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.

18. Spirits

The other thing she said was-
-I have to do this, Neji-niisan.

Hinata said his name like a separate declaration. The things she said to him at moments like this took on their own individual gravity. The close space of the walls and their dusty paper panels seemed to suck all the sound and air out of the room. Awkward shadows from the wooden shutters fell over them now. The sun was dawdling slowly, over the high gable of the main house. Crows screamed outside. And somewhere above them, a team that was not her own was meeting. But now, there was silence. She had no idea what they were doing. What they did, or decided, or said to one another was probably none of her business anyway.

It was late afternoon, or possibly early evening. The house's stream of activity and its familiar rhythms seemed too far away to tell. This was a place where no one would go at this time of year, a dusty sitting room with a few stacked cushions and an empty hearth squared into the floor. It would be cleaned out for the summer. But now in the sodden end of a lingering winter, it was half-abandoned to its soot and dust, and a baleful collection of cobwebs. The scrolls hung over them on the walls, curling with the changing humidity and slouching crookedly along their wires.

Neji didn't order her to leave- and even though she was clan leader now, she would have obeyed him instantly. He said nothing; it was too late now to stop her. But he was probably only tolerating her presence. And her sudden need to do this, which must seem so out of character for her. She had been behaving badly since her father's death, and the entire house knew it; but this was worse, this was a direct infraction of the house's most basic rules. Neji had not stopped her, and maybe he felt that he couldn't. He was waiting for her to explain her strange and rash actions. That must be it. She nibbled her raw, peeling lower lip nervously. But he held his opaque, intricate silence.

She fussed over him. It was her nerves that made her want to do something, as if that would improve the situation. He was sitting down, that made things easier. If he fell and if the convulsions came again, she could easily catch him. She may not have needed to worry ultimately since the council had taken off her own heart seal without much trouble. But she was not on their level of ninjutsu, she was decades behind them. And his was on his forehead, in front of the chakra of the third eye. It wasn't hard to imagine she would blind him somehow if she failed to grasp some precise targeting component or inflection of the jutsu. The seal removal jutsu seemed so simple and brutally direct, but surely it could be dangerous.

Dangerous. That was the next thing he said to her, after what are you doing? and you can't remove a seal like this- that it was dangerous and reckless and it was an unacceptable risk. But as she sat back, her hands folded in her lap, she could see that he was startled more than anything. She always tried to use his own words to try to understand him, words that only he wanted to use, words like fate and destiny, predestination. Neji was the kind of person, it seemed to her, that needed to have a handle on everything around him. He didn't know there was a jutsu to undo the seal- I heard there was such a thing but of course I did not believe it- because it would give him false hopes, she thought to herself. He said "you shouldn't have done that, what if you couldn't complete the jutsu?"

What he meant was I don't accept this as part of reality. He must have told himself that he would be trapped under the boot of the main family for his entire life- of course he couldn't accept this, she thought. It was too much to hope for. She anxiously knit her fingers together in her lap, tapped her forefingers together, but he seemed fine, if completely appalled at what she'd done. He blinked at her, disbelieving, from beneath the hand he pressed to his forehead. The jutsu was complete, and the seal was gone.

The difficulty was in explaining.

"I saw my father..." she began, when he had subsided into silence.

But now she wondered if that was really why. She'd wanted this anyway, she hadn't wanted to.. have Neji be bound to her under fear of sudden death. She had seen something, never mind whether it was real or not or whether it was her father's spirit. Or if it was a fantasy of her own, created by her need to see him again, as if her mind could create such a complex illusion. Never mind that… it was pointless anyway, when she wasn't trying to explain herself to people like Neji she didn't ask herself questions like that. She wondered about rightness, but she didn't wonder about reality. She had always wanted to wipe away the seal, maybe her father was just the excuse she needed, the excuse she gave herself to trust herself this time.

She raised her eyes to meet Neji's gaze. He stared at her, baffled and strangely outraged, taken aback and shocked into silence. Exactly as he'd been, his wide white eyes, the moment when she stood before him at the semi-finals, told him how it was. She knew that was real, she didn't know if it was right to mention it to him, that was all. She knew under it all that he was the one who feared and who was torn apart by the destinies of his family. And she'd known she saw that clearly, but she knew also that he probably would not believe her story about her father's spirit.

The stammering returned at the worst times. She couldn't get a full sentence to come together and make sense. "… I-I didn't want.. to have you feel that way... that you should have to fear this.." Words were failing her and she frowned, curling her fingers into one another in her lap. She showed him the seals, formed the killing jutsu that would have lit his cursed mark like a lantern. She held the final seal and showed him that it was defused now. He was her second, her surrogate. She wanted him to stand by her and protect her because he wanted to, not because he lived in fear of the seal. Of her family. And of her, weak as she was, compared to him.

"What are you going to do..?" he said finally, after she'd asked him if he felt dizzy, if he needed her to fetch medicine and water, if it hurt. He still hadn't taken his hand away from his forehead.

In the silence around them you could hear the council's fury, gathering, distant roars through the hollows of the paper walls, the interstitial spaces of the house. This was the place where so many spirits must walk, because so many Hyuga had been mutilated just like Neji had, right here, right on these floors and under these walls, these indifferent clean sweeps of ink and Zen brushwork.

"...I don't know." she finally admitted, miserably.

"Hinata-sama." he said, exhaling in a long tired sigh.

Because there was silent clockwork in the air now, the tick of hidden dynamite- the news would ripple through the house, there could be no secrets here. Things were moving and something was being set into silent, unstoppable motion. She could feel it perfectly, and she couldn't stop it. The council would be angry, but the council's anger raining down on her was nothing new. But the council would have solid proof now. She had broken the rules. "We'll see how many enemies you have." Neji said, getting up. She watched him move and judged his balance and alertness. "If you have any supporters, they'll show themselves now."

She stayed sitting, she looked up at him. The light pressed his shadow onto the sectioned white paper behind him. Dust motes floated in the last shaft of sunlight that pierced the room. Instead of his forehead protector there was a mottled bruise of grey pinks and sickly purples, the lines of the seal were blurred away. She was so used to seeing him with a band of fabric on his forehead, he looked strange without it.

