It was done and it couldn't be stopped now. Nothing could stop them, they would come.
Sasuke glared at the phone, annoyed that it was there at all. Enabling him in his complete inability to handle this.
So, they would come. He would have to talk to them. If he wanted to be a person again rather than an instrument of rage, he had to face them. Naruto blabbered endlessly about bonds, but the truth was closer to his heart, Sasuke thought. It was like Naruto held the last shards of his humanity, the idiot. Like he picked them up and kept them safe, waiting for a day when Sasuke would realize he didn't want to mutilate himself into another Itachi after all, that he needed them again.
He sat in the pleasant silence of Hinata's room. Sun fell over him and warmed his cheeks and hands. He contemplated his freshly bandaged fingers and palms, considering it. The paradox was numbly interesting. Hinata. Friends. Comrades. Happiness and togetherness, but to have it would mean letting go of misery. Misery was safe and strangely warm, it was assured. Misery could be counted on to do exactly what he expected of it. There would be no surprises, no screaming fights. He knew exactly how misery worked.
But if they were coming, he had to stop... thinking like that. Stop grasping at half-strategies, stop casting around for ways to avoid it. It wasn't as if they hadn't done this crap before. They chased, and he resisted. They reached for him- he slapped their hands. It would have been easier if he just didn't care about them at all, he could just return, and he could tell them in all honesty that he didn't want to spend any time with them. Thank you for their efforts, but as for their feelings? Sorry- but he just did not feel the same way.
But that wasn't the way... and he'd even told Naruto directly. Didn't Naruto get it? He had to draw his sword, push them away, escalate to the point of killing them because he cared. Because he couldn't kill this part of himself. Because he couldn't face it either. It was a mess because of it. Stupid fucking Naruto, couldn't leave well enough alone...
But you'd think that they'd give up someday, even an idiot like Naruto. The time before last, for instance, when Sasuke looked down on them and reached for the sky. No, I'm through with Konoha. It was an impersonal way to kill them, lightning from the clouds above. And an impersonal way of making the threat, he hadn't even used their names, they were just figments of Konoha, enemy-village, grounded electrical targets. He acted like he didn't even know them.
How many times could he act this way before they gave up on him? The indifferent mask didn't even fit all that well anymore, now that the whole mission had gone down in flames. He worried that they'd see through it this time, see all his squirmy insides rather than yet another cold promise to kill them both, an implication that he wouldn't care that much either. He worried they wouldn't, that this time it would be permanent. He'd tell them to go away and they would.
So he didn't know what could be done. Naruto was just a timed explosive, something to kick like a nest of hornets- make Naruto make something happen, push it all into motion. Maybe he hoped that it would all sort out anyway when the dust cleared. Sasuke had no idea how to fix it himself.
Still, this was an improvement on being holed up in some moldering concrete bunker, listening to Orochimaru feed terrified mice to his python collection. Hinata's room was sunny and bright. Sasuke looked at her neatly shelved books, her pretty pots of dried flower bits, her photographs of happy Konoha ninjas, like herself. A Konoha eleven. That might have been twelve once. I walk a different path now, he'd told Sakura. A different path than her and Naruto. And there, in that book that Hinata had read the other night, there was a wedding photo. The two of them. All smiley. He told them to do that, he told them to forget him. Then they just up and did it? Since when had they listened to him? They'd married one another.
Forgotten about him? He felt angry that they had chased him at all. He wanted them to come and wanted to turn them away. I'm not coming back to you, just to the village. He could say something like that. Be a bastard to them. Would it matter? Would it make him feel better? Would it change anything or make this easier? There really wasn't anything he could say anyway.
So maybe it would be better to say nothing.
Hinata was first a misty presence down the hall, half-vanished in the sunlight. She smelled like tobacco and she looked miserable, which meant that her asshole relatives had their claws in her again. She was in the doorway, furnace currents scattering the ends of her hair, somehow before he expected her to be. She was still a reality that he was getting used to. The white eyes were the part that shocked him. Hyuga. It meant something now. A future, maybe. A way out. An impossible possibility- a lot of confused half-feelings that he couldn't paste words to. Better to say nothing. He had to say something. "I called them." he said.
He looked at her hands. Hyuga-hands, a good shot at his heart from this angle. He'd spent most of his ninjutsu career meticulously not caring, it was strange to see a lover and a killer at once, in the same person. And all at once, a person like him, close enough, another person. A paradox too, not being alone any longer, not even in the howling emptiness of his own head. Another person. He was staring and he saw that she was worried by it, something in his manner. Was it that obvious that he was nervous?
She didn't say 'who?', there was only one them in that tone of voice. There were a few varieties of him. A tone for Orochimaru, another for Itachi. "Oh." she said, softly. She had folded her hands in front of her. She was still wearing those... ridiculous kimonos that her family put her in. Painted up like a toy for them, or an elaborately dressed puppet. A ritual sacrifice.
Amazing to look at her and think that she probably knew what he was all about. She didn't buy that cool crap that the girls in Academy classes had. She probably would forgive the panic attacks and the nightmares. She wouldn't mind how deeply screwed up he was, she probably had already divined that about him. He'd told her enough, after all. She didn't need to know the bloodiest parts, but she knew enough.
"They're coming." he said, unnecessarily. He had to talk to them, so it was like he couldn't control his own mouth now. This was going to be worse than he'd thought! He felt like a jerk for just standing there in her room, as if he were backing her up in her doorway, out of her own house and... well. He didn't want to even bother with himself when he felt this way. "It's okay..." he muttered, trying to make it better. How had he gotten into this conversation in the first place?
"...come in." he said. He came away from her bookshelves and took her by her long sleeves. He normally would have said nothing, but she wasn't talking- and someone had to, the silence was picking apart his nerves. Then he thought that maybe she would feel that he was shying away from touching her, so he took her wrists and pulled her into the room. She came with him, and it was still awkward. He put her in his arms. "It's okay." he said again. What he meant was 'don't feel awkward around me.' Feel comfortable with me. You accept me, right? Better to say nothing at all.
If this was all an elaborate game of Orochimaru's, he thought, this was a good trick. True genius. Look at this room and this well-intentioned and caring girl right there. It was exactly what he'd wanted, wasn't it? What he'd really wanted and refused to acknowledge? Here it was. Right here.
Hinata murmured something about Hyuga rules and seclusion. They could have guests now, which meant that people would be coming, which meant telling people and the upshot was that decisions would have to be made. Hinata was tired and he had a mind to just put her to bed, get her some food, and station himself by her door. He could snap at anyone who came near her until they went away. That was what she needed, time away from her asshole family. He could maybe try that affection thing again, he was getting better at it.
"We tell them." he said, to her unspoken question. What were they going to do, sneak around like ridiculous children? He didn't know why she was even asking, she was allegedly friends with both of them- didn't she know how nosy they were?
She nodded, her eyes down. Something bluish smeared on her eyelids. She really looked a lot better without all that crap on her face. He'd get a wet cloth in a minute, he thought. For the moment, hugging was important.
When she was there, and the cool smolder of her chakra was there, when her soft voice and her warmth was next to him, then this made sense. He could see himself with her. He could do it. It was just when she wasn't there, that was when he started to fall back into...
..well, that dark hole. They called depression the black dog. A dark pit. It was all pretty accurate, all these metaphors. Blackness.
"If you don't want to come back, I understand." she said. Her voice was a hollow shell. Stoic. As if she held herself sharply in place and used that to pull herself together tightly. Staples and bailing wire. It was her own nervousness and the jaggedness of that was apparent to him. She probably had her family telling her that shit again, about him and what a faithless piece of garbage he'd be, how she'd catch him with the chamber maids or something, as if he was just some fucking animal, some low-class trash-
Well, he needed to reserve his energy.
