stiff little manners didn't seem to allow for any vulgar class awareness, that would be so déclassé. So it wasn't that they thought he was from a lesser social strata- which he was not, incidentally. It was that they seemed to feel he had fallen, betrayed something. They sneered, and it seemed personal to them.

Was it because of the massacre? Or maybe it was because of his defection from the village.

Still, who were they to judge? They terrorized Hinata! Her asshole of a cousin, and her raging fucking bully of a father- what kind of sick bastard yelled and screamed at a little girl? Even he wouldn't do that, and he was supposedly evil fucking incarnate.. the way some of these Hyuga went on about him.

So what it was, he concluded, was that the Hyuga were both monumentally self-important and gigantic hypocrites.

So they could all go to hell. Just like he was meant to tell them. He crossed his arms, following behind one messenger and flanked by the other two, pleased with that decision.

And yet, still...

It wasn't easy, to be here. To deal with this.

Not that it would, or should sway him, he thought. She was giving him the gift of time. And of resources. And of rest, peace, home and a family, all of that again. He would finally have something to fight Itachi with other than his fists and impotent rage.

And all around him, the Hyuga were whispering. They weren't all sleeping, not even at this late hour. They were observing funeral rites, and their drinking and quiet discussions burned long into the night. The servants slipped in and out of his path through the hushed network of half-lit paper hallways, long wooden matches in their hands to relight paper lanterns. The click of mahjong tiles and the heavy opium-like scent of the carved tobacco pipes was heady, subliminal, almost conjuring the dead. That was what this was for, this slow ritual. Sasuke stayed invulnerable. He was good at looking like he was, at least.

Panic attacks were fine when he was alone. But now, he was surrounded. So many Hyuga. And they were all watching. That Uchiha boy. They needed no excuse to look down on him, no slip in his perfect composure, no hard evidence. But he didn't want to give them the satisfaction. He assumed the posture of defense he'd used for Orochimaru and Kabuto, the complete expressionlessness, the locked down emotion, the pretense of serenity. The Hyuga looked him over, from behind teacups and newspapers, from the slow curl of scented tobacco smoke and from intersections of paper doors half-closed, their millions of little inter-clan conspiracies. White eyes looked him over like slow hands, feeling for pressure points. He looked back, glassily. He walked downstairs and the messengers followed. White eyes, lazy and focused, sharp and languid, all of them interested in some way for good or ill- followed his every step.

He was momentarily glad to be in a room with only one of them, when they took him to a large tatami room, wooden walls and typical inked wall scrolls. Cloudy half-light from the fires falling over one Hyuga. Only one. The messengers opened the paper door for him. Sasuke blinked in the change of light, and saw the single occupant more by his chakra shadow than anything else.

"Sit down, sit down." this person said. An old man from the sound of his voice. Grandfatherly, and trying just a bit too hard to be friendly, Sasuke thought. The sliding door was being shut behind him.

He sat before this person, squares of tatami between them.

His eyes adjusted quickly. He saw a typical old Hyuga man. He'd seen plenty of Hyuga around. They all wore their hair long, they favored old-style clothes and a particular set of muted sky colors. They all were fastidious, not a hair out of place, nails filed like a Mandarin merchant, he thought. He stuck out, clearly... with his typically unruly hair, his hands scarred and- at the moment- bruised and bandaged. His nails alternately cut deep to the quick or bitten to it.

"You look like a man who has little time for small talk." this Hyuga said. Sasuke didn't like his choice of words, it felt like flattery. These people didn't respect him and they didn't think of him as an adult.

So he said nothing.

The old man talked on, and Sasuke thought he could get a sense for him. He was a word-painter. That was Orochimaru's term. For himself. For a manipulator, Sasuke recognized the tactics.

The old man had servants bring tea. Sasuke hesitated before drinking. Poisoned? Drugged? He looked down at the greenish liquid, but it seemed like refusing to drink it would be a loss of face.

Because...

..the more these people said he was a criminal, the more they said he was a wild animal, the more they said his blood was mixed and muddied, the more he wanted to whip out his old manners, his old upbringing, and show them how wrong they were. He'd been raised as well as any of the children of this house.

So he hesitated before walking out, being rude, arranging his shoulders and the tilt of his head to communicate his cold disinterest. Rudeness would just be grist for these people and their fucking rumor mill- that was another thing the Hyuga could think about, the next time they started singing their own praises. This house was full of gossip. And he wasn't sure if he wanted to hear about that Uchiha- and he was rude to the elders! Was it worth it? He liked his blood pressure where it was.

"You're a smart lad." Hyuga Yasuo said. He'd introduced himself, asked Sasuke a series of polite questions that were meaningless small talk regardless. Sasuke put down his cup, which seemed to just be normal tea. He didn't taste anything untoward. Now Hyuga Yasuo was coming to the point.

Sasuke was watching his eyes, now that he was accustomed to the dim lantern light of the room. . Eyes like the scales of a snake oil salesman, constantly weighing and calculating. Sasuke could almost see the wheels turning in his balding head, the way the old man had decided to approach this.

And the point was flattery. Sasuke kept his face composed and unemotional. But- not the glassy serenity either, he could assume that these Hyuga could see through that. He held on to his suspicions and listened. Hyuga Yasuo didn't much want to talk about anything of importance. He praised Sasuke's skill and his speed- he joked about the 'little incident' with Neji. Sasuke suppressed the urge to frown suspiciously, because there was no way the upper power structure of this house would find that little episode amusing. "That's impressive, evading the main house guard." Hyuga Yasuo said, with a slow, fluid chuckle. Sasuke hadn't evaded all of them, just the first four. The next twenty had grabbed him.

And as it went on, Sasuke decided that the real point of this was for Hyuga Yasuo to get a look at him, get a feel for how he could be pushed and persuaded. It may be a tactical mistake to put on his manners. Maybe he should push the other direction, be as rude as he could? That could be a way to throw Hyuga Yasuo off- and whomever was behind him, this house had even more conspiracies than gossips. But, that could be a way of bringing them too close to where his real weaknesses were located. Sasuke fought the urge to close his eyes and just listen to the man's voice, let sound magic paint it's own abstract rorschach blots in his own mind's eye. He could get a feel for the man's intentions, then.

But the problem with people like this was that sometimes, they didn't have intentions. Not clear ones. Not ones that made sense to Sasuke, who was- lets face it- not the most whimsical person, not the sort of person given to a lot of intensely creative and outlandish thinking. And a true, gifted liar knew no rules of boundaries, no limit of hyperbolic heights. It gave Sasuke a headache at the best of times.

So he left the meeting disoriented, sensory overload, from the sound magic trying to decipher the colors and insinuations that flew through Hyuga Yasuo's voice.