"I don't... think that way, Neji-niisan." she murmured.

He was always sighing at her, sighing over something she wasn't or couldn't do. "Hinata-sama. You need to start. Right this minute."

"I don't want be that kind of clan leader." she whispered. "Neji-niisan." Was it strange to keep using these honorifics dividing them into master and surrogate, superior and subordinate? She thought they needed this structure, their relationship was so flimsy, if you took the backbone out it would just collapse.

And there would be nothing connecting them at all.

"I don't think my father wanted this.." she blurted. "..he didn't want us to be strangers to one another.. Neji-niisan, I know he did this and made us this way, but I don't think..." But she was talking about a ghost vision again, her own cloudy rationalizations. That familiar look of gradual resigned disbelief was gathering on Neji's face. And it was probably, she decided, that he knew it wasn't about her father at all, it was about what she wanted and what she felt she had to do. "My father would want me to do this," she said finally. "I believe that."

There were many Hyuga family legends about clan leaders and how the line of stars, the Hyuga constellations in the sky of southwestern cross, the summer solstice, all aligned and connected them in spirit as well as blood. There were plenty of Hyuga stories exactly like that. And Neji didn't believe in any of them. He seemed to put up with them for her sake. Why he did anything was suddenly a cryptic, exhausting mystery to her. She couldn't understand him. She tried to reach him. She was sure this was right, the spirit line of clan leaders wanted a change and she thought she might be the person to do it. There could be no other reason why she had been installed in her position. But it came out wrong. She had to go, she decided. She had to try her best now to say something polite to excuse herself and not just run from the room.

"You're my protector." she said. Then she closed her mouth because she didn't know what to say after that. There was nothing but empty space in her thoughts, after those words.

"I need to put ice on this." he said, and she heard the whisper of his feet going to the door. "And I'm saying as your protector, I don't know what they're going to do to you for this."

--

The door was at his back, but where could he go?

The roof? The world itself had no peace, no escape from Naruto.

"So where were you six months ago?" Sasuke gasped at them. He couldn't get any further away, so he sidestepped Hinata's desk and her bookshelf, he finally hunched against a wooden cross-brace in the corner. Naruto lay still now, though his eyes fluttered and jerked under his eyelids. His fingers grasped at nothing. Sakura was slowly stirring, but it would take minutes, he knew. She would be disoriented even after she came around again. A chidori current to the brainstem, up the motor nerves, into the central nervous system, and she might even have short-term memory loss. She might not even remember what had happened. That would be perfect, Sasuke thought. He'd like to forget this entire episode too. He hunched down, his hands braced on his knees. He listened to his harsh, broken rhythm of breathing. And he knew…

…that this wasn't all right. He was not in control of this situation, or notably of even himself. The chidori and the genjutsu, the shoving and the argument… It seemed a bit more brutal than usual, even for him. He made a lot of threats after all. But when did he ever get this far? Naruto always stopped him. Maybe things really had changed.

But he must have forgotten the way Naruto was, because when he looked again Naruto was already struggling to get up.

He moved swiftly to the far corner of the room. Access to the windows, he thought. Plenty of room to put more genjutsu inner-space between himself and Naruto, if necessary.

If Naruto insisted on fighting.

Naruto was getting air back in his lungs and blinking rapidly, feeling around the floor and getting back in touch with reality. Sasuke had at most twenty more seconds before Naruto was awake and alert enough to come at him again. If it were a fight, he'd use this moment of weakness to strike Naruto- either dead, or unconscious. The snake-summon tattoo on his forearm tingled, as if in silent encouragement of this idea. But no- he had to talk. He had to get them to take him to the ANBU. He had to make some kind of peace with them, even if he couldn't even face them. As the seconds drained away, and Naruto coughed himself back to wakefulness, Sasuke's balance foot slid back, instinctively drawing away, he thought.

He'd never known what to say to them, anyway.

And behind Naruto, in the long angle of early evening sunlight from the window, Hinata's dressing table mirror. His sidestep had brought him into alignment, the movement caught his eye and-

-a shard of his own reflection. A blur of black spikes and movement. Of jagged unsettled body language. A person off-balance.

He'd instinctively avoided mirrors from the time he'd left the village. It wasn't worth the bad feelings to see what he'd done to himself. He preferred the distance of knowing intellectually that the drugs and the sleeplessness and the dangerous training and the constant stress of being at Orochimaru's claw tips was doing serious damage to his body. And some of that damage could be permanent. He knew for instance that his current height was at least three inches shorter than he should have grown, the pound of flesh the steroids and amphetamines and god knows what else had extracted from him. But knowing these dry little facts wasn't the same as seeing the evidence right under his nose, was it?

No. But he felt so disoriented that he flicked his gaze back to the mirror, to clasp onto the painful wild look in the black eyes there.

This person was not him. Not how he should be. This was all wrong.

He was flushed and his hair was messier than usual- for a moment his eyes were wide and prickled with anger and something… his pride of course would not allow him to call it fear, he was not in the mood right now where he could admit to that. And instantly, as his eyes locked on this crazed, violent, out of control person he saw-

-his kabuki mask rematerialized, his face returned to its expressionless lines, it's faint touch of concern, but certainly nothing that would indicate real emotion. It was the face of a considered, measured Zen monk, perhaps fresh from hours of deep meditation. It was an acting trick, a necessary survival skill, an elegant piece of carefully created bullcrap. He was good at looking like he was perfectly in control of himself. But the mask was only good until it slipped.

And these two… were past fucking masters at getting under his skin, weren't they? This idiot and this pushy girl, chasing after him… just never giving up on him, no matter what he did to them, no matter how much he lashed out at them. They just wouldn't let him destroy himself. They just wouldn't get out of his face, would they? They wouldn't mind their own business.