And snapping at her was pointless, it wasn't her fault that she was related to a bunch of gibbering pieces of shit.
"It's okay." he tried. He stroked her hair. He felt a bit like an idiot somehow, saying all these soft things. They were true, but he still felt dumb somehow. What, was he going to turn into some romantic poet, some silver-tongued minstrel or... well. Never mind. "I'm coming back." he said. "Okay?"
The light behind him glittered around her eyes and the edge of tears there. He said "I'm coming back here." Because that was the point, not the village or the legalities. His own iron composure lasted that long. But no longer. "And I meant it." he muttered, looking away and out of the room entirely. "I'm coming back and we're going to do this."
The sun was like flashes of gunpowder igniting, cordite smoke in the air, white fire like the sky was blazing behind black stone, the distant cliffs. The edge of rock spurs far away, the edge of the Fourth's carved head.
"Okay..." she whispered. Her voice was high and thin. She was trying to get her hand free, so he loosened his arms. He watched her curl her small fingers and rub the skin around her eyes. Her makeup smeared.
"I'll come back," he said, the words all messy and he didn't know where he was going with this. Should he just shut up? "I'll come back and we'll figure it out." The ANBU would put him back together and scrape all the snakes out of him. She'd need time to deal with her father's death and he couldn't take that pain for her. "We'll find out if it works or not."
-and if all this love bullshit was going to work out. It would be something he'd never done before, if it did. He knew he'd screw parts of it up, he'd make mistakes... Maybe just an illusion anyway, snowy nights and space heater darkness, the kind of retreat from reality that two people could create to lie to themselves. That kind of nonsense would wither fast in the hard light of day. It would survive or it would not.
He looked at her, and it seemed real. She was warm and alive in his arms. It was strange enough, supernatural almost, that he'd landed here, in her path. He could have just frozen to death. He could have just died in some distant miserable outpost, bled out on Orochimaru's filthy stone floors. He'd forgotten the Hyuga even existed, their blood tie, he never even noticed her at all, just a quiet cringing shadow of a girl. There were a lot of girls in his class. A lot of people in his face, trying for his attention one way or another. A lot of bad memories, in fact.
"Okay." she said. It was her steady voice. She must be telling herself that she would handle this. He knew all about that, he did it himself all the time. "Okay." she said. "Okay..."
--------------
Hinata had things she had to do. She had to get a hold of herself. She couldn't cry now. She walked up the stairs and back towards her bedroom without making any conscious decision to, her feet just moved.
It was as if her great aunt had used the Fist and struck her between the eyes, and now she had no idea where she was or what she was doing. Automatically, she turned down the main halls and took the south stairway. Her room was her traditional sanctuary. Though, very soon she'd have to move out of it and into the chambers for the clan leader. These were her father's old rooms. Where many objects and chakra traces and dangerous memories of him lurked.
She wondered vaguely if his ghost was there. Had she even seen him the first time around? There was no certainty.
And it turned out that Sasuke was in her room. He was hovering around rather than lying on her bed. She didn't know him that well, comparatively, but his body language instantly told her something was wrong.
He told her himself that he'd called Naruto and Sakura.
And that shook Hinata out of her daze, as if a hypnotist had snapped his fingers and forced her to wake. She'd had her own gauzy ideas of how the meeting with Sasuke's teammates would go. They would come to offer condolences along with everyone else. Somehow Hinata would tell them.
Sasuke shoved his hands into the deep pockets in his loose linen pants. His shoulders aligned into an iron cross of embarrassment. They were his friends, so she'd thought, but she dared not interfere, she knew that much. She knit her own fingers together unconsciously, like a small child told not to touch. And... she had her own teammates. Her own life. Didn't she? She looked at him through the half-shadow of her hair. She'd never not liked Sakura, but still she was alone while Naruto and Sakura were together. But Naruto and Sakura had a teammate-shaped hole punched through them. And now that lost teammate was here. Hers. Hers more than theirs?
Sasuke shook his head, dismissive and impatient like restless licks of flame around his hands, his manner. We'll tell them. He said. He meant that they'd tell Sakura and Naruto the truth.
Hinata went through the motions of nodding and agreeing, which was easy enough. She'd been nodding and agreeing with a lot of completely impossibly requests lately. This was just one more. She'd have to do it somehow.
Having told her and held her, Sasuke turned and paced over to the window. He seemed more preoccupied than usual, and even angrier. But his anger was beyond her, it belonged to his own secrets and his own team now. Hinata pulled out the chair and sat down heavily at her desk. She had to do this, so she had to think- she hadn't done anything wrong. She wasn't really stealing something from them. People weren't... things you owned, and there was no ownership in just meeting a person and liking them. She was their friend, they could reconcile their strange asymmetrical relationships with Sasuke in the centre. The cyan shadow on her eyes came off on her fingers in a messy blue smear. She didn't dare look into the mirror either. She'd rather not know how bad she looked.
Momoe would send someone to fix her hair and face before the well-wishers began to arrive.
"That fucking idiot." Sasuke muttered under his breath, the obscenity like razorwire in the way he said it. "He'd better not fuck this up..." He seemed more foul-mouthed that usual. He was probably upset, she decided. He was not just angry, he was worried. He probably had a... complicated relationship with them. That's what Sakura had said, sighing. It's complicated. He must feel a lot of things. She didn't want to pry. And- she didn't want to make it harder for him. He was staring out the windows now. Tension crawled off him in slow waves. Talking about his friend Naruto, that way, the Naruto Hinata knew. The Naruto that would do anything to have his teammate back.
And it was not her business.
He seemed to want to stay in her room. He seemed to not want to talk about it. Hinata had things she had to do and her own polite face to show to the world. The business of being a clan leader so far was so much artifice, silk and crushed makeup and white lies. She told Sasuke that the servants would bring Naruto and Sakura upstairs. They would bring refreshments if he asked. They would alert him when his teammates arrived.
------
Of course, Naruto would come quickly.
Sasuke couldn't clear his throat, couldn't show his face without Naruto racing across the land like his pants were on fire, full of his usual idiot certainty that he would save Sasuke. Save Sasuke from what? From himself, ultimately.
Sasuke was half-expecting Naruto to be crouched on the other end of the phone line, like a jungle predator ready to spring.
But Naruto wasn't home. Where the hell was he? Sasuke hadn't worn a watch in a while, the crystal face would just get smashed in sparring or missions, but now he wanted to know what time it was, how many minutes and seconds had passed. Hinata's pretty sunlit room was too small and too sweet-smelling. Nowhere to rest and no space to think. He felt like he stuck out, the raised nail waiting for the hammer, black and ragged against all this soft prettiness. He could train but he had to conserve his chakra. He could read, but he was too keyed up, too restless, his thoughts wouldn't slow down. Sakura was probably at the hospital or something, but where the hell was Naruto?
The filigreed silver hand of Hinata's antique water-clock crept and dawdled. There were voices out in the courtyard, probably her relatives doing him the courtesy of leaving. Pity that some of the others didn't go too! Sasuke was not the kind of person who liked to pace, to let himself be seen pacing, anyway. If anyone was watching he'd have sat down and glowered and not moved a single muscle. But no one was watching, unless Neji was even more pathetic than Sasuke had thought. He was all alone with his useless circle of anxious thoughts.
Obviously this was because of Naruto, because Naruto was such a pain in the ass and Sasuke didn't know what the hell to do with him. It wasn't his fault he had this... crazy friend that just wouldn't leave him alone, just wouldn't let him kill himself slowly and painfully in peace. It wasn't his fault that Naruto decided to care that much, it wasn't like Sasuke had ever given Naruto much cause to care at all! Obviously it was all Naruto's fault- Sasuke liked that answer, it explained everything. Now Naruto had to get his lazy ass out of bed and show up.