The messengers seemed to feel that he didn't know the layout of the house yet. They took him back, and as they did, he paused at the windows. Each in turn, here and there. The firepits burnt relentlessly, distorting the fog and the light balance of the night air. It was hard for Sasuke to tell what time it was, when usually he could make an accurate guess. There were also too many people awake, you gauged the tenor of the night air by the weight of sleepers breathing slowly throughout the house.

But the clocks in the Hyuga house worked slowly now, spun backwards, there was no direct order, the entire household was shuffled together for the funeral and the ceremonies. Sasuke turned away from wing that had closed behind him, as a messenger reached back to fasten the wooden doors shut. The sleepless Hyuga were shut behind it, he was momentarily out of their direct line of sight. Byakugan or not... and as he leaned on a cold windowsill, his bruised palm stinging with the weight of his body, he thought that maybe that was the point. Overload his sound magic. Set him before a skilled liar. Lies were complicated things, it took time and effort to unweave the web of sound in them and get at their hidden motives. But then he wondered if the old Hyuga had used genjutsu. Had the messengers? No, they weren't ninja. Ah- but maybe they only pretended to not be ninja. Maybe the tea really had been drugged. But if this house wanted to drug him, why didn't they have the guards do it? Poisoned needletip, do it in the scuffle. He'd never notice between the metal spurs on their wrists and gloves.

He'd never notice... but if the point was to control him, why let him join the clan? They must have given him that option, the place to put his bloody fingerprint into the clan roster, for a reason. Was it just because they thought they could control him like they controlled Hinata? Did they mean to appropriate the Uchiha clan's jutsu for themselves? They didn't seem to much care about it, and their library was full of sister techniques to almost all the Uchiha jutsu Sasuke knew, anyway. Did they just feel he couldn't do any harm to them? Or maybe... well, he didn't know, he couldn't tell. He needed more time to study them. And less to feel this paranoid. But maybe it was smart to feel that way. Maybe they wanted him to feel paranoid and that was their game. Maybe... well, he was getting nowhere with this line of thought.

Back in Hinata's room, and the hiss of silence moved around him as he walked in. He saw the reels of her tapedeck turning, playing endless yards of blank tape. He pushed the power switch. On her desk was the contract he'd signed- and they hadn't asked for it back yet. He couldn't see his fingerprint, that was buried in the coil of the scroll. He sat on the edge of Hinata's futon and wondered vaguely where Neji was and if he was being kept away. Or if he'd already come?

Maybe the Hyuga had meant to simply get him away from Hinata. He looked over at her, and she had not stirred. So much for the depressing song, he thought tiredly. He thought that he was too tired to really deal with things anyway. He would have trained far into the night, usually, slept only when he could no longer keep his eyes open without swaying on his feet. But that kind of masochistic punishment hadn't really appealed to him for a while, now. Not since the cottage... no, before that. The power outage. He yawned hard into his hands. He was always telling her to rest and yet he almost never took his own advice.

Hyuga Yasuo. Some person of importance, from the way the servants behaved. The honorific- Yasuo-sama- always a key clue in this house. Hinata's grandfather- assuming that wasn't a lie too. Though they would expect him to compare notes with Hinata, obviously. And the man's name: honesty. What a joke, this man was the least honest person Sasuke had ever seen!

He'd lied through the entire meeting, but maybe that wasn't worth getting angry about either. Sasuke closed her bedroom door. He was almost entirely undressed before he remembered- right, he was supposed to deny himself. Well, too late. He got into bed with her, tucked the covers securely around them. Hinata shifted against him, murmured in her dreams. Her warm hands seemed to clutch at the edge of the plain cotton sleep t shirt he wore. She didn't wake. They both woke up hours later. If cuddling with her weakened him, he didn't notice it happening.

-----

A cold morning. Sasuke was already awake. The furnace seemed still, so the power must still be intermittent. Sasuke sighed, somewhere close to her, but lost in the darkness. He shivered, lay back down with her. And then a moment later his arms moved around her. His cheek was cold against hers.

If there were dreams, she could only see the tail edge of them, like the ends of flight feathers on a retreating bird as it shot into the shrubs in the garden. She couldn't remember what day it was, and as she thought, she couldn't remember even when she had gone to bed. A sudden worry bloomed that she had missed the cremation- why hadn't the family woken her? "What..." she murmured. Her throat was dry and the words came out clumsily. "..time is it?" She wanted to say 'what happened', but Sasuke spoke and interrupted her before she could.

"Four." he said, his voice thick with sleep. "Or five. I think." She turned her head to look at her clock but she would have to turn on the lanterns to see it's numbers. Or it's hands, though sometimes starlight and the changing angle of the moon would make it's silver hands glitter in the dark. Not tonight. Or this morning. She thought that the house around her felt more like early morning than night. And there were no sounds of owls or their heavy wings outside. Sometimes they would come to roost under the wooden eaves above her window. They flew in the darkest part of the night.

"You collapsed of exhaustion." Sasuke said. "You were out for nine hours."

She tried to make that fit into her memory. She grasped for pieces. "...we went to dinner..." she said, almost to herself.

"Right. Your cousin ruined it."

She frowned, but thought.. of course, her memory would be muddled if she was already feeling faint by then. She felt okay now, she thought, if a bit cloudy and heavily slept. She couldn't remember what had happened, why she was here but-

Then she remembered.

"Could be a hallucination." Sasuke said when she told him. She knew she told him just to hear him say that.

"I know." she said.

His voice sounded strange to her, as if made different in the dark. Or maybe it was just the subject. She knew a bit about his family, they had discussed it. He said that the dead Uchiha all turned to free-floating hostility and malice. "Ghosts," he said, distantly. "but not of them. They look the same, but it's not really them anymore." she caught the flicker of his eye as he glanced at her over her shoulder.

That was true, she thought. She remembered her father's body, like a puppet with it's wooden back broken. Someone intangible was gone, and he was no longer there.

"I think only the living care about this at all." she whispered. "I... " She didn't think her father cared whether he was burnt on the day of the moon's fullness or the day of no moon at all, whether it was the day named for the sun or that for the moon or any other planet, did anyone care but the living? "I think I did just hallucinate." she finally said, damply. "I don't think he stayed with us. He's gone away." She meant forever.

"That's been my experience." he said. His voice was heavy and cold. "Lets talk about something else." There was no time, the attendants came to the door immediately after.