Harrumph. Irritation flickered across his face, disrupting the harmony of the illusion. Stupid Naruto. Even worse that Sakura- the voice of reason!- wouldn't write him off either. He was really losing the knack of pretending that this all wasn't squarely his own fault.

Sigh. That was less destructive to the illusion, its serenity carried a gentle note of sadness. He really wouldn't have believed he could ever be much of an actor, but that was before he threw himself into the situations he had. And necessity was necessity. He looked hard, and the mask looked back, empty-eyed except for that pale shadow of quiet regret. He frowned and it didn't vanish. It fit itself to his worries, absorbed them like fluid ripples on an undisturbed pond. It showed nothing of its depths, it was a perfect two way mirror. He could look like he had a grip on himself. And appearance was everything to Orochimaru.

But then blond spikes were edging into his line of vision, Naruto's chest was heaving after scraps of air and his head was still down like he couldn't stand up straight just yet, his legs were quivering with the effort. Sasuke guessed that he couldn't see clearly, he was swaying dizzily on his splayed feet. He wasn't shouting yet. Maybe he didn't yet remember where he was, his mind could be as scrambled as his balance. His inner ear would still be too disrupted by the genjutsu and that would confuse his optic nerve, sharingan genjutsu was noted for its brutality to sensory nerves and their connected areas of the brain. So Sasuke had maybe a second. Maybe two. But Naruto was getting up. Rapidly.

And there was no more time. No more steps back. But Sasuke pulled himself together sharply, felt the mask correct itself. It was a mercy really, that he could lock all of this turmoil inside himself, and let others think that he was just…. fucking… fine. Maybe even to these two, they never seemed to be shaken off by his scorn, but then again...

..the look on their faces at the day under the electrical clouds, when they stood in the chipped crater of Orochimaru's whittled stone lair. The way they'd watched him stand and accept the vanishing jutsu from Orochimaru, like he really was hurting them, and badly. Like they needed to know that he was still himself, somewhere under all that snakeskin and samurai costumery. But that he made it very hard to believe. He almost made it impossible. So maybe the mask worked on them, it could dissolve the thread of their hopes, disconnect their efforts...

But not this time.

It was a good thing. He had to remind himself of that, that he wanted this. He was just so used to running from them, that was it. It was just a habit. He felt fully disarmed going into this battle of.. words or whatever, he'd never known how to talk to them, never been able to make them understand. It worked with Hinata but maybe it just did not work with them. Maybe it never had. Maybe Sakura would fly off the handle anyway, and it would be no better.

And it didn't matter, because Naruto's eyes were sky blue, deep as the column of water that had formed when he smashed Naruto over the head, deep into the footwaters at the Valley and Naruto had shot down into the depths. The supernatural electrical blue as the chidori's light died on Itachi's face. That color, maybe. Those feelings. Naruto's eyes and Naruto's face and Naruto's hand- balled up in Sasuke's collar. Just before Naruto shoved him against the wall.

They'd finally caught him. He was caught and he couldn't get away from them.

--

"Another of your decisions," Neji said wearily, casting one eye towards the ceiling. There were distant thumps overhead, an urgent wisp of raised voices.

"I can't do this for them." said Hinata, ice dripping in her hands. She transferred handfuls of melting cubes from the small steel freezer box she'd taken from the meat locker, the backrooms of the kitchen were the closest part to this secluded corner of the house. She wrapped the ice up in the discarded linen and handed it to him.

Neji piqued one eyebrow like a calligrapher's comma. He was momentarily speechless with the overwhelming understatement of that.

And with the absolute insanity of what she was doing, it seemed. "He's troubled. He has real problems, Hinata-sama." Neji shook his head carefully, holding the ice to his face with one hand and closing the other into a slow fist on his knee. Hinata watched the taijutsu reflexes in the curl of his fingers. She wondered silently if her own problems, Neji's problems, these were somehow not real? "He's not a problem you can solve." Neji said with a hint of impatience. "I know you want everyone to be happy, but I've seen his files, I've seen the psych profiles on him. He's not in the bingo book for nothing- or because I'm just being dramatic, Hinata. I'm not saying this to scare you, I'm trying to help you protect yourself."

He said that now and then, alluded to her not believing him because he was talking about things too seemingly theatrical and strange for her, because she believed the world was one way and he knew it was another. That these hidden horrible truths must be like fairy tales, ghost stories, storybooks- because these were her only contact with them in her place of absolute safety.

"You can't help him. I know you want to. But he doesn't need someone to kiss him better, he needs professionals, Hinata. He can't help himself." Her silence must have spoken for her, because he sighed and he closed his eyes, leaning back against the wall. He had retied the forehead protector loosely around his throat while she'd fetched the ice. Like she did, it was almost as if he wasn't that angry, but it was too indefinite as a sign. "I see we can't talk about this." he said tightly.

"We are.." she began.

"You aren't listening." he said. "You can't hear me over that nonsense, that idea of Uzumaki's, I know he has this effect on people but he's reckless, Hinata, he's just lucky enough to get away with it but you aren't-" Was it the look on her face that made him falter? "You aren't anything like him." he finished, anyway.

"I know." she whispered. She sat with her wet hands clasped in front of her. She'd subsided to the floor and tucked her feet under her. That he would talk at all was a rare opportunity, they mostly lead separate lives. Ships passing in the night. It didn't matter how much it hurt to hear him say these things, she wouldn't leave until he told her to.

And it was true, she wasn't anything like Naruto.

She looked at Neji, framed suddenly in that last golden sliver of light, it had passed into the hour right before twilight. She wondered if he'd ever love someone who just didn't love him back. It seemed impossible, Neji was what she was supposed to be. He was like a more perfect version. No- someone present and undeniable in the world, while Hinata herself was his pale shadow. This feeling was familiar, damp and somehow bittersweet, a numb depression. Was she angry at him? All of her anger had frozen into this strange formation before, a tired despair at herself, the sense that there was no way to make it better, she was not feeling any better. She maybe had made a big mistake, freeing Neji...

"Why do you do these things to yourself...?" he asked, as if in silent understanding of her thoughts. Or maybe it was all still plain as day to him. She stole a glance at him and his eyes were closed.