The sun was high over the mountains now, riding the pools of melt water on the block ridge of roof outside Hinata's windows. The sky above was unbroken blue. All storms over. Tiny green buds on Hinata's little bare bonsai trees. Or maybe those were the ornamental cherries, she said they were young seedlings still. Sasuke didn't concern himself with crap like gardening usually, one tree looked like another. He ran one hand hard through his hair. Then the other. His fingernail caught on a snarled spike. The bright wet metal of the water-clock ticked indifferently on. Naruto was still not there. Was Naruto looking for new ways to piss Sasuke off?
Naruto had an infinite capacity for causing annoyance.
Sasuke had not seen him for almost three years. But that couldn't have changed.
The wedding photograph had shown two happy, bright-eyed people. There was a gap of time between them and Sasuke now, he'd been gone for so long and it was something that smacked him in the face when he saw that photograph. He'd been nervously looking through Hinata's books, seeing nothing. The photo had fallen out of one, fluttered at his feet.
They had become adults, crystallized in a moment of recent happiness, but still Naruto and Sakura. The more distant faces of the Eleven were around them, these were people that Sasuke had thought of as distractions, animated sparring obstacles if that much. There was the sloppy dog-nin, the taijutsu expert out of his ridiculous green leotard for once. Sakura's blond hard-eyed friend. At their right hand, like a religious figure, like a kabuki ghost in purple watered silk, was Hinata.
Six years was a long time. Maybe they both would be strangers to him now. They'd only known one another for a short time. A year? Naruto talked about unbreakable bonds... Like the invisible force between a samurai and his sworn enemy, Sasuke thought, the hair on the back of his neck prickling up as if Naruto was at this very moment drawing near. The samurai knew with his supernatural awareness of the movements and all of the thoughts of his enemy. They were bound together.
Even if Naruto was not an enemy, never had been. More a confused cross-combatant, someone Sasuke had fallen into the dust with in the blind headlong rush of years past.
Still the only friend he'd ever had, really. Stupid goddamn Naruto.
Probably the only thing that had stood between Sasuke and just ending it. Why not? Orochimaru took him apart. Orochimaru worked around the distant tracks of Itachi and after all that came to it's utter waste of an ending, what else was there? It wasn't as if any of Orochimaru's toadies gave a damn if he died or not, that left more of Orochimaru's ear and attention for them. It wasn't as if anyone back in Konoha wanted him back on their doorstep, was it? It was easy in the black pit, in the jaws of the black dog, to believe that.
Except for Naruto.
Stupid idiot, he yammered on about saving Sasuke- and he'd done it. Hadn't he? Saved him from his own hand, and the idiot didn't even know it. Didn't even have the first clue! Same old stupid Naruto.
Might as well just talk to him, Sasuke thought, glowering at the strange pattern of shine on Hinata's row of books, polished leather and gold leaf stamps. He had carefully replaced the photograph back within her book. Being an actual human being was never going to get easier if he didn't do it. Better to just rip the band aid off quickly.
Stupid Naruto was late. Sasuke looked around the room, at the utter nothing that he could do. He sighed.
Stupid Naruto, annoying as always. Like nothing had changed.
---------
There could be no ghosts in this house, Hinata thought, to comfort herself. It was a safe warm cocoon of paper and glass. Sasuke was safe here, and so was her sister and her family, and so was she. Her father was gone because his work was done. She was here now.
Sunlight cut long lines of shadow down from the windows at the foot of the stairs. Hinata had thought it was still mid-morning. But it was probably closer to noon. She had not eaten, and the fade of her hangover reminded her that maybe she should. The old cook would be full of advice to put something in her stomach before she attempted to greet the visitors and do her ceremonial duties. The front rooms of the house only had a few stacks of belongings now, most of the travelers had departed. The house staff moved through the long sunlit halls, light bouncing from ceramic dishes to splash white on their faces. They'd have to feed the well-wishers soon. The temple doors were bolted now, she could imagine the heavy steel locks without seeing them. There would be no more burning candles and papery ghosts. Even the lingering hint of kerosene and ashes had faded in the cold winds sweeping up from the gardens, the windows were all shut and the wooden halls smelled strongly of lemon oil and fresh cleaning. Hinata made her way to the kitchen, avoiding all the eyes and direct light.
"Oh honey, you look like a raccoon." Momoe said with mock horror as Hinata came to the kitchen door. She was chopping fish into efficient little translucent slices. She smiled, a hint of gloss on her lips, and put aside her dripping knife. "I'll get a cloth..." Hinata watched her wipe the fish bits from her hands, rocking back on her heels. Her stomach gurgled at the thought of the fishy smell anywhere near her. She crossed her arms protectively, mumbled half-excuses. "But you have raccoon eyes," Momoe continued gently. Her manner always changed when she spoke to Hinata, she seemed to feel that Hinata needed more warmth than others. "You look like something we'll find scuttling through the compost."
This sort of teasing was comforting sometimes. Hinata assembled a small smile, not entirely real, but she was grateful. This sort of thing also drew giggles from Hanabi, who seemed as resilient as ever. "Like a tanuki!" She weighed in from the table. Miya was beside her, drinking a late morning cup of coffee. "Except she doesn't have the big huge hairy-" Hanabi continued.
"Brat, eat your food." Miya said, administering the required bop on the head with her wooden spoon. But Hanabi seemed pleased that she'd managed to at least mention the big, huge hairy part of a tanuki, even if she hadn't gotten the naughtiest bits out. Hinata rubbed her aching eyes and thought that at least... Hanabi wasn't crying and sad. That would seem worse somehow. Hinata wouldn't know what to say to her. But then again, maybe Hanabi was very hurt inside and her usual misbehavior was a smoke screen this time. Hinata scrutinized her little sister, or tried to, because Hanabi noticed immediately and then her intense white eyes were squared on Hinata and Hinata felt too tired and worn out to even deal with this.
"Hey, oneesan, you look like a trainwreck." Hanabi said authoritatively. She had recently seen her first train in a distant away-mission and Naruto had told her about derailing one once, it amused her terribly. "Are you okay, oneesan? Is that mean boy being mean or what?" Hanabi put down her rice bowl with a declarative clatter and frowned across the table. Hinata folded her kimono skirts under herself and found a tissue in her obi. All of this let her slip between the sights of Hanabi's piercing stare.
She almost said 'no'. "Yes. I'm okay." she said. She rubbed the tissue into her wet eyes. Someday she would feel normal, that's what Sasuke said. Someday it would all be a distant ache, like a scar or an old bruise. "Are you feeling better, Hanabi?" She tried to smile and this time it was a lost cause.
Hanabi frowned harder and disbelief settled onto her small, perfect features. Her eyes glittered, cubic crystals. "Yeah." she said, and looked away, over Hinata's shoulder and out into the busy dining rooms and shoji division behind her. She must have assumed that Hinata was talking about her hangover. Or maybe she just didn't want to talk about it at all.
Servants came with fresh clothes and wanted to take Hinata upstairs to dress her and paint her up again. No, she told them. Sasuke was there. Mean! Hanabi interjected at the mention of his name. Hanabi suddenly had boundless enthusiasm for talking, wanting to get into a long discussion of how Sasuke was weird and Sasuke was mean and Sasuke was in Hinata's bed again, and yes Hanabi knew all about it. And Hinata was quietly glad to be picked up like a discarded household object, bustled away by more servants.