They sent Sasuke away. She heard later that he had been allowed back in the library. He was not at the funeral procession, where they placed her on a horse- seal blue. Like the color of bruised flesh blooming on her pale arm, storm clouds, she thought. She was not used to riding, but she did her best, heavy as she was in her thick formal funeral kimonos. Attendants from the stables south of the village corralled the horses. She dimly listened to them discuss the foolishness of the fires, how it would scare the horses, how they might bolt. She leaned her cheek against the wiry grey mane of the calm one that she rode. It whuffled at her. Animals were the only part of this funeral that made sense. The fire didn't comfort her. If she was to feel alive, rather then just something waiting to die and burn herself...

But she resolved to not upset herself, she needed to present a very careful face, now. At this moment, it was the time to honor her father, not break his rules. Even Hanabi was behaving. At least- Hinata had yet to catch sight of any disasters in progress. She scanned her assembled family, the crowd around the Buddhist priest at the wake, looking for black spikes among pressed, plaited shiny Hyuga hair. She knew he would not be there, it would be in his character to avoid it. He disliked spectacle. She closed her eyes.

She felt distant from herself again. Disconnected. She had just woken, and had no time to reorient herself to the world before the house shut itself in around her, and the slow circle of meetings and ceremonies began all over again. These ones were more crucial than any other. She struggled to meditate properly in the rings of candlelight and the painted lanterns. Her eyes kept going to the altar and the little tealights lit there amidst small pots of scented oil sacrificed to the little traveler god, a laughing fired clay buddha. The innate absurdity of death, she thought. That was why the buddha laughed. This little statue was the story of the buddha who had been a monk, resolved that he would not become a buddha until all three hells were emptied. This was the god who would watch over her father now. She had said that she hated him. To hate someone was to wish hell upon them, wasn't it? She closed that door in her own mind. Don't. Neji was right. She tried not to think too hard.

But maybe... like her father in her hallucination- she hesitated before allowing herself to believe- maybe there was laughing on the other side. Maybe there was transcendence of things that just could not overcome in life. She hoped so. She wished he was still here, with her. Sasuke seemed to doubt the afterlife. He said that there was nothing but vicious shadows. Mocking the believers. He made a case for the innate cruelty of nature- or started to. He seemed to catch the look in her eyes and immediately veered to another topic. When the servants came around with the first tray of sake, she gratefully accepted a cup. There would be many others after it. The house drank on the day of the fire, opened their senses to dream, so that the spirits could come through. That was the reason. She was grateful for the ready excuse to drink, she was tired of thinking.

The sun set, slow and growing later. This was an auspicious time for death, because tonight was the night of the equinox. The only luckier day for her family and it's solar magic would be the winter solstice, when the sun slowly began to return. At the fire circle, finally she stood in the crowd, surrounded. On her side, council attendants in black and bright red embroidered flames. On her other side, her great aunt, straight as the hot poker in her hand, dressed as formally as the imperial family's empress. Hinata moved only her eyes, she couldn't compromise her perfect posture, not at this moment of ceremony. She saw the iron tip of the poker glowing red hot from the fire. The heat washed over her, ten feet from the bonfires. She saw the garden staff carrying in the small jars of oil, and because the jutsus had not yet been cast, she could smell the flaxseed oil, and behind it the sharp dirty tang of gasoline and, in the distance beyond that, the kerosene soaked into the coffin so that the body would burn slowly and the bones would incinerate too.

Now that she felt her father had left- forever- it seemed like only a lot of empty posturing. She didn't think he would care, did an injured ninja care about the drops of blood they left on the battlefield? Did she care anymore? She saw Neji across the circle, his face outlined in candlelight. His eyes were downcast. She could see the way his eyelashes glistened just a bit in the light. Was he crying? It was hard to tell with him. His sadness could be invisible. It could be something she was used to seeing and didn't notice anymore, because it was always there. He was less than five paces from her but he might as well have been a stone buddha himself, carved high on a temple wall, for all she could ever get close to him. They might have been friends, but the clan kept them apart. When she was young she did not understand the clan and she did not- could not- understand Neji's anger, his dead father, why it should have anything to do with her.

But it was some time before she would have to take the torch. She saw the ring of them standing, driven into the ground unlit. The bonfire pit itself spat wild hails of orange sparks into the black night sky, haloing the crowd of her family around her. It was strange light, a strange feel to the cold air and the drift of smoke and heat from the fires, it made these people she knew in daylight seem like ghosts, or wandering spirits. It smudged and burned at the flow of time, confused it. She was meant to look at these fires and feel immortal. Instead she prefigured her own funeral pyre, her own crimes yet to be committed. Was there anything she could do? Neji talked of destiny, and of fate and- no, she thought. She had another cup of sake.

It felt like swallowing steam, her body bunched and shivered, delighted at the heat. She looked up and saw the strange ghost whiteness of low hanging clouds. It might snow again, the wind stung with sharp glimmers of ice when it cut here and there, washing over her bare face. Her fingers ached with the cold, even when she held them over the fire, and they turned dark against the flames. The heat became too unbearable and she had to step back. It was a coldness deep inside her. Firelight turned thickets of Hyuga eyes soft yellow, like wan candle flames. The tealights were everywhere. Sasuke found her when she had withdrawn to the garden treeline at the edge of the party. He sat down on the stone garden bench beside her. She didn't look up and he nudged her gently with his elbow.

"One of them's blue, I have no idea what it is." he said. His voice was soft, like the tiny tealight flames were soft. Warm and hushed. "The other one is orange, I think. But they've put spices in it." She smelled cloves, and alcohol, and caramelized fruit. She looked up and the candlelight glittered in two glasses in either of his hands, drinks from the trays circulated endlessly through the crowd. He had brought two of the fluted cocktail glasses. "I didn't know which one you'd like better," he explained. So she unfastened her arms from the tight way she'd folded them in against her empty stomach.

"Did they say what it was?" she asked. She wasn't sure why, she didn't really care at this moment. Maybe to try to make conversation, and cover her own creeping anxiety, try to feel together and normal.

He shrugged. "Spirits, I think. That one's probably Bombay Sapphire, I saw them adding the dye. Your family is crazy if they throw money around like this." He shook his head. The flickering warm light made his hair and his dark formal clothes into warm, flat blacks. There was a ghostly white insignia at his lapel, a circle of three fans. "Everyone's going to be drunk by ten." he continued, his voice close by her ear, she could feel the heat of his skin. "I think you sister already is." he muttered.

"No one cares tonight." she said, very softly.