"I miss you." she whispered.

For a moment there was silence in the room, Neji didn't seem to move. For a moment she thought that Neji was just gathering his thoughts, but then it became clear that he wasn't going to answer. He was ignoring the words. Her face burned. She had always known she shouldn't say this to him.

"Hinata-sama..." he leaned back against the wall, resting his weight against it. "If that's what this is about, then I can talk to Tenten, she can help find someone..." he sighed, irritable with pain and the bother of this "someone more suitable, someone who isn't... " He shook his head, the motion completed the sentence for him.

"He's a problem, he's more problems than you need. You don't need this, Hinata, don't do this to yourself. And if it's because of me or of Hiashi-sama-"

"It's not that." she whispered.

"But isn't it?" his voice had taken on a raw sharpness. "Why would you choose someone who's so…" He sighed with frustrated impatience, he seemed to be thinking something like crazy or unstable or untrustworthy, but unable to decide between these words. "…emotionally unavailable." he concluded with clear distaste. And then, sharply: "He's not like your father, Hinata-sama. He's the way he is because he has real psychological problems."

He said that- real psychological problems- like it was a curse. Hinata bit her lip. She felt like he was staring down at her, picking her apart, using his ANBU training on criminal tendencies to tear down someone who was not a murderer, a criminal, a horrible person who deserved to be torn apart under interrogation.

Fear tinged her anger, she was so used to doing nothing and saying nothing. Taking it, as Sasuke put it. He said- you don't have to take that, Hinata You don't have to let him treat you that way.

About Neji. And about her father. And about everyone else in her life who did this to her. Who sent her away and shut doors in her face and wouldn't let her be close to them, wouldn't take her seriously.

Maybe before she would have just subsided into a quiet depression over this. She would have scuttled away. That still seemed comfortable, easy, it would be something she knew how to do. But she still had no idea what to do with anger if she wasn't going to bottle it up and bury it- and do nothing. She didn't want to yell and scream at him, she didn't even know if she could do that, she wasn't like Sakura and Ino and all these other intense, fiery girls.

"That isn't what he's like." she said. It was only a whisper, but she managed to say it without cringing or stuttering. Her voice didn't waver.

But it was like a mouse's squeak. Neij looked at her with cool incredulity from behind his wet fingers. "Oh really? He's been twisting the knife in Uzumaki's back for almost six years now." Her mouth opened to protest this, but Neji was speaking quickly now, his eyes flashing and narrowed. "Uzumaki believes that he's just some sort of misunderstood person, but I'm telling you, Uchiha Sasuke chose his path, he's threatened the village, he allied with the killer of the Third and a sworn enemy. He's a notorious missing nin and he's probably going to be executed."

I won't allow that. This is what her father would have said. That will not happen in my house.

But she could only close her mouth tightly and squeeze her eyes shut. She felt her blunt nails scraping at her palms when she squeezed her fingers together tightly, twisting them with the restless nerves and the endless horrible silence. At least he was talking, even if he was saying the things he was.

"So I don't understand this." Neji continued, shaking his head in summary judgment. "I know you want to help everyone, but you should have taken him to the police. I don't understand why this missing-nin is in this house and I don't understand why you are doing any of this. He may think that he can sweet-talk you into covering for him, but I-"

But he wouldn't allow it. But he would put a stop to it. But he would intervene- protect her. She cut him off before he could finish.

"You don't understand, Neji-niisan." Each word weighted, cloudy islands in a heavy chain. It was a step too far, it broke his patience finally.

"What exactly do I not understand?" The rawness in his throat was sharp and immediate, as if he'd stressed his voice. Or as if he'd been crying. The rough wetness was familiar to her. So was his anger- its suddenness and it's brittle edges. "You've chosen the most violent- oh, you think he wouldn't hurt you? The most violent and emotionally unavailable person possible. A person who is going to.." he exhaled hard, as if his patience had just drained away suddenly. He was losing his voice. "someone who won't just break your heart, he'll ruin your whole life."

She shook her head slowly. She pressed her fingers against her closed eyelids. Strange patterns beat upon one another in front of her eyes. "You don't understand." she whispered. There was no way to make him feel what she felt. Or to even make him understand those feelings, it seemed. If there were words that would help her explain, make him believe or even listen, she had no idea what they were.

And somewhere out in the silent space of the room around her, Neji's clothes rustled as he stepped away from her. "Well, if there's anything I've learned from dealing with Uzumaki and Uchiha Sasuke, it's that you can't save people from themselves. You're making a mistake, Hinata-sama."

He seemed to say these words from on high, towering over her even as she shrank forward on her knees, curling her head over to the mats.

There was a distant crash over their heads, like someone had just fallen to the floor.

Neji made a short sound of irritation. "There's the person I don't understand and who means us no harm." he pronounced coldly. " And who I am to believe is through with his-" he seemed momentarily too disgusted to continue. "-usual destructive behavior. "

There was nothing she could say to that.

And maybe she was wrong, Neji was always so good at making her feel small and stupid. Even if he probably didn't mean to. His judgment of character would be far superior to her own. Maybe she just was that useless.

"Well, you've made him our problem now." Neji said wearily. He fixed his tired, resigned gaze on Hinata, looked her in the eye. Pinned this decision and it's consequences squarely upon her. Her actions. She had done this.

"You'd better go deal with that." he said, and shut his eyes against the pain of his broken seal, pointed shortly to the ceiling with his free hand. The conversation was over. She was dismissed.

--

It wasn't really a fight. The adrenaline was useless.

Or was it? Sasuke couldn't tell if they were fighting anymore. Words or fists, nothing ever seemed to come of it. For a moment Naruto just pushed him against the wooden brace of the wall. The pretty little frames of pressed flowers hung above him rattled, but held. The crossbeam dug into his spine. Naruto's fists pulled the collar of his shirt tight around the back of his neck, and it hurt, it pressed against his swollen shoulder. But he was not going to show that weakness, not to this rude idiot, not now. Naruto just gasped for air for a moment, his hair drooping in front of his bowed head.