The makeup and clothes were camouflage. The powder set on her face and tightened slightly, it felt like a layer of ceramic armor. Her father's dressing servants were no-nosense and clipped, she didn't have to talk to them, all she had to do was move her arms away from her body so they could tie sashes, hold still for their brushes and pots of crushed minerals. The kimono this time was long with formal sleeves. Soft gold with wheat-colored embroidery of silk trees and geisha lounging with shimasen. They twisted and tied her hair up with chips of pink abalone. She looked less and less like herself in the mirror, they painted away her swollen eyes and messy tears. All she had to do was obey them, turn her head for them the way they wanted. They take orders from you, don't they? Sasuke would say. She'd seen him with servants, he pointed and snapped and told them exactly what he wanted them to do. He was like.. someone with only the abstract thought of a family, it seemed. He didn't know how to behave with a real one. Her neurotic worries wouldn't make sense to him, she decided. You should stand up to them. You should take control. Yes, she thought. You should tell them all to go to hell, Hinata. They can't talk to you that way. Yes. But he didn't understand.
More servants came with a pot of green tea which she did not drink and a late breakfast which she forced herself to eat. Council attendants came and wanted to know when she would relocate her living quarters.
"Soon." she said, looking at her white face in the mirror. It was as if all the evidence had been hidden, Sasuke's fingerprints carefully wiped from her.
Like a crime scene. But it wasn't wrong, what she'd done. She wasn't taking him away from them. He was still theirs, Naruto's and Sakura's. It was going to be difficult, but it wasn't wrong.
You should have thought of that before you did it, she thought to herself, closing her eyes under the powder and mineral shadows and blushes. It was the kind of thing her father would have said. The servants were only to complete their task. They put away their implements and closed up the closets. They packed away the makeup and the jewelry. They closed the door and left her, and she was in charge again. She had to get up and be what she was supposed to be. But she felt at loose ends, wanting to busy her hands with paper marking or plant-watering. Both were upstairs. In her room. With Sasuke.
Neji's teammates arrived, in the wake of the last departures. The garden staff sent the warning, and Hinata came out to see them picking their way up the main path, past empty stone fire bowls and spent torches. There were flowers in Tenten's hand. But Tenten thirty feet away was still something Hinata could handle, a face she couldn't quite see clearly. She wasn't talking, she wasn't a reality that had to be confronted. The veranda was chilly under her feet and the wind pitched and bit at her ears and fingers coldly. She stood still and waited. When they were closer she bowed. Neji's tall loud sensei came leading them, he greeted her right on the wooden lip of the veranda.
He was not solemn, but his face was not split into a blinding grin either. He took her hands. Hinata stood and let him do it. Ragdoll limbs. She was being ridiculous, like a petulant child. Neji's sensei said words, and she saw his lips move and his small shiny eyes glint, but she wasn't really hearing. Sasuke had done this, taken her hands. Trying to share her pain, or at least put a hand to it. Neji's sensei tightened his grip slightly. His fingers were very precise in their balance of pressure, he was a master in an entirely different kind of taijutsu from her own or Neji's. He made a encouraging kind of hmmm sound, and then he let her go.
She stood on the raised wooden deck and he stood on the ground with the half-frozen twists of tulip bulbs at his feet. Tall as he was, she looked down on the shiny ring in his hair. Lee was beside him, Hinata didn't see him until he leapt onto the veranda beside her. He had been beside his sensei, maybe a few steps behind. She was too fuzzyheaded to even notice, a fatal mistake for a ninja in the field. Lee sprung back into a standing position. "I'm so sorry Hinata-san!" he exclaimed, with the same urgency and enthusiasm that inflected every word out of him. Hinata-san even though they were teaching colleagues and if Hinata weren't so shy and slow to come to these things, would probably be friends. Lee was polite. Formal. In a different way than she was. In him it was joyful. In her it was like she was holding the world away from herself with both hands.
Tears pressed in on her eyes and she had the tissue ready for them.
"Don't cry, Hinata-san!" His hand was on her shoulder. She had almost flinched when he moved so quickly, and with his usual grace. She'd seen it a million times, walking through the schoolyard between morning and afternoon classes to watch him leading the advanced classes in footwork drills. It was nothing new. She was just a mess. "You can cry, it's okay to cry!" He said everything with brightness and cheerfulness. She rubbed her eyes and ruined her makeup. Her nose was running. She smothered it with the tissue.
"Thank you, Lee-san." her own manners were brittle next to his. Her eyes stayed down.
Tenten was there. Hinata saw her pink sleeve first, then the polished cherry wood buttons on her Chinese tunic. Her warm brown eyes, which Hinata could not meet, and then she found her gaze zeroing in on a golden butterfly clasped to Tenten's small ear. The flesh was pinked too in the cold and the earring was cut away so only a finely worked gold skeleton, four wings, hung and clinked together. It was an old, very bad habit, a shy cringing away from faces and voices and over-concentration on that other person's clothes or hands or- worst of all- shoes. Hinata caught herself doing it and made herself look Tenten in the eye.
Tenten said "Hinata-chan!" Hinata did her best to hold up her end of the smile. Because they were now almost sisters-in-law and Tenten was concerned, Tenten took a well-balanced step up onto the veranda and then she wrapped her long, lean arms around Hinata. Her long sleeves folded, and her body was close enough for Hinata to feel her warmth. Maybe it was all politeness, Hinata still couldn't quite figure Tenten out. Couldn't figure herself out, really, given how far she stood from Neji. Even now. Tenten whispered in Hinata's ear that she was sorry, simple words, Hinata smelled her peony perfume. White lilies. Her topknots gleamed like burnt gold as she held Hinata at arm's length finally. Smiled her confident smile, her you'll be okay smile. No matter how Hinata felt about it, it was easy to see why Neji had fallen in love with Tenten.
If there was just going to be hugs then maybe this would be easier. She wouldn't have to try to talk. But then Tenten had let her go to and she had to. The wet tissue was balled up in her hand. She gestured with the other. "I'll... get Neji-niisan. I... " She caught the flicker of movement behind her, a servant in the hall. "Thank you for coming." she bowed to the three of them shallowly, manners observed. "I'll get Neji-niisan." Where was Neji? Hinata had no idea when Neji was, she hadn't seen him since the funeral pyre. She showed his teammates in and she had no idea what to do with them. The servant came forward and interceded. Shoes were removed and organized.
"Wait, Hinata-san!" Lee was turning around from their group and the servant. There was a coiled sheath of papers in his hand. "Hinata-san, these are for you!" Not a scroll, but a collection of many sheets. Hyuga-sensei. The lettering was neat ink blocks, a student's writing. "To help you feel better! They're a good class, they were worried about you." He flashed his white teeth and his thumbs-up. Then he was lead away.
She tucked it into her obi, in the back like a short ninja's sword. Her broken fingernail was bleeding and she didn't want to get blood on the papers, it was definitely from her morning class. The wind had systematically torn apart her carefully tied hair. But it was okay to look a mess, she decided. It was expected. She didn't want... people to think that she hadn't loved her father. Never mind that she wasn't sure about that herself. The servants were either preoccupied or didn't bother to alert her. But maybe they saw these two as friends of hers, they didn't need to be introduced as formal guests. She was fingering an abalone hairpin when she heard Naruto's voice.
"Hinata-chaaaaan!" he boomed, tearing up the garden path. So maybe the servants had assumed she'd hear him coming. Sakura was only a few steps behind, looking harried as she grabbed Naruto's orange sleeve.
He was tall now, probably taller than even Neji. His hair was a gold halo in the piercing sun. Sakura was pale and pretty beside him, even as she smoothed out her long white doctor's coat, elbowed him and growled at him to be polite, to mind his damn manners, to act normal, they must still think that Sasuke was a big secret.
Hinata bowed. Because there was nothing different about this, was there? They were still her friends. Naruto drew himself up from his graceless stop. His blue eyes were incandescent. His face arranged itself in a smile, a genuine one. He was always on fire, lit by internal flames. Hinata said, slowly "Thank you for coming." There would be manners first. She saw Sakura realize this, her face set into a kind of vigilant understanding. She had one hand on Naruto's arm, like she had to hold him in place. She said the polite words, and Hinata answered with more of them.