"Even the children?" he said, and the light picked out the elegant arch of his eyebrow. She balanced her drink carefully in her hands, her coordination was already wavering, and looked up at him. He held her under his warm arm, and the firelight pooled on his pale cheeks and outlined his high cheekbones, and the slightly harder plane of his nosebridge. "Here. Take the blue one." he handed it to her. She looked down and saw a small jewel cluster of pomegranate seeds, deep violet through the clear liquid blue. A jiggly reflection of flames played on the surface. Sasuke drank half of his in one long swallow beside her. "Least they can do.." he muttered. "These people make me need a drink anyway." She watched as he drank the rest, and the smooth marble color of his long throat as he swallowed. His hair turned midnight black in low firelight, so soft against her numbing fingers. It reminded her of the time they had spent by the fire in the tea cottage, the white linen of Neji's shirt next to his bare chest, the way he had turned to her and held out the kunai.

She remembered the glistening of vodka on his lips and wanting to rise and pull him down into her arms, flick the little droplets from his skin with the tip of her tongue. She hadn't dared then. Now, she nestled closer to him. He tasted like warm cinnamon and crème de menthe. The heat of the kiss couldn't warm her deeply enogh, and she shivered. He nudged her to drink, "It'll warm you up." he said. "I just watched your little sister drink two of those." he seemed almost amused by that. "What is she, twelve?"

"Thirteen." Hinata said, distractedly. "Almost fourteen, she's angry because father died so close to her birthday." She didn't know why she was telling him that. The glass rim was cold against her lips. The gin stung her throat, but she felt herself relax, just a bit. She tilted the shiny little red seeds back and forth in the last dregs of fluid.

"They're dancing." Sasuke said. Silence had fallen between them, and from downwind past the bare trees and into the fire circle came the echoes of the musicians hired for the night. Hinata lifted her head and peered past his shoulder. She rested her cheek on the warmth there, and his hand moved under her hair, cool against the nape of her neck. She heard the drums, and over it the eerie howl of flutes. Like ghost musicians, and their voices, she thought. It was the centrifugal force of the wind careening down from the cliffs, turning the entire sky over Konoha into an snow-lined chamber of echoes. The snow would fall soon, it's traces were in the cold, bitter winds. She hoped there would not be another blizzard. "We should dance." he said, again. It was his way of asking.

She knew the reason. It was to prove that they were not ashamed. She thought that her great aunt would be furious anyway, and the council would probably think it was a direct act of flouted responsibility. They would continue to hurl that word at her, disobedient, they would never- ever- ever ever approve! No matter what she did. She curled herself into his lap and later, after he went to bring her another drink and one for himself, she kissed him and drank from his warm mouth, felt full of his warm breath, as if he'd breathed soft gusts of fire right into her. Another drink on top of that and she wanted to dance with him. She wanted to stretch out the anticipation, the slow foreplay. She felt him through his pants with her cold hands, and he laughed, breathlessly. He was drunk and so was she. He was hard in the soft fabric and she felt herself hot and wet, ready for him. They were away from the fire circle and deep in stark shadows of bare cherry trees. His hand was in the folds of her kimono, stroking her nipple through two very thin silk underlayers. Not at my father's funeral! she thought, mortified. Excited. He took her into the fire's light, into the couples and little groups of children who danced together happily, their laughter floating on the swift winds.

They danced together, her whirled her around and the embroidered edge of her kimono took flight. The white silk flames ruffled in the wind and then sank under the darkness at her feet again. The noise of the crowd around them just went up and up and up, as her family got drunker, and the stories flowed with the spirits. This was the night to toast to her father, after all. Even a pressed-linen, buttoned down clan like hers seemed to need these wild nights of fire and drunken remembrance. She heard the laughter of her grandfather, and the raised voices of her little branch house second cousins as they ran gleefully around, chasing one another. The relaxed murmur of their parents, because no one would be told to behave and be quiet and be a proper stoic Hyuga, not tonight. At midnight, they brought her the torch.

She felt it's heat, coming through the crowd and the fire-lined, silhouetted figures parting before her. Her great aunt was a black thin shadow, her back to the source bonfire, and the family gathering behind her. Sasuke had ducked out of the light, unenthused even at his most uninhibited for this much crowd exposure.. when all the eyes of her family landed squarely on her. The torch was heavier then she expected, it's flames long and dangerously whipped by the wind. She worried about her coordination, her hair unbound and streaming around her in the icy currents of air. But Neji's cold hands were on hers, he was steadying her arm. When she caught her breath, he had stepped back into the blackness of the crowd around her. She walked, like a ghost, her head dizzy and light with the alcohol. If she'd known that this would be easy this way, she would have just gotten drunk sooner. The coffin lay on the stone pyre, as the family lined up along her slow procession. The fire trailed behind her. He was dead, he didn't care, she thought. She looked at the clean blond wood of the casket, the inked tags that would help it burn clean. The flaxseed oil had a pleasant scent, almost like cornfields in late summer. Neji was gone, her hand was steady. The torch fell, turned a firey half crescent. The fire roared alive and shot up in front of her.

The snow had begun, she just hadn't felt it in the whirl of the dance, the music, the crossdrafts of the bonfires. And now the charmed flame of the pyre ripped heat through the garden and the currents of it beat upon the stone facade of her house. She sat on the veranda, somewhere between drunken numbness and drunken relaxation. Jutsus channeled and swirled the heat, kept it from being unbearable, but transmitted a slight burning, she rubbed at her cheeks and her hands- unharmed, it was at least part genjutsu. Her seal ached with dull, heavy throbs.

Sasuke dozed beside her, half-lying in her lap. Her hair was sleek and warm under her fingers. She could tell that he'd had just about enough of her family. She guessed he didn't want to leave her here, and he didn't think he could pull her away either. He would wake when she whispered to him, or patted his head. "Mmm?" he murmured, drowsily. So she let him drift off. He was drunk enough to not feel the cold creep under the fire's heat; and he seemed so relaxed, even though it was just the alcohol, and the same for her- fake happiness. But it got her through the night, and the long process of the fire. It helped her through the picking of the bones, when she and Neji and Hanabi, when the main house knelt as one and gathered them with lacquered chopsticks. They gathered the ashes in burial urns. The fires fell slowly to embers, and under the whirling curtain of snow, somewhere, it was turning slowly to the first stabs of dawn. Ashes were in her eyes and under her fingernails, as she watched the priests seal and mark the urns. Sasuke somehow got her to bed, which was amazing. He was just as drunk as she was.

"I do understand." he whispered to her, sometime in-between the party and her bed. She was too far gone to remember what they were talking about or why. She just thought that she loved him- it wasn't even something she had to wonder about or worry or think through, it was just light that shone out of her. It was the simplest thing in the world, and she wondered later if she maybe did have pride of her own, and it was making this hard for her. Maybe it was that for both of them. She'd been.. what was the word? 'Drunk' didn't seem quite... enough. Wasted? Completely wasted. That would be what Naruto would have said- haha, I'm sooo wasted right now! She could hear his bright, happy voice in her mind so clearly, as if he was right beside her. The memory of him was that vivid. And she knew how he got too, when the sake bottle started to empty out and all three of them- him, Sakura and Hinata- were getting a bit silly. The way he slung his arms around the two of them, clumsy and happy. I love you guys! I love you! Did you really feel real love when you were.. well... wasted?