"All this time..." he wheezed. The genjutsu must have made him thought he was drowning. He must still be dazed with it. "...all this time and you still don't get it... dumbass... " And it was like Naruto got his dirty fingers all over Sasuke's heart too, because the idiot could still make him grit his teeth, tense up in anger- and at the laziest and most brainless of insults.

"..shut up." he muttered. And found that his collar was cutting into his windpipe, jamming his vocal cords flat. He set his jaw irritably. He could get out of this- he instantly had eight or nine countermoves in mind, his favorite was the one that involved a fingerstrike to Naruto's kidney- but that would accomplish nothing. Wouldn't get him anywhere. He had nowhere else to go but here. This room and these people.

"You're stupid because you don't understand it." he muttered at Naruto, at Naruto's big blue eyes. He watched them narrow, by reflex watched for the liquid black spots of Naruto's pupils to slit and turn fire-red. "You think I don't know what he wanted? I went because of what he wanted. You never got it. Idiot." Naruto's hands seized and talking became too painful to bother.

So Naruto would have to talk. He loved talking, he never shut his mouth, after all. Let him do the work, he was cramming Sasuke against the wall in a way that forced his head back, made talking nearly impossible. But Sasuke still had to look at him. Even in the evening's half-light, the clearing smoke of the chidori singeing the fine hair off Sakura's arm and burning the edges of her clothes, Naruto's eyes were still that harsh bright color. That supernatural blue, no wonder it had a demon behind it. He'd always known there was something unusual about Naruto. He'd even seen that demon, touched it's bubbled snout, lorded it over Naruto and acted like he was untouchable and felt nothing.

Or like he didn't feel his own guilt twisted in his gut, whenever Naruto looked at him this way. Like he just couldn't understand… any of this. Why anyone would have to throw themselves into the hands of someone like Orochimaru. There were stupid religious myths that Sasuke didn't believe in, things about the eyes of demons and spirits that could strip the lies and self-illusions from you at a glance, but…

…he was probably just getting slowly strangled and was hallucinating before he blacked out. Breathing was difficult, but still possible. Naruto was still heaving air into his lungs, pointing his glare like the glittering edge of a kunai right through Sasuke's skull. And Sasuke glared back. Stoically.

He thought that he should tell Naruto that it was over. The chase. But his lips were dry and his throat was constricted. He said nothing, hesitated too long. Naruto's attention had shifted to Sakura, and his face was breaking into concern. Sasuke watched him numbly. That change in his expression, when his big blue eyes would turn soft and liquid with such easy affection. Naruto made it look so damn easy, being close to people He and Sakura were probably actually in love, they weren't just… stupid hysterical people, people who needed to get a life and leave him alone.

Their feelings were real.

There was motion to the side, fabric bunching and hands brushing against the mats. Sakura wasn't staying down either, nothing was going his way today, both of them were going to be back in his face.

"Are you going to run away again, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura said somewhere behind Naruto. As she stood up, her pale hair and face appeared behind Naruto's shoulder.

Sasuke watched her reach to the back of Hinata's desk chair to steady her balance. If she was at all surprised about being sucker-punched with a chidori, she wasn't mentioning it. Or letting him see, anyway. At least until she lined her gaze up with his, and he saw that she was getting on with it, trying to focus on what was important here. Either she expected some bullshit from him, some screaming and tantrum and so on, or she was resigned to it by now.

There were moments sometimes when he realized how much he hadn't grown up, how much others had grown up and gone into the future without him. How much he'd really lost while burying his head in the sand and refusing to actually help himself, or get through the grief, or even acknowledge the grief at all, really. To acknowledge it was weakness. But that whole way of thinking was the weakest thing of all. Maybe she was too young and stupid herself when she'd begged him to stay. But now, he thought, looking away from her, now she knew it.

"There's nowhere to run to." he said to her, as if correcting a careless logical mistake she'd made. Trying to hold to the illusion of his dignity. Naruto's knuckles pressed into his throat and the fabric bit tightly at his neck. A slight shift of Naruto's hands and the pressure would fall completely on his shoulder. The wound was throbbing slowly. It had a sickly corona of hot swelling, he could feel it up his neck and down his arm. "That hurts, idiot." he hissed at Naruto. "Stop it."

Naruto's blond eyebrows raised. "Yeah? It hurts?"

"Yes, you clumsy moron, it-" How the hell was he supposed to do this? He didn't know how to stop fighting them and just.. come back, this idiot didn't understand anything!

Naruto grinned at him, so close that his hot breath was tickling the side of Sasuke's cheek, Naruto's blue eyes were right in his face. Here he was again, not any one of a million crystal clear sharingan memories. A vivid reality. Naruto.

It was so fucking embarrassing to be unable to not care, to not be friends with this idiot. To need him.

"Bastard, if it hurts so much," Naruto said, grinning like he'd already won. "why don't ya just stop fighting us?"

--

Hinata knew what he was doing. He would ignore her now. If she stayed, he would get angry with her. He drew intricate lines and boundaries around their brief interactions. He would be upset if those lines were crossed.

And he was trying to make her leave.

But she found her small store of courage and stayed put. She looked at him instead, measuring out the space between them with a long gaze, like he was on the other end of a telephoto lens. Byakugan without the distance. He might have been a million miles away.

Because-

-he never let her know him. She couldn't tell if he liked her, if he hated her, if he resented her -or what he'd ever felt towards her. His anger at the chuunin exam had blindsided her brutally, he'd never shown it to her before. Had she ever known him? She tried to. But she was getting nowhere, wasn't she? He seemed to talk- and to act like he knew her completely. And like he understood absolutely everything about her. He'd put his hand through her chest. His fingerprints were on her heart, but it he wouldn't let her see anything. Or know anything. She tried, but he never came any closer.

She didn't answer him, she just held the ice to his forehead. He was still dizzy from the jutsu and had been forced to sit back down. She had gathered a fresh handful of ice from the bucket for him. A tiny rivulet of cold water ran down the side of his cheek.