"I was surprised to hear the news, your father was doing very well on the medication Tsunade-sama prepared..." Sakura said, after the sympathy had been ritually offered and accepted. The wind scattered her hair and threw it over her shoulders and around her face. With some difficulty she pushed it aside with a gloved hand. She paused to elbow Naruto discreetly, as he started to speak. They must not know how to even ask about Sasuke, Hinata thought.
"Uh... Hinata-chan, we just got the news- about your father. Ow, Sakura-chan." Naruto said. He rubbed at his ribs with one hand, his orange patterned coat wrinkling. Sakura had just elbowed him.
Sakura looked up at Hinata, and Hinata looked back, and Hinata thought at once that she had nothing she could say, nothing that was polite, and also that she should invite them in. They couldn't have this conversation out in the wind and the cold and in front of half the gardening staff.
In a small northward tatami room, Naruto's impatience lasted long enough for the servants to close the shoji door. The light was withered half-green and strange from the angle of the windows. There would be tea coming. Hinata had imagined this moment being improved by formality and the three of them sitting together and sipping tea. It would be okay, because Sakura was the student of the Hokage and the ANBU were under her control. Sasuke would be fine, and Hinata would explain everything.
"Is Sasuke here?" Naruto finally broke out, ignoring Sakura's sudden acid glare. "Ow! Sakura-chan! I said I was sorry about her-" His voice was boyish and high suddenly, wheedling, Hinata felt something in her chest tighten. Grief or dreams deferred. Guilt?
"It's okay, Sakura-san." she murmured.
"Hinata-chan, there was a phone call..." Sakura said, slowly. She watched Hinata carefully and Hinata played with the roll of papers and twine, and then put it aside. Her restless fingers and her blood-smeared thumb sought the crisp hem of her kimono. She had never known what to say about the two of them, other than that she was happy for them. It was enough of the truth, or the only parts that could be aired by daylight. She didn't... mind... that they were married. She knew it wouldn't work, so it was okay, and this was enough. She told them the proper words to let them know that it was all right about her father, at least that they didn't need to talk about it. The necessary politeness was over.
"Your teammate, Uchiha Sasuke-san," she said, staring at her hands. "is here."
It was a relief to finally say it out loud, to hear their sharp intake of breath.
She dragged her gaze upwards and saw them exchange a glance. Sakura had Naruto's hand tightly in hers between them. His knuckles were white. Silence tensed in the small room for only a second before Naruto said, tactlessly "Here? He's here? Hinata-chan, what-"
But it wasn't tactlessness, Hinata decided, burying her head in one hand and rubbing at her eyes. It was just an unwillingness to let anything stop him from achieving his goals- and she could really stand to do the same. She was being very unfair to them, making them put up with this pretense. She had imagined there being time, somehow, to say I found him in the woods and I wanted to call you but the ice storm and the ANBU, and her own neurotic worries and this wasn't her business any longer. Naruto was already on his feet and Sakura had let go of his hand in shock, her eyes were wide and there was a perfect curved reflection of the window in each. Hinata looked away under the glaring force of Naruto's voice and his insistent questions.
"...please." she whispered, holding her hand in front of her face, as if that would stop them from seeing her eyes welling up. There was no way to explain anything. When Naruto offered her his hand she was too scattered to take it. She couldn't hold this situation together. She should have said something like come with me or I'll show you where he is.
But her throat closed, and she just took Naruto's hand. She fumbled for Sakura's. No more politeness, she thought. He needed his teammates and they needed him. The servants would come with tea and find an empty room, but she didn't care. The servants stared at this small spectacle, the clan leader crying and pulling her friends down the hall. The servants said nothing. They parted, lifting heavy trays up high and out of the way, making room to let them pass.
----------------
Sasuke had solved the problem of Hinata's room and his own wretchedness by going outside. Very simple. It was cold, and the sun was sheeting off the water and hacking at his eyes, but he felt better. Discomfort went nicely with nerves. He sat very sit by the pond's edge. The flagstones were wet and his feet were freezing. Perfect.
A long murky orange belly flashed underneath the water. It was a big, mature koi, probably well-fed since Hinata was a soft touch. He was in such a bad mood that his scorn was catching everything on fire, everything he could think of. But he didn't mean that, he thought. He liked the fact that Hinata was gentle. He just hated where he was and who he was and what he had to do and- in fact- the world at large.
Crows flew over his head. He watched their long fingery black wings. There were little birds, too. They stayed near the ground and jumped around. The really tiny ones had a spastic flight pattern, flicking back and forth between bare tangled bushes. Naruto was near. Sasuke was sure of it. That samurai's bond. That, and the fact he could hear Naruto yelling downstairs, somewhere.
Or maybe he was already on the second floor? Maybe he was charging upstairs like a herd of elephants right at that moment. Naruto needed to hurry it up, the waiting was just making Sasuke want to punch his lights out more. He had to talk and not kick Naruto's ass. Too bad that he was a lot better at the former. Somewhere in the house, Naruto was yelling, the sound came up the wood frame, distant echos. Sasuke couldn't hear the words, but the tone was unmistakable. Naruto couldn't shut his mouth and get moving? Sasuke glared at the birds, the crows, the fish, the world around him. Too much to hope for, of course, that Naruto might just break his neck on the stairs.
Naruto was the kind of person who's voice burned itself into your memory. An annoying person, Sasuke had told one of his hired hands, the last time he'd seen Naruto. An elegant understatement. Naruto's voice was coming closer. But Sasuke kept his back turned, and little nerves sizzled up the back of his neck, as if Naruto was spitting fire on him just by being around. The yelling was close, so maybe Naruto was too stupid to look out the window and see? Maybe he'd arrive, think the room was empty and-
"Sasuke-kun!"
Instead Sakura would open the window.
And Naruto would be hot on her heels, bellowing Sasuke's name in that irritating way he had. Like Sasuke couldn't hear him coming miles away. "Sasuke!" And Sasuke wondered how he'd ever let Naruto start addressing him in that overly familiar way. He scowled down into his rippled reflection in the pond, fish scales shimmering glassily under it. There had been a muffled sort of high, hitched gasp too. Hinata was there. That was bad. He got up but did not turn around. The little birds burst from the bushes and shot to the roofline.
If he didn't turn around, he thought, then Naruto would charge over and yank him around. Or- lately- Sakura would. He'd only seen her twice since she grew taller and violently short-tempered, but he knew to listen for the snarl in her voice, the signal that she was about to start punching.
He would listen for it carefully. He could leap to the roof, he thought. There would be roof to put between himself and her strike range. There would be open air for chidori and kirin. But it wasn't a fight. It wasn't about fists. He had to talk. He didn't move.
And they didn't move either. Nothing moved but the birds and the wind. They would be charging by now, there would be screaming. He didn't really believe that they'd ever give up, but...
More silence. Maybe they didn't know what to think. He felt that way himself. Ten seconds of standing with his indifferent back presented to them was a miniature eternity. He didn't want them to touch him, he decided. He didn't have the energy to cover the flinch and act like he didn't care.
But when he turned to face them, the sun bounced white hot off the windows and blinded him. He saw the silhouettes, both of them taller yet, he thought. But nothing more. Hinata was behind them, he couldn't see her eyes but he recognized the familiar gesture of her hand to her lips. For a moment there was only the scattered birdsong, because time had slowed down like this was a moment of attack.
There may have been another gasp from these people he could barely see. Their chakra was familiarity enough, it was probably better that he couldn't see their faces. He squinted into the light and didn't move. The wind picked at his hair and then gusted, throwing it against his face.