So she decided that she should reserve judgment. When she told Sasuke about it, he laughed- he said he didn't know that she knew that word. But she knew all these words, including all of the bad ones that he actually said. He seemed strangely taken aback by that. And- he agreed. "We decide this when we're sober." he said. And then he frowned. "What other words did Naruto teach you?"

But far before that, in the sudden ugliness of the morning, her head throbbed even harder than the seal. The council sat her in the brutal brightness of the sun. She imagined that their hands burned that way, white-hot, solar flares, as they burned through the inking of the jutsu. It hurt, but like a splinter being pulled out. She breathed through it, her hands clenched and interlaced behind her. She had learned this jutsu, seal-removal. She had a dangerous little quake of an idea. It reverberated slowly, even though she was far too scattered by the hangover to think clearly. It glimmered, like something dropped in deep waters. "That's done, then." her grandfather said, too loudly. Hinata winced. "Second order of business, then?"

But throughout, she struggled to stay upright, her head felt only loosely attached to her shoulders and somehow too heavy to be supported. Sasuke was still in bed, sleeping off his own hangover. She envied him. Hanabi's marmalade tabby cat had been curled up over his feet when the council insisted she get up. Her eyes felt like crumbles of dried out, formally soaked tissue paper. The meeting seemed to go on forever. It was only forty five minutes.

"Aah, get to bed." Miya said, bopping Hinata lightly on her shoulder this time, due to the current circumstances. "I already had to treat the boy for his headache, and he's always such a ray of sunshine in the morning, isn't he? Here, I've made stinging nettle tea for those rowdies in the lower branch house, it's still hot."

Hinata struggled to keep it down, and the three herbal pills Miya shook into her hand. She was glad there were no food smells in the kitchen, it was far away from both breakfast and the midday meal. "Bed, off with you." Miya said firmly. "Kimi-chan, take this very silly girl back to bed!" But when Miya said it- silly girl- the words glowed with rough affection. It was completely different from when her great aunt said it. But her great aunt could make her name sound hateful too. She could transform it into a vile curse, one that made Hinata's neck burn and made her want to hide her face. Kimiko wiped dishwater off her hands. Knives gleamed in the drying rack, flashing sunlight, and Hinata had to step into the shadow of the hall. Kimiko leaned her long, slender arm around Hinata's shoulders. "Come on, lets go see if Mr. Sunshine is awake." This was the new official kitchen staff nickname for Sasuke, and Hinata hoped he wouldn't find out about it. Kimiko winked. She was twenty one, engaged, and a jounin of four years standing.

It made Hinata strangely jealous. So irrational of her. The Hokage's office had tried to promote her to special jounin twice. She had refused. She didn't feel ready. She worried she would make mistakes and she would be unmasked as weak- and a great shame to her clan. The change she accomplished felt fragile to her, and worse- false. She sometimes wondered who she was kidding, she sometimes fell back into the same memories, because her father's angry voice was so indelible, stamped and imprinted deep into her now. Kimiko patted her shoulder, sensing her mood. "Is that cute Uchiha still in your bed?" she asked, nudging Hinata gently in the ribs. "I think he likes it there!"

Hinata couldn't laugh, it hurt her head too much, but Kimiko's giggle made her feel better. Warmer. It was the sound of normality, to her. Sasuke was still in her bed, asleep and breathing slow and heavily. She could only see the edge of his hand and three knuckles, the bandages here tinged with his blood and grayed with the ash. He'd pulled a pillow over his head. The cat had flounced off. Hinata carefully lay down beside him. Her headache was too volatile for her to jostle the pillows and unlock his arms, she just curled up and waited for the painkillers to start working.

They did not let her rest long. The sun was only at midday height, when she was summoned. Sasuke never woke, and she slipped out of the room so he at least could sleep in peace. She told herself she could spend the rest of the day in bed, after this. And also that being the clan leader meant responsibility, and responsibility meant fewer opportunities to sleep in. She felt that she was being pulled across the house by currents of force.

Now that the fire and the spirits were gone, the house was empty of those voices. There was no more murmuring darkness, no more eerie silence in pools of cold sunlight. Even the long burial candles had been extinguished, and she knew the temple's mausoleum would now stand empty. Out in the wide western gardens, the outdoor staff would be turning the ashes of the firepits into the frozen soil and snow. They would salt the earth too, she thought. Proof against evil spirits, and purity to restore the balance of the house. It was a strange chemical spiritual geography she didn't understand very well. And now, too, she felt something different. The servants, the branch house members, drowsy now, but awake, they all looked at her differently. She was numbly aware of it, her father gone. Her father burned away, which meant that it was finished, symbolically his life had fully ended. Now he was of the sky. She was of the earthly house. That made her the clan leader now, in something so much more than just the words and the law.

But it was not the full council when she arrived. She felt disoriented all over again, blindsided. Because with the strangeness that had endured for so long, she was not ready for things to feel ordinary again. The sunlight that warmed the west side of the house and turned the polished wood floor blinding under her feet seemed like it could belong to any other late winter afternoon. She struggled to get a fix on herself, what she should do. She hadn't seen Neji since that long look at him, when he seemed to finally shed a spare, cold few tears, in the heat wash of the fire. Since the moment when he steadied her hand. She hadn't seen her sister either- because Hanabi had never gotten drunk at all before, and she was down for the count.

"It seems the lad's a bit..." her grandfather was pacing slowly, his fingers linked behind his back. He unlinked them and brought his hands in front of him. He turned them over, rubbing his gnarled fingers and beaten down knuckles- eighty years of Hyuga clan taijutsu, and he still practiced with the sunrise, like every other member of the house. Hinata could see that he was trying to be tactful. She saw him make a particular little grimace.

"He should be put in a cage like an animal." her great aunt said crossly. Hinata turned, saw her great aunt reach for her teacup. "If he can't control himself."

"The father couldn't either." her grandfather remarked, coming over to the mats and cushions where Hinata knelt opposite her great aunt. He eased his old legs under himself, his pale blue robes crumpling from their crisply starched lines as he did. Hinata watched it, dulling herself. Slowing her reactions.

Her aunt snorted, delicately. "Neither could their heir, and that was his brother. They're all just garbage now, their blood is filthy. It would be better if she took up with the buraku-"

"Now, Aoi-san," her grandfather said, exhaling slowly, as if to calm the situation.