He didn't resist her, or push her hand away. He didn't strike her for her defiance, which was something she'd- bizarrely- imagined. He was harsh with her sometimes, but he never raised his hand to her.

He just shut her out of his life. When he no longer wanted to talk, he sent her away. He turned away to other people. He said he wanted to be by himself. Or that he needed space, and his short irritated sigh made it clear that he wanted her to leave now.

To postpone this conversation- end it- but leave it open-ended. They always did this. And that was how they'd lived eighteen years in one another's shadows, without ever talking or even acknowledging one another on anything but the most ceremonial level. Their entire relationship was ceremonial, it was a shiny surface of polite words , a film of pretty lacquer over a dark gulf of space. She looked at him, and he might as well have been a stranger. The handful of tatami squares between them might have been thousands of miles. He lived beside her, and she was still somehow all alone in this big house. She was so clearly behaving strangely out of grief, but she couldn't help it, she couldn't stop herself. She didn't want to live this way anymore. She was so tired of being held away from him. She missed him.

And it was the wrong thing to say, that she missed being close to him so much, missed the relationship that was not there and had never been there- but she was so tired of not saying it.

And now, too, in her head there was Sasuke's voice. It was different than Sakura and Naruto, who were friendly and attentive, who never made her feel left out, or like a third wheel in their.. well, their marriage. But still, somehow they were very uninvolved on the basic level of her house and her family. Those things were Hyuga business, and they did not get aired out with her teammates or her friends. But Sasuke… was involved.

He had said to her, low and gentle in her ear: don't let them push you around, Hinata. It was another firm, gentle nudge, a few words or a soft touch to her shoulder, the way he'd gently steered her to bed, to the bath, to just take care of these basic things while she was too bludgeoned with grief. It was his way of nudging her towards standing up for herself. He said that she was courageous. And that she could do this…

It was something she had to do. She couldn't be a jellyfish forever. She had her rabbit impulse to run and hide whenever there was a situation like this, but that accomplished nothing, that just stranded her in the wasteland of another horrible non-relationship, like the non-relationship she'd had with her father, like the non-relationship she'd had with Naruto- until she asserted herself and spoke up. These things would stay dead and static until she made them change. She was so tired of being lonely and staring longingly after Tenten and Neji, when all she wanted was a relationship with her brother. With her brother.

It was not so much to ask.

Sasuke was right, her family was twisted up in horrible, silent, uncommunicative knots, it was a house where siblings killed one another and- yes, the gentle fist that had pierced her father's heart was probably a hand related to her by blood- all of that toxic load of undeniable truth. She was sick to the gills of it. She was the person who stood and spoke for this house now, it's living beating heart in the middle of a cold wash of white Hyuga stars, cold Hyuga eyes, and the empty mannered crap- Sasuke would not have said 'crap' exactly, he would have said a bad word. Hinata elected to not even think this word. Absurdly, she still felt bad about even thinking bad words in her head, though she did do it sometimes- and she blushed. She was too timid. She had to stand up and change this house. It felt a bit like Neji's destiny, the way her chosen mission just stared her in the face.. like a scatter of a million stars, aligning in a constellation of fate all around her. She couldn't run and hide from it, it confronted her from every facet of her house.

She had to start right here.

Because Neji wasn't going to do this for her. Sasuke could not be here to do it for her either- though she knew he wanted to go beat Neji up, she wouldn't allow it. She didn't want them at one another's throats. She didn't want Sasuke to see the exhaustion and sadness on her face later and know it was because she'd argued with Neji, she didn't want Neji to worry about her being alone with Sasuke. She had to speak. She had to.

"No."

It was a whisper. A breath. She waited, her heart fluttering in her temples. Afraid-

-of what? She thought wildly.

Of his disapproval. Of being ignored by him again. Of him walking away and leaving her with the same situation, that same empty space between them. She judged the distance to the door, she could grab his sleeve if he got up and tried to leave the room. He'd heard her, he was looking at her in that puzzled way, like he wasn't sure that she even knew how to say such things, and she said again, louder: "No."

A word like a heavy clomp of her getta's wooden heel.

"No?" Neji repeated, his confused expression resolving into the first dark withering of impatience.

"No, Neji-niisan." It was easier to say it now that it was out in the air.

The tiny precise muscles around his jaw worked like delicate piano hammers for a moment, as his clear white eyes fixed on her, tried to make sense of these words coming from her. "What do you mean 'no'?" Irritation was slowly gathering in his tone, but she shook her head and forced herself to continue.

"No, I'm not leaving, Neji-niisan."

And, after she'd breathed and he hadn't walked out, or slapped her, or yelled at her… or rejected her, turned his back on her, or even just brushed her off like a million times before, when none of this cloud of fears materialized immediately, she felt she could add: "I want to talk."

He blinked. His slender eyebrows came down together under the dripping icepack he held to his forehead. "About what?" Puzzled again

"About…" she almost said about us, but they weren't… like that, they weren't in-

Well, that kind of relationship. It wasn't that, it was just the distance that warped the way they were, made it seem strange and wrong, it was just that they should be able to have some kind of normal family relationship, the way other siblings did. It wasn't wrong, she had to repeat that to herself, steady herself to continue, to finish the sentence. She swallowed the lump out of her throat. "About the way we are." she finally managed.

She watched him with expectant anxiety. He would say something, it wasn't that he wouldn't talk, he often talked circles around her, swirls of his criticism and his complicated and impossible anger. His resentment of the family that had never really gone away entirely, his impatience and his commentary- she never really had to wonder what he was thinking, but he still never talked to her, he just talked at her, the words were like clouds of smoke, a shinobi's basic disappearance genjutsu. Poof. And he vanished, he just faded away from her.

But it was like the moment at the chuunin exam, when his mouth had fallen right open in shock. This time, he maintained his composure. But the look in his eyes was the same. Like he'd thought he knew what she could do and had misjudged her limitations. He looked straight at her finally, both eyebrows piqued in surprise. "You're like Hiashi-sama." he said, distantly. He held the icepack down in his lap, and droplets of water started to slide off the spidery fine bruising on his white forehead. "I never know what to expect."