"Sasuke-kun...?" That was Hinata. She had reverted to formality. "Sasuke-kun, please come inside?" He shifted his position so the glare fell from his eyes and he saw her fingers turning translucent pink with the cold. She stood at the open window with her hand curled over the frame. Sakura and Naruto stood behind her, unconscious attack formation, both of them tense even though their hands were at their sides- and for the moment, empty. It seemed wrong, they should scream and yell. There should be crying and they should yank on his clothes and slap him across the face and demand to know what was wrong with him. They should threaten to haul him back tied up in a gunny sack, if necessary.
"Is it him?" Naruto's voice broke through the silence roughly. "Hinata-chan, are you sure it's him? It could be Orochi-"
"It's not the sannin Orochimaru-sama." Hinata said, quick with anxiety. Her eyes and words seemed wet, like she was crying. She had so much crap on her face that he couldn't tell if she'd been crying or not. She didn't look at him. "It's the same person... that was in your team. It's not a henge."
Tense snaps of silence.
Then Sakura said "She would know. She can see his chakra."
"I know that, but what's he doing here-?" Naruto said, and he was being so fucking stupid, so utterly obtuse, it was enough to shatter Sasuke's silence into a million pieces. Sasuke was cold and he wanted to get their usual crap over with, so he could come inside. Naruto was just standing there like he didn't believe it, like he thought Orochimaru was sending Sasuke-clones right to his doorstep now. Sasuke had called him, practically handed him a personal invitation. He was standing, dumbfounded. He was such an idiot.
"Do you think it's three snakes in a henge, dumbass?" Sasuke snapped impatiently. The sun was in his face again and the wind kept tossing his hair into his eyes. There was no dignity to be had. "Has it ever not been me? Of course it's me!"
But there was only silence, wide oceans of it, in the wake of his words.
Naruto's feet scuffed on Hinata's tatami floor. He must have taken a clumsy step back, Sasuke wasn't sure because that would require looking at him. He looked at Hinata until he realized it was making her uncomfortable. Then he looked at the roofline, the birds up there. The sky behind it. He took a long, deep cleansing breath. Crows turned their long black heads to look at him with one eye, than the other. The silence seemed to demand he say something, possibly like I've come back. But- no. If Naruto wanted this, Naruto could do it. He folded his arms. He was freezing. Hinata pushed the window open more, so he could come back in. But he stayed put.
Sakura had the decency to figure it out, though not quick enough for Sasuke's taste. "It's him, he's here." she whispered, and then there was Naruto's muffled half-growl about it maybe being a trick and was it really Sasuke and more about Orochimaru. "But Orochimaru is dead," Sakura said and-
"He's not dead. Is your ANBU intelligence that bad? He's just gone to ground." Sasuke growled. He was trying to keep his temper in check, but they were both pissing him off. But he had to stop doing that- if things were going to just spill out of his mouth he should at least decide what he wanted to say. Maybe that would stop up this dam of.. impossible feeling-type crap that he had no idea what to do with.
"Of course he's dead." Sakura shot back, finally losing patience herself. "You killed him!"
"I didn't kill anyone." he muttered. The birds hopped from the crest of each ceramic tile, completely unconcerned. Crows over the gable started to shriek obnoxiously. His feet were numb and he didn't want to waste chakra to warm them yet, he might have to fight this idiot, who was probably still standing in bafflement, frozen to the spot.
He looked up and Hinata was watching him, her hair all windblown and half of her hairpins falling out. She looked miserable, and he felt the embarrassed heat creeping up his neck. Why did she have to be here to see this? He had to make this work for her, at least. He knew she hated a scene. She probably hated seeing him this way. She stood and she seemed to be waiting, she must have been as cold as he was.
"...I'll come in." he said to her, finally. He kept his eyes down as he climbed back into the room. The window creaked behind him as she closed it. And then he leaned back against it and crossed his arms over the healed scar in his side and still did not look at them.
And he waited for them to speak. Try to save him.
The silence was granite weight pressing him into the floor, but he couldn't say anything, his throat was clenched tight. Maybe Sakura and Naruto were struck dumb by this, his bizarre reappearance in the Hyuga household, of all places. Rumors of not only Orochimaru's death, but his own being... greatly exaggerated, that was the cliché. He remembered that. Maybe they didn't know what to say either, that's why they were saying nothing. There was no flare of chakra, so they were not attacking. No fight was starting. Nothing was happening, which was somehow much worse. There was then a choking sound, someone suppressing tears- so one of them was crying. He thought it might be Sakura, but it might not have been Sakura, and that would be intolerable. This was intolerable. Were they going to make him say it? Did he have to reach for them now?
He couldn't. He'd always thought that he'd kill Itachi, and after that the future was a utilitarian blank. Maybe there would be no future at all. He had no plan and no ability for this moment, because it was never to have come. He was never to have been here- ever. Dead, one way or the other. Already dead.
"I'll... I'll go. I'll... the servants will bring you tea. I'm... glad you stopped by, Naruto-kun and Sakura-san, I.. I mean I thank you on behalf of the... " Hinata was backing out of the room and he didn't blame her.
So he didn't stop her either.
She couldn't handle it. She was no different than him after all. She couldn't be there. But the difference was that she didn't have to be there, either.
The door closed, vibrating slightly in her haste. Then the soft sound of her bare feet went away down the hall.
--------
She was a coward- still, she thought. She gave up and ran away.
She was an intruder, pushing her nose into their business, she wasn't part of their team and she didn't know Sasuke, not really, not the way they did.
She was maybe in love with him, though probably not yet. The romance novels couldn't help in figuring this out at all. She maybe should have stayed. She maybe should have said something, something that she couldn't think of, that would have been the right thing to say and would have made everything better.
She was definitely in love with Naruto- or she had been, sometime in the past. That feeling was a memory with a frayed end. She cut it out because it was useless, dead wood, hacked away roughly, because of course she did not deserve any gentleness from herself. Naruto loved Sakura, and Hinata was a Hyuga and the heir, so unless she wanted to be disowned by her family, she couldn't have married him anyway. There could be no mixing of Hyuga blood with the Kyuubi, the council would possibly rather put her to death than risk this dishonor. Tears were also weakness and her father would frown at her, right now, if he was there. His frown would start out as simple sternness, then darken into something black and horrible.
So it was stupid to even think about it, this was what her father would have said.
"I think he's a traitor and an active enemy of the village. He had his chances to prove Uzumaki right, and he fought us every single time. I think he just wants to die." which was what Neji said, because Hinata searched the house until she found him.
What could she say? That Neji didn't know Sasuke the way she knew him? That he seemed so bad but he was really a good person? These were the things that stupid, deluded women said when they were being used by some piece of scum- which was also what Neji said.
She thought of her weak heart at moments like this. As he seemed to bring his hand to his side, the place where the Sound ninja had impaled him, Hinata thought about her heart. Injured by him.
Which was not a thing she could say. On his forehead, under the metal and fabric and the linen wraps under that, was his mark. Injured by her father, and as she thought about that, chakra began to collect on her fingers. She pictured dime-sized drops in her mind, spinning on each fingertip. Neji would have noticed, but he didn't react. Maybe he thought of her as so weak that he didn't have to prepare for an attack from her at all. He could stop her- with one finger. He'd said that to her once. Their relationship, she decided in a rush, was not really any better, not really. She thought she should just do it. There was no good way to get it done.
"If you want me to approve, I can't." he was saying. He was sitting in the corner of this little tatami room, a bit dusty from misuse, tucked in the back pockets of the house. His skin was very pale between the white of his robes and the rich wood-stain color of his hair. His elegant forearms and hands were braced on his knees, and he was looking mostly still at nothing, into nothing. There were fine shadows of grief and exhaustion on his face, silvery bruises, so he was upset and he was dealing with it without her, as always. It wasn't really any more her business than Sasuke and his teammates. He must have sent away his own, and Tenten too, which meant that he didn't want to see anyone, he'd chosen this room to be alone in.