Hinata concentrated hard on her hands, how they were folded.

Her great aunt sipped tea, her spine straight as an arrow, her hands now withered so that the delicate bones of her fingers now moved like spare, skeletal swan feathers.

"Let's not have trouble on the day after the fire, hmm?" her grandfather said mildly.

Hinata focused, and narrowed that focus. She watched her great aunt and how she tilted her head, how the ornate pins in her white hair clacked together. She watched the elegant face that old age and good breeding and propriety had inscribed on her great aunt- as calligraphic and perfect as the feather-shadows of emotion on Neji's silent face. "Remind me again why this one is better than the Kyuubi boy." her great aunt said.

"Better for us." Hinata heard her grandfather flick his lighter, knew she would smell the sickening sweetness of his tobacco pipe soon. She was glad that the nausea was gone. "We'll save face."

"Not much face."

"Drink your tea, Hinata-chan. It's all right."

"Their clan is demonic. You're being a very foolish girl."

"Ah, never mind... never mind. Let's not quarrel. Not on this day, hmm?"

"I'm sorry, obaa-sama." Hinata whispered. She breathed carefully, to control herself.

Her great aunt made a sound of prim disgust. Hinata could not bring herself to look up. "'Sorry', she says.." Her great aunt sounded tired now, weary of all of this. The sound of wooden hairpin ornaments clacking again, as her great aunt shook her head. "And that scene in the east wing!" Hinata felt her cheeks burst to flames, heat crawling up her neck. She'd hoped her great aunt wouldn't hear of that.

"They're young, Aoi-san." Her grandfather was trying to make peace.

"He may be a filthy animal, but that doesn't mean you have to get into the mud with him, Hinata." Her great aunt's voice was colder then usual. Hinata felt their eyes on her, drifting, like brilliant xenon searchlights, the ones that Neji told her about at the ANBU prison. She looked down at her tea and made herself drink it, sip by metronomic sip.

"Well..." her grandfather didn't seem to have much to say after that. "Well." he chuckled. "Our little Hinata-chan is growing up."

"The first mistake we made," her great aunt paused, contemplating the steam pouring from her teacup. "was allowing Hiashi-chan to-"

To what? Hinata thought, her thoughts racing behind her tight facade of self-control. To choose her as the clan heir after all?

"-marry that woman, that tramp from Amegakure, the children came out looking like a blue fish. It's a shame upon us."

"Well, I daresay Hinata-chan will have many suitors. We should wait a year?"

"You mean until this vulgar little display with the Uchiha delinquent is finished? We'll have married her off before the cherry blossoms fall."

Silence. Heavy. Full of tea scent and, to Hinata, little flashes of byakugan light. The chakra of an elder Hyuga turned to columns and angles of crystal, dazzlingly geometric and perfect. It was honed like a forming diamond over decades of byakugan, the eye changed your entire body behind it. Not just the motor nerves in your hand- parts of your consciousness, and the way you spoke and carried yourself, the way you thought.

"We let the spirits guide their heart, Aoi-san."

Her grandmother made a tired sound of disgust. "There's altogether too much heart around here. Someone should think for a change. I won't be alive forever. Look at Hanabi-chan, it's like their mother all over again."

"At least the clan won't lack for strong fighters."

"Neji-chan is already fighting with the Uchiha mongrel."

Her grandfather chuckled. "Young men have a lot of energy."

"Yes, well.. wild animals don't belong indoors." Her great aunt gestured with one ornately hennaed hand. "I suppose we're going to deal with the Hokage's office? Hinata-chan is too young to broker for us alone."

"We'll send council messengers with her. And Neji-chan as her second, he is her branch house attendant."

"Well, I don't want a scene in the house like there was in the temple yesterday, but I don't want it outside the house either. We can't have this discord in our public image." Hinata felt her great aunt's eyes heavy on her, weighing the words down. Like a warning, she thought. "Neji-chan will have to leave the Uchiha brat alone."

"That..." Hinata wet her lips nervously. There was a trace of green tea at the edge of her mouth but she felt inhibited from raising her hand to wipe it away. She was too nervous, and their gazes were too intense. Even sitting, relaxed, an elder byakugan user's eyes would almost glow like the sun behind thick wintry clouds. Lightning white, just before the full charge of the flash. She found it hard to look at directly, Hyuga eyes were a weapon- always. She looked at her small polished fingernails and the drop of clear gloss that had been put on each. The light flicked in it's gleam strangely. "That won't be necessary." She and Neji would not be taking Sasuke to the Hokage, after all. She had never planned on that.

The two elders exchanged and long and meaningful glance as she told them.

"His teammates." her grandfather mused thoughtfully.

"This is a decision about me." Hinata said to them, suddenly emphatic and white-knuckled in her haste to explain to them and make them understand. She almost spilled her tea- an unforgivable breach of etiquette. She felt the flush spreading down her cheeks and neck as she put her cup down. "I made it." she continued, pressing on, searching their eyes and trying to find a fingerhold. "It's not a Hyuga clan decision. It shouldn't be about the clan."

"They'll ask questions no matter what you say." her great aunt said.

"I'll tell them." Hinata said, still feeling flushed and now her heart was racing too. "No one will be arrested by the ANBU but me!"

"You silly, stupid girl.." her great aunt sighed. She toyed with the carved bone sundial netsuke on her obi. "Do you think we won't lose face for that, the leader of the Hyuga clan arrested in public? This is a delicate time for us."

"Well, at least our greatest rivals are gone." her grandfather said mildly. "Can you see the Aburame clan being a threat to us? Bugs are to be stepped on, eh Aoi-san?" Hinata thought- Shino- and quickly shut herself down into pure observation, all over again. She couldn't afford anger. She needed to think clearly.

"Or squished with the newspaper." her great aunt agreed, bluntly. "And those Uchiha bedevil us past their death. Bothering us with the problems they cause. In the form of their bastard son."

"At least the father is gone."

"Good riddance."

Hinata concentrated- saw the elegant slenderness of her great aunt's hands, their spotless white. She was a genjutsu specialist, her hands did not have the patina of scars and puckers that studded her grandfather's fingers. Hinata was like him, a taijutsu expert. She would have beaten hands like his, crackled and pocked like antique weapons. She lost herself in that thought. She couldn't get angry.

"...aaah, can't be helped, Aoi-san." her grandfather was saying. His battered fingers curled around his pipe. Two of his fingernails were gone entirely. "We can't risk our nerves, at our age. We all were worried at her birth, too. I remember."

"Well, so far the omen is correct, isn't it? Hinata, you leave us now."