This was too cryptic, too distant, it wasn't what she wanted, she shook her head once and licked her lips nervously, pressing forward to speak again- "Neji-niisan, I-"

"I'll talk to you." He said quietly, his eyes down and his tone softer than she'd ever heard before. Water dripped off the neat planes of his nose as she held her breath tightly. "I don't have to hate you anymore."

"…hate me..?" she whispered, but he didn't seem to hear her. He just looked down at the ice dripping in his fingers. The linen bandages hanging looped down around his shoulders, their little steel fasteners clinging with tiny triangle teeth. His seal fading under the bruises.

"I don't have to hate you for having a father while I don't." he said tonelessly. "Now your father is dead too."

--

Just stop resisting them.

Naruto made it sound so easy. And it probably would have been easy- for him. He would have never made these kinds of decisions. He wouldn't have run from the village- and he was just as mistreated, wasn't he? His parents were just as dead as Sasuke's were.

But that didn't mean that Sasuke wanted to hear this.

He shoved Naruto away, a crossblock with his good arm against the exposed angle of Naruto's elbow. Sloppy. But it wasn't a real fight, Naruto wasn't really trying to pin him, no one was really trying to hurt anyone. "Off." he muttered, pushing Naruto back. He straightened out the creased marks Naruto's hands had made in the fabric of his jacket. The three woven fans, intertwined like the three hollyhock leaves of the Tokugawa samurai, were a silent reminder.

"It's not that simple." he muttered at Naruto.

Naruto shrugged, fluid and easy, like he could shake off the tension instantly. "Yeah it is." he said.

But no it wasn't.

Sasuke watched Sakura step between them, and the sureness to her movements now. He could have reached out and pushed her away too, seized her small wrist again and really hurt her this time. The first chidori was a good shock, but it wasn't yet fatal, he could get really serious. This could definitely become a real fight, and very quickly. But he just watched her numbly as she got in between them, and as she reached across the chasm that seemed to yawn there. Or maybe that was only in his own mind, maybe these two knew exactly how to handle this, and how to make it right again. He thought that given how hard they'd pushed for this, that was the least they could have done. But he knew better. His guilt was conquering him finally, making him stand still and not slap her hand aside. He watched her like it was happening to someone else, like the wound she touched was completely uninvolved with him. He didn't resist, and the chakra moved behind the solid lines of her flesh and his, from the slender fingers she held to his forearm, like long acupuncture needles. He avoided her eyes. She had assumed a closed expression of total concentration, she didn't try to impale him in her hard green glare again. That must have taken too much energy that she needed otherwise, the pain in his shoulder hushed, it seemed, between one breath and the next. She took her hand away warily. And her eyes said that she didn't trust him.

"Sasuke-kun, why did you do that?" she said. Not her shannaro-growl now. Just pure steeliness. Her balance seemed a bit weak from the electrical shock, but that didn't deter her focus or the precise needleprick of her question. It was annoying that she was as smart as she was. She was unsteady on her feet and held onto Naruto's arm for balance- he could have shoved her back and she would have struggled to keep her feet under her.

But she had him, all the same.

He didn't like being spoken to this way, and he let her know it. She wasn't going to be shaken off by his huffiness, and she let him know it too. "Sasuke-kun." she said again with even authority. "Stop pouting and answer me. I was trying to heal your shoulder, why did you do that?" She spoke as if she'd told herself that she would not become emotional, that she would be the calm one, no matter what went on around her. She had planted her small feet like she'd drawn a line in the sand, she was going to see this through, and she was not going to go easy on him. And probably, he had to admit, she should not. She had no sharingan, but her eyes nailed him to the wall anyway. He was aware of Naruto watching from the sidelines of the tatami square they both stood on now.

Because of your chakra, he thought, because of her deadly left hook to be exact, but she hadn't actually been attacking him. She'd made no hostile moves at all, and the only one who'd flipped out and acted like a complete lunatic was himself. He didn't come here to fight them, and he felt like saying that too, but maybe he was the only one who didn't understand that. He kept slipping back into fighting. They hadn't even attacked him.

And that wasn't right. He had to make this right.

But he wasn't about to squirm under her questioning like a guilty child either. He coolly looked away from her and- so easily- summoned his usual manner of irritation. He had far more important things to do, and she was bothering him. He ignored her question- like everything she had to say it was a waste of his time- and got to the point. "Take me to the ANBU." he said dismissively.

Naruto's grin collapsed into his stupid puzzled look, his 'duh' expression, then his smirk again. "What're you talking about, bastard?"

"The ANBU." Sasuke repeated impatiently. They might have still not understood, but he couldn't tell because he was staring hotly at the ceiling rather than look at them. "I don't know what Orochimaru's done. I need to be taken into ANBU custody." He could feel Sakura's eyes on him anyway. Feel Naruto's shifting mood between happiness and bafflement. But she must have shut him up somehow, because only she spoke.

"Are you coming back to Konoha?" she said. Her tone was painfully neutral. She must have come to expect very little from him. Or maybe she just didn't have any hope left. He could see that she was the one who dealt with the reality of this situation, so Naruto could keep his intent focus without... well, without the burden of the facts, frankly. She was the one who had thought about all those other times that he'd casually struck at them, or he'd made bored death threats. She was the person who remembered all the things he wanted to forget. And her eyes, therefore, were like the blind face of justice. Like an ancestral ghost who had risen up to seek him out, and force him to see.

He did see, he thought. Finally, he saw. He swallowed with difficulty, then hardened his expression again. He was coming back. And he thought that returning to the village was entirely implied by going into ANBU custody, but in the interest of getting the conversation ended, he said "…yes." Little more than an affirmative grunt. He tore his gaze away from the wooden crossbeams and made an effort to look her in the eye.