-by choice, because he was talented and powerful and so beautiful, looking more and more like his father every year. He was a person with so much to offer, unlike Hinata herself, who felt as if she begged people to even notice her, cupping her empty hands. She got down on her knees to face him. He slowly pulled himself back from his thoughts enough to look at her.
She didn't want him to say that he'd beat up Sasuke if he hurt her, or that she was being stupid, or even that he actually did love her, even though he never really showed it. She didn't want him to say anything at all. She put her arms around him- not to embrace him, but to catch the knot of his forehead protector in her fingers. Her thumb was bleeding again. She untied the sash and put it aside.
"...what are you doing?" he said, mildly exasperated. The metal plate clanked as she put it down on the floor.
It was like he only started to take her seriously when she pulled out the metal clasps in the linen wraps and even then he didn't speak, he just stared at her like she'd lost her mind. But it was familiar, she noted and weighed his reactions in a distant kind of way as she methodically unwound each layer of cloth. This was the look that had slipped onto his face at the end of the chunnin exam, when she'd called his bluff.
"Don't-" he said, and he raised one hand partially between them. But he didn't stop her, and he didn't even touch her. Chakra was saturated in her hand and he'd have to be blind to not know it, it must be burning holes into the back of his head even without his byakugan lit.
"I have to. Neji-niisan." The strip of fabric was loose and almost completely unwound, when she let go it fell to his neck. She had seen his seal so rarely but it's black crispness stayed with her, like fine silk embroidery. Or better for Neji's absolute precision- diamonds chiseled into marble, or maybe into milled steel. It was almost artistic, the spiderweb of scarring around it, the agony of migraines that came upon every member of the branch house and the way the main house politely ignored it. It was beautiful, her father was skilled in his seal-making. The jutsu to tear it apart was so much more crude. Like a sledgehammer- she put her hand to his forehead and he was too shocked to stop her, the jutsu was too complete to stop.
------------
Sasuke had changed his mind. He'd like Naruto to yell and scream and shake him, please. He'd like Sakura to cry, and both of them to get in his face, and both of them to look at him with that bewildered why look and then-
Then he and Naruto could hammer at one another in a confused rage, because it wasn't like they could talk or actually deal with their feelings, so what else could they do? That was how it had always been before. That was what he needed now.
Sasuke would like that again rather than this, a closed room and three separate excruciating silences and the flowery collection of Hinata's things. The photographs and the books and the inter-layered flower scent, like her distant presence. A fight would stop this but he didn't know how to start one.
Because maybe they wouldn't react? Maybe there was too much water under the bridge between them, finally. In their silence he constructed the guess that they must have thought he was dead too. That's why they hadn't rooted him out of Orochimaru's cellar, his insistence on leaving had finally worked.
It was probably Naruto crying, though maybe not, since Naruto was a loud crier. So it was Sakura. Someone sniffled and there were quiet words that Sasuke could have heard perfectly, had he wanted to. Instead he stopped up his ears- with his hands, right out in the open where they could see him.
There was no roof and no sky to look at, the photographs were a silent indictment, so he watched his feet warm back up. The knobs of bone in his toes were no longer white and purple when Sakura said "It's really you."
Sasuke wondered why Naruto wasn't shouting already, if they were finally convinced of that. But his mouth stayed shut.
And no one grabbed the lapels of his robe to shake some sense into him.
When he was sixteen- and entirely deluded, caught in Orochimaru's illusion- he'd met a shadow clone. He'd popped that shadow clone like a soapbubble. A temporary target. Evaporated.
Between the battles, Naruto's blond head had poked up over the rubble and his shout had cut through the silt and smoke kicked up into the air. It was the real one that time, but Sasuke had ripped out a bit more chakra and persisted and worked around Naruto's weaknesses- and finally escaped him. Maybe Sasuke had finally escaped him for good. His lip curled. This idiot.. he couldn't believe this idiot.
He couldn't say anything either.
They had to do this. The team was something that Sasuke had held in his mind, as something to push away from. He'd always thought of it as staying around, existing somewhere outside of him so he could run away from it. Surely Naruto would always chase, he was stupid, and he was loyal, and he wasn't like Sasuke who was determined to be miserable. But in that room, right then, maybe it really was over.
"Dammit... dammit... Talk to him." That was Sakura's harsh whisper. Leather cracked and shifted, she was probably clenching her fists.
Naruto's words were too soft, too growled up to be deciphered.
"It's him."
Naruto snuffled messily. "That isn't him."
Did they doubt that he could ever actually want to come back to them? Didn't they understand that he wanted to, he needed to, didn't they know that he couldn't say it?
"...Sasuke would never not wear that.. that fucking sissy bow on his ass-"
"Shut up, dumbass!" The words exploded out of him. He looked straight at Naruto before he could stop himself and Naruto's blond blueness lanced him right between the eyes, made him want to stagger backwards.
The wall held him up as Naruto wiped his eyes with his grimy knuckles. He was the one with wet eyes, and under it his fierce fanged grin, it seemed to glint with the tears on his face. "It is you." he said. Messy splatters of tears and stupid chuckles were rolling out of his throat. "Fuck you, bastard, it is you. You're not dead."
But Sasuke could only stare back, weighted down with too much silence. If he wasn't going to spit in their face, what could he do?
"You were dead, we were sure you were..." Sakura began, somewhere to the side. He could see the pink wisps of her hair and a long white jacket she was wearing with an ID card and pens and doctor stuff in the pockets. If she was a doctor now she shouldn't be saying these stupid things to him.
He had to keep his temper. He had to tell them, somehow, without telling them. He had to share his feelings and keep them under wraps.
"I told you, Orochimaru went into hiding." he said. He turned around and faced the window. "I was never dead, and he isn't dead either. But where have-"
"Where have you been!" Naruto interrupted rudely. "Where the hell have you been, they told us you were-"
"What do you think?" Sasuke hissed. His seal wound shot pain into his arm as his shoulders knotted up. He drew in a shaky breath, his temper was exploding out of it's cage, awake and raging. "You couldn't check up on those leads? You idiot!" He slammed his hand down on the windowsill. He felt like he was shaking his finger at Naruto, scolding him like a naughty child, counting off his disobedience. "Fucking dumbass, clumsy idiot, you idiot, you fucking moron, usuratonkachi, you couldn't even do this right-"
"Shut up!" howled Naruto, same as always, his mouth perpetually open. He probably felt it coming.
"-I was waiting for you, idiot!" That hand became a fist, pain curling up his arm. The words came out in bitten off pieces. Naruto couldn't take it, that hadn't changed, Naruto balled up his fists and hunched over with his own rage, blond spikes flying, like an angry animal, his eyes hot under the tears now. Sasuke could see the reflection in the window. Sasuke couldn't face him.
"You were dead! Fuck you, you bastard! You make us think you're dead and-"
"That's stopped you before? Stop giving me these excuses, where were you-"
"You were fucking dead!"
"I wasn't dead, you idiot! Shut up and listen to me!"
"If you weren't dead, where were you!"
"I just told you where!"
"You made us think you were dead!"
"I didn't do that, it was Orochi- " he had to let the air out of his lungs, it was like gusts of fire, he was yelling and he couldn't stop himself. Probably the whole house could hear this. He got more air in and started again. "You're such an idiot, you talk and talk and you never shut up but the one time I need you to be stupid the way you always are-" And then he wasn't yelling or even talking, because his arm was alive with agony and the words rippled apart into a shaky gasp. Sakura's hand was on his arm and she'd grabbed him the exact wrong way.