Hinata obeyed, and through the sudden dimness away from the windows, her eyes burned by the sunlight, felt her way by the directional weave of tatami mats under her feet.

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

Hinata was not around when he woke.

It was just as well, he was pissed right off to be awake at all.

One of those ninja girls was in the room. He'd been too.. drunken, passed out, whatever, he hadn't noticed. He should have woken. In Orochimaru's lairs, where Orochimaru's favoritism made a gleaming neon target of him for any and all ambitious would-be assassins, Sasuke would have woken if anyone had so much as touched the door of his room. He sat up and glared at the ninja girl. He still couldn't remember which one was which. He really did mean to glare, but his eyes wouldn't open properly because they were attached to a throbbing hole of pain which was inexplicably right where his head should have been. He swayed and had to slam his hand down on the pillows behind him.

"Good morning, Uchiha-san." the ninja girl said. Her voice went through his head like a slowly driven railspike. A dull one. He growled and ran a careful hand over his aching eyelids. There was too much light in the room. What had happened..? Oh. He remembered. He remembered to about the fifth drink. Hinata and arms around him, the snow that struck their faces, a snatch of her soft giggle and the warmth of her skin in the cold darkness. Disjointed memories of fire and strange firelight playing off snowy blackness. Firelight pooling crazily in the bell of a brass player's instrument- and everything too loud and spinning around him. He felt the covers shift as if the ninja girl had put down a tray. When he got his eyes to open, he saw teacups and a small kettle. It tasted about as good as all of the other weird medicines the old woman foisted on him. Like the others, it worked.

Eventually.

A grinding hangover headache was good for one thing- he couldn't think.

When he felt like he could live without sleeping for roughly the next week, he got up and showered in Hinata's very flowery bathroom. He picked through her little bottles of scented floral shampoos and thought that- no- he had his limits. He did not want to spend the next twelve hours smelling of flowers. No. Even if Naruto wasn't around to tease him about it. His stomach rolled over slowly, reminding him that smells were currently things to avoid. She had soap, but it was not plain soap, it was flower soap.

Continuing to smell of alcohol and sweat and ashes was not an option. Was chamomile a flower? Chamomile sounded like a plant to him. And then he found a little green bottle of juniper essence- or something. He didn't know about this sort of thing. Juniper was a tree, so that was acceptable. He padded back to her room, damp and smelling of juniper berries or whatever it had been. He felt a bit better, since having to think about something ridiculous like flowers had kept him from thinking about the usual things that he tended to think about.

And he was able to maintain that until he found a small note on the tray. From the lawyers, a reminder to return the scroll to them for legal processing.

He looked up, to her desk. The scroll was there, sitting very calmly for something that should have fired Itachi's voice in his head, cursed him by implication for his disloyalty. Or if that didn't make sense, the two clans being legally alike- for his weakness then. His something, something bad- something he'd done wrong. He could always find a way to find fault with himself, explain away any particular good he'd done, make it disappear. He could always make himself miserable.

He picked it up, turned it over in his hands.

The clan. Itachi had said.

With contempt. Disgust twisting in his voice like Orochimaru's coils of black venom. The clan, the clan. Orochimaru's influence? Orochimaru reaching out of his Akatsuki organization to scoop Itachi up, push him and twist him into something he was not, a killer, a mass murderer-

No. Sasuke thought.

The Itachi that stood before him in the dojo on the only night that mattered, the bodies of their parents at his feet, that was the real Itachi. The other Itachi, who paused on the veranda to say hello and to offer a rare cryptic half-smile, who never really had time but who still showed hints of warmth, chances and enough to sustain the absence of their father and his turned back- that was a fake Itachi. That was Itachi's fake fucking act of deception.

The clan, the clan. Itachi had mocked, his voice turning from a reedy calm to bright hard steeliness inside of a second. Attachment to your name- And the rest, that Sasuke could remember perfectly, even without having committed it to sharingan memory. The clan, the name, the rules. Itachi's biting scorn. But, without these things, without some sense of honor and duty, some guiding principle, what the hell were they? Ninjas? Contracted killers. Mercenaries. Whores, really, selling their lives for a few pieces of silver. A tool, like that kid and the huge Mist-nin with the massive sword. Or madmen, cheerful psychopaths like Suigetsu, yanking that sword from the earth. Without the clan, the name, the rules, he was just a killer. And so was Sasuke, and so was Itachi, and so was everyone else here.

Maybe it would be funny to try to tell the Hyuga family that. Just as they were gearing up for a long, pompous celebration of their own absolutely monumental importance.

And maybe Sasuke would have bothered to do so, if he believed Itachi himself.

He couldn't. It was his great failing. The clan, the rules, the name. If Itachi spat on the Uchiha clan then it would be Sasuke's duty to revive it- and to protect it.

Downstairs, in tatami rooms blessed and purified by visiting Buddhist priests from the forest temple, the Hyuga clan were doing the same. They were, of course, being insufferably self-important about it. Never mind that.

For once, he had a hand in his family's destiny. He wasn't too young or too unimportant, not anymore. Now he was the only one who could do this, fate had put it's hand on him. But maybe not for the reason he'd thought. Itachi would die- he had to die. That was clan justice. But it would not be everything, maybe, not anymore.

Sasuke was not a sentimental person, but he seriously considered pressing that scroll- a collection of paper and ink and blood and rules- taking it and pressing it to his own damaged, fucked up heart. His Uchiha blood, not worth nothing. On the contrary- worth the entire world to him. Worth it to his future children, and the clan that he would rebuild.

It was good that he was alone, that could have looked very embarrassing.

But it was something.

He made his earlier plans in a haze of blood, Itachi's bloody grafted memories. He'd thought- of course, he'd kill Itachi. He'd live for nothing else. He was twelve and he knew so little of the world or how it worked. He had no time- no patience for friends or for thinking, for life itself. At the cusp of awakening, finally, from that long nightmare...

...he'd stood in the deep green darkness of the Forest, and looked up at the distant glow of sun. He'd cursed his foolishness- but more then that, accepted it. He'd understood. Not the way he did now, but a glimmer. An opening of a new path. Orochimaru bit him shortly after. The nightmare smoothly shifted back into gear.

Maybe it could end now.

So, grow up, he told himself sternly.

And, therefore... turning himself in would be growing up? Consenting to life and living and making stupid mistakes with people- that would be it too? Facing Naruto and Sakura? Really facing them, not freezing them out, driving them away, or turning it into a fight so that no one could talk? He went to the old woman because while he didn't like her, she was an adult, so she would probably know.

"Everyone has to find out for themselves." she said.

The one time he wanted her to tell him what to do, and she wouldn't. He'd been in an actual good mood, too. He harrumphed at her- and she raised her eyes from the pot she was stirring to give him a vaguely reproachful look. She mostly didn't seem to take his fury very seriously. "There's nothing I can tell you." she said.

"I need guidance and you won't help me?" he complained, crossing his arms.

She sighed. He saw her look him over, sharp-eyed, take in the way he favored his uninjured arm, the irritation in his posture, the fact that he'd probably slept decently for the first time in weeks.

"It'll be a hassle," she said, turning to pick up a handful of spices from the counter. "dealing with the Hyuga clan. And with the village. But if you want to come home, it's worth it." She scattered the spices over the bubbling water. He watched the bubbles rise and burst for a moment. Steam was collecting on his skin just from being this close to the burners. He could feel the heat rolling off them. It was nice to be in a room that wasn't too cold for a change. Never mind that it was too hot.

After a moment, turning the thoughts over for last inspection, he said "If you know the clan is corrupt, why do you stay here?"

She snorted mildly. She held out her hand, not turning to look at him. "Get me the turmeric, dear. It's on the shelf."

He scowled, but she didn't seem to notice or care, so he got the jar she wanted from the collection of them, and handed it to her.

"All noble clans are like this." she said, with a mixture of vague amusement and resignation.

He knew that, but firstly- that wasn't what he was asking her. And secondly, he wasn't in the mood to talk about the assorted skeletons buried in the Uchiha clan.

She shrugged, her old thin shoulders crinkling the heavy work clothes she wore. "My great-grandfather worked for the Hyuga, my grandmother did, and my mother did too. We're a retainer family." she turned, and glanced at him, her eyes like small dark polished stones, "like the samurai clans who protected the Tokugawa shogunate. It's worth it to me for the same reason it's worth it to Hinata."

He merely scowled harder because he didn't like that answer, and in the scattered silence of bubbling soup and steam, she said "The village isn't perfect either. But we all swear loyalty to Konoha. It's better to stay and try to fix it than to run away. If you run away, you have nothing."

He was annoyed with her freshly for using the words 'run away', because it was not true about him. That is, it was too much truth and he didn't want to deal with the full brunt of it at the moment. He leaned against the countertop and assumed his familiar postures of hunched, clenched, aloof attitude. The old woman clearly had seen it all before, because she didn't so much as glance back his way.

"If I left because of Hinata's father," she added, thoughtfully. And then, another gesture of her open hand. "Basil, dear. On the right." He noticed that her spice rack was alphabetized, which made it easier. "..then who would be around to take care of Hinata-sama? And her sister Hanabi-chan, and Neji-san. They all would have no one to watch over them."

"It's not the same for me." he said, and knew he was quibbling. "You aren't disrespected."

"You aren't either." She held up her hand when he started to object. "Not by everyone. And it's not about you. There was a real fracas between the two clans twenty years ago, there's bad blood about that, but they don't disrespect you. And that's only one generation." He wasn't sure if he believed this, but she continued. "My granddaughters and their generation, the children... even most of the elders.. " she shook her head. "You don't see it yet. But there are people all over this house who lost friends when the village lost your clan. There are people here who knew both of your parents, your grandparents, the Uchiha elders... My husband was in the same genin team as your grandmother on your mother's side. It's only Hiashi-sama's former loyalists, the council... and the young people don't remember the clan well enough to care."

By then he couldn't hold the scowl. He didn't know if it was... well, he didn't think she was lying, but-

"Look, dear. I'm only a retainer so you might not believe me. But my family has served the Hyuga clan for generations, and I know it's character. The clan never stopped thinking of itself at the ancestral home of the Uchiha. There are people as late as four generations ago who thought the two clans were one and the same. This house has a lot of serious problems, and there is constant court intrigue." her eyes were dark, sharp, connected with his. He almost felt the need to look away- it was too much. He looked out the window. "But no one can say that this isn't your home." she said.

He didn't know what to say to her.

So maybe there was nothing to tear himself apart over anymore.

Photographers came to take pictures of the Hyuga clan. He ducked the hell out of that, of course. But he lingered up on the roof and watched. It was a milder day, the freak snowstorm had blown off. Now there was slush everywhere, sunlight, muddy chaos down below. He watched the photographers position Hinata and then her cousin beside her, her sister, then rank after rank of Hyuga, a huge sprawling family. Hidebound and full of themselves and exasperating, but still- a family. A house that could not be torn down. Even as he watched Hinata's little sister make monkey faces and ruin picture after picture, and Hinata kneel and try to reason with her, even though he knew how corrupt they were... he still felt that ache at the pit of his stomach. He watched, he couldn't take his eyes away from it. He couldn't join them, he didn't feel right about that. But he couldn't sneer at them either. He couldn't understand how Itachi could have taken something like this -and destroyed it. No matter how corrupt, no matter how many dirty skeletons in the closet, it didn't matter. How could anyone? He couldn't look away this time. He couldn't say he didn't want it.

"Here." he said, to the attendant who stood outside the room where the family lawyers were working. He would have said nothing at all, but somehow, the moment needed a marking, in sound magic. If only to prove to himself- yes, he had done this.

No, he was not going back on it.

To run now.. the Hyuga clan would have a personal stake in it. Orochimaru would have had difficulty extracting him from the protective circle of his own clan, and the Hyuga were bigger by more than three times over. They would have a vested interest in his arraignment and interrogation at the hands of the village. They would protect him from the Hokage, and that was Hinata's doing, she had orchestred this. She had made this happen. Not just a request for him to stay, but a place to go to, and to actually belong there. He knew nothing about love. It could not have meant less to him, when he stood on that dock, threw himself into the water, made his vow. But maybe it started, in a feeling just like this one. She had done this. To find her now, try to say something empty and route like 'thanks'? It wasn't enough.

He felt dizzy. He didn't know what to do with this strange, threatening, sheer bizarre feeling... of having options, of having a future. He wasn't sure if he could even find words to talk to Hinata about this, not sincerely, not in a way that wouldn't just be like reciting lines from a movie or from some idea of how normal people acted, and how normal people said thank you, and how normal people could even grasp this.

He had no idea how normal people lived with this.

He retreated to her room, in the relative privacy of her sequestered wing.

His eyes fell on her telephone.

They lived together now, didn't they? He was sure Hinata had mentioned that.

And there they were, the two of them. In one place, which was convenient. Under 'U'. He got their answering machine and-

-it lanced through him, laser-bright, the same stupid happy voice. The same stupid jokes. The same shimmering energy, the charisma- something in his chest squeezed. His face heated up because he was supposed to be invulnerable and to not care, especially about this.

It pissed him off, actually.

A beep.

"Naruto," he snapped. "Get over here."