"It's in your shoulder." she said tensely, almost to herself. She was right beside him now, her hair was blown up by the heating vents at their feet, it was tickling his chin. He couldn't move, she was too much at once, what could he say to her? And meanwhile, she was going on about stupid doctor crap. "It's deep, you're swollen, and if it hurts for me to touch you here-"
She had to make a diagnosis that way? He tried to pull away from her, but she had him and also there was the wall- he didn't want her poking at the wound, it hurt. He didn't want her sympathy or her closeness, she was worse than Naruto, he could cuss at Naruto and fight him- she was impossible. "Nothing." he snapped, trying to pull his arm out of her grasp anyway. He clamped his teeth together against the pain.
"Sasuke-kun, hold still please." she said. She had a voice like clear water, and this close to him he could smell the traces of medicines on her and the burn of spent chakra. She tried to pull his robes open and he grabbed her wrist. He could only grab one hand and she cross-blocked him with the other, pinned his arm under hers and it hurt, it wrenched his shoulder. He grit his teeth so he wouldn't show any pain to her and she sighed, impatient. But it was a thin veil over floods of worry, sound magic dissected down her tone. "Sasuke-kun. Don't struggle and it won't hurt. You're injured." Naruto was right behind her, breathing hard, they were both right in front of him.
"It doesn't hurt." he lied, raggedly. He couldn't get away this time. He could only try to shrink away from her- which would be too humiliating. He took his good arm and pushed her hand away. She evaded that too. He glared acidly at her and she paid no attention. "You're annoying." he spat at her, in final desperation. What else could he say? Something tightened on her pale face, he saw her eyes crumple slightly. She had his clothes down by his elbows by then. She was wide-eyed and her cool fingers were on his inflamed flesh, the heat and pain of it zigzagged up though his shoulder joint. There was finally nowhere to run. He looked down, letting his hair fall into his eyes fully. But it wasn't working. It wasn't working. The flush was climbing into his face again. This was a fiasco.
"Holy shit." Naruto said, leaning over them as Sakura stripped off the bandages, the medical tape, the poultice of herbs, now browned and rust-speckled with his blood. Naruto whistled under his breath and laughed stuttery-quick, like he was still jumpy with adrenaline. "Hah, you asshole, look at you! I can't even eat after seeing that, I'll go to get ramen and I'll be like, no beef or pork in it, I just saw something that'll make me lose my lunch-"
He was so fucking annoying, Sasuke couldn't believe it. He glowered under the shade of his long bangs and bore imaginary holes into the mats in front of him as Sakura's fingers pressed gently and the pain numbed down. He couldn't believe most of all that it actually... was almost like nothing had changed. You couldn't batter a relationship that was so flimsy, just Naruto's stupid determination, and have it survive, and spring back to life...
...you just couldn't do that. No one else would care that much. Or should.
"This needs a surgeon," Sakura said. "It needs Tsunade-sama."
"It's just been cut out." Sasuke muttered at her.
"With a hatchet?" she retorted, impatient with worry. "It's down into the muscle!"
"With a kunai." He averted his eyes. There was nothing to look at. Just them and the wall. Sakura exhaled in hot exasperation.
"You cut your seal out with a kunai," she repeated. "You cut your seal out. You... " Her hair brushed against his face again as she slowly shook her head. "Sasuke-kun. Sasuke-kun." It was unbearable, he didn't want to know how much he'd hurt them. He liked not knowing. Their worry and their concern, that tense silence like he was an enemy who might just snap and kill them, all of this. It was too much. He couldn't even handle his own pain.
"It was sterilized." he muttered, trying to bolster his case. He didn't see her roll her eyes but he didn't have to, either. He heard her grope for irritation. She'd probably learned that trick from him. Cover the pain with annoyance.
"Sterilization doesn't make it okay!" she snapped. She was probably imitating her equally annoying mentor, the completely intolerable Fifth who had let Naruto run after him in the first place!
"I had a drink first." he grumbled, mostly under his breath.
"It's really disgusting." Naruto told him cheerfully. Idiot, immune to the quiet heavy worry in Sakura's face, or else too busy making stupid jokes, trying to heal everything with his dumb loud laugh. "I can see your bones and everything. You're a big mess! Ha, you're so beat up, looks like you lost really bad-"
"Shut up!" he snarled. "Shut your mouth, I-" Sakura was prodding and he had to shut his instead. He glared at the discarded little clump of herbs. "I knew that shit was useless.." he grumbled.
"It's been treated well, it would be fine if it were just a flesh wound." Sakura said, getting down to business. Sasuke almost bothered to snap at her again, but it occurred to him that she was probably addressing Naruto. "It's been trained on and reopened-" That part was probably directed at him. "but the problem is the seal. It's Orochimaru-sannin's work. It needs Tsunade-sama, I'll have to call her." She shifted her weight like she was getting up. And it was happening, finally. They were going to just... take him back. It was going to be all the same again... all fixed.. like nothing had happened. They just wouldn't talk about it. It would all be fine. They'd be a team again. Everyone would forget. The world wasn't like this. Some people got reprieves. They were just fucking lying to him, just trying to paint it all over and act like it was okay.
"No." he hissed. He couldn't go back with them, stand in front of the Hokage, be locked up in chains and put in the dock- no! It wasn't going to work. Not this time. This time he did catch her wrist.
She wasn't ready for it, because his reaction was so out of proportion, probably, to what she expected. The chidori was ready, he just had to line up the charka circuits. He had to do it, he had to shock her so she couldn't clobber him. Simple. Her eyes connected with his and they were a clear bottle green, they rattled up in her head as the electricity flowed. He couldn't- he couldn't go back with them, back into the clutches of the village, back to Kakashi and to the Hokage and the empty Uchiha graveyard- "...no!" he gasped. She crashed to the mats, her coat fluttering after her.
He had his head down, he couldn't look at them. There was a heavy scent in the air. Burnt hair, sizzled in the charge. A dizzy haze of unreality. But Naruto would be at his throat in fractions of a second, he had to get another chidori lined up. Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan! Fuck you, bastard! Naruto was yelling already.
Naruto's hands must have had the strength of nine tailed demons. His hands were everywhere, whipping like flamed tails, the crisp memory of the Kyuubi bubbling through the walls. Too many bad memories.
"No." Sasuke was saying, still blocking Naruto somehow. Muscle memory. "No." His voice came out strangely calm. This was bad, hand-to-hand with Naruto in an enclosed space, his arm numb with pain again. Taijutsu was out, ninjutsu other than surgical strikes of electricity would ruin Hinata's things- stupid of him to stay here. He was one-handed, Naruto was reeling forward blindly, his hands outspread like clawed fingers. The sharingan needed no seals, no hands.
Genjutsu needed no hands or space at all.
"Asshole, we're trying to- we're doing this for you!" Naruto shouted. "We're trying to help you, you called us, you-"
"Lying to me?" he spat in Naruto's face. "Pretending that it's all okay?" With the next breath he shoved Naruto away. Patronizing him like he was a whining child! He hated liars more than anything. He pulled his shirt closed with his good hand. He cast the genjutsu- and a black cloud touched the ground over Naruto, all around him. Invisible blackness was filling his lungs and covering his eyes. Naruto went down on his knees, gagging like his windpipe had just been crushed.
And now it was real, now it was raw and hanging out in the air. Now the usual things Naruto yelled at him, and the usual things he yelled back- all of that was over with. There was nothing else he could think of to say or do, even though he'd wanted this, a real confrontation. It was here and it was impossible.
"...I can't do this." he gasped. His heart was hammering in his ears. His hands were out and raised to fend them off, words or fists. Sakura was on her back, out cold and Naruto was curled into a ball, shaking, the air was full of smoke and burnt smells. He needed air. Space. "...I'm leaving... I'm leaving this time." It was amazing, the urge to want it, want it so badly, and throw it away. Drown in his misery. "I can't do this!" They were both out and they couldn't hear him. "I can do this without you." He took one step back, and then another. Then the door was at his back. "I can't do this." he whispered. I can't do this with you.