It wasn't easy. She knew too much about him, too much of his stupid, hurtful behavior. He wanted to blame her too, he hadn't asked her to love him, to try so hard for him. But that was a dodge, and they both would know it. And even if he could force the word out, 'sorry' wasn't much either. Not that he could.

Naruto digested the single word he'd spoken and his insistent cheerful voice was there again- haha, bastard! You're so slow! I knew you'd come back but you dragged your lazy ass didn't you? Haha!- but Sakura neatly stepped further into the circle of Naruto's arms and elbowed him in the ribs. "Aw, Sakura-chaaaan," he murmured. And Sasuke saw that even he watched carefully, hawklike. Under his stupid smile and dumb jokes there was hard vigilance.

"Why, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura said, penetratingly.

He kept his composure. Perfectly. He thought: Because there's nothing left for me. And that was because this was all the family and home he had left. These two. And it was more of a family than he'd had in his father's house. Being ignored by his father, to be exact. Being used for.. god knows what by his brother.

And he'd thrown these two and their love away. For nothing, for a bunch of lies, whether they were being told by Madara or by Itachi or by Orochimaru. The exact schema of who'd lied about what, or if everyone had just lied their heads off to him was just too complicated- he was tired. He had to explain himself to these two, at least enough to get Sakura to stop pinioning him with her wary glare, so he drew air into his lungs, didn't look at them, and said, as if by route:

"I've left Orochimaru. I'm done trying to kill my brother. I don't remember clearly what happened because Orochimaru uses mind control techniques. I'm returning to Konoha to inform upon Orochimaru and Uchiha Madara and become reinstated as a Konoha shinobi. I need the ANBU to clear me because Orochimaru may have sent me here as a trap for the village. I'm at the Hyuga residence because Hyuga Hinata found me injured in the woods south of here. I'm involved with her now and I don't want you interfering in our relationship. I'll rejoin the team if you both stop being so annoying. I'm tired of answering questions. The next person who touches my shoulder is going to regret it. Where's Kakashi?"

It was probably more than he'd ever said to them at once before.

And it shut them both up, which was satisfying.

--

"I thought you wanted to talk."

Neji's voice was more tired than sardonic. But the prickle of his irritation was there. She didn't want to look at him, this wasn't what she'd wanted. It wasn't what she'd pictured. But it was the way it was, he was right. It couldn't be any other way, the history between them wouldn't just evaporate, she couldn't magically make it disappear and make them be siblings, or even friends.

Even though she wanted to. It was another one of her desperate, but ultimately childish hopes. And Neji saw that so clearly, it was something he had always understood about her. She was impractical, and she didn't know how the world really was. She saw him raise both delicate eyebrows coolly, then hold back from saying something even more cutting. He was going easy on her, and maybe she should have felt patronized and insulted, but she couldn't feel anything but a twinge of relief.

"That isn't going away." he said to her, as she went through the motions of gathering more ice, held it to the bruised imprint of his seal mark. "It happened, Hinata."

She bit into her lip. It was true, it had happened, it wasn't something they could politely ignore and forget about. He might have said instead: your father killed mine. She almost wanted to say it herself, just to get the words out in the air and said. Maybe it would be easier then, if she just admitted what had been done rather than the ornate collection of polite Hyuga euphemisms for the incident. His father's unfortunate and accidental death, that's what she should have said. "I know." she whispered, just to say something. "I'm sorry." She would have apologized on behalf of her father and the bloodline of clan leaders, but it would probably just have upset him. And it wasn't hers to say, she knew he didn't believe in the chain of stars and spirits. It was the only time it would work out in her favor and the guilt for the murder wouldn't fall upon her. Not in his mind. But he wouldn't take an apology that was not hers to give. She couldn't change this for him, or order it away. Being a clan leader so far was becoming an extended exercise in total helplessness. "I wish I could do something." she said. She watched the little tracks of cold water slide off her fingers. But there was nothing she could do, he knew it.

And he didn't need to continue, she understood where he was going with these words. But he couldn't seem to stop himself, there was a grim obsessiveness moving through his half-whisper now. "They killed Hiashi-sama too, I think. They used the Fist. And Hiashi-sama knew that his mother, your grandmother was killed that way too. And you have a weak heart, Hinata, you almost didn't survive when I-"

The breath squeezed tight in her chest. She felt the razor's edge of tears. Her fingers clawed tightly on her handful of ice, and Neji paused.

"They sealed the coffin so the duty guards at the gate wouldn't have authorization to check the body. And…" his eyes searched out hers. Tried to zero in around the hand she'd pressed to her face, trying to hold the tears in. He wasn't going to let her hide from this. "…they burned it before the Konoha medical examiner could see."

In the sudden hush after those words, she sniffled. It sounded clumsy and loud. Her fingertips were brushing against his forehead, but they were too wet and cold for her to feel anything, would it have been so hard for him to just take her in his arms? To just protect her and comfort her like a brother? But she couldn't ask. She couldn't even speak. He said "You know this, Hinata-sama." And she did, she had a byakugan to pierce the sealed coffin and she saw what went on up in the highest echelons of the house. "I think it's because he was training me." Neji said, his voice turning thick and exhausted. "And because he was starting to accept you. So they killed him for that. And now you've defied them too."

Because it was the right thing to do, it was what her own moral compass of starpoints steered her towards. She hadn't thought about the consequences, she'd done it in a kind of feverish madness. Even now, she thought, the threat of the council's fury was so unreal. It was too abstract, too omnipresent anyway given how they never seemed to approve of anything she did... anyway. It was hard to be afraid of anger when they were already anger. But Neji was right. It could be different now. Maybe she really had crossed a final dividing line. The rules of Hyuga blood that divided the clan were old and sacred and...

...she knew there was no way they would not be furious. This rule was so integral to the clan, it was an animating spirit to everything they did. They took half their members and branded them. And then they forced one house over the other, split their familes and children from one another. She had no idea what Sasuke would say about this, but she knew he would be disgusted, it was just beyond the pale in any context other than that of the clan itself- it's inner world, it's own myths of justification.

She wondered if Neji knew what it was like to be ashamed of the clan. He seemed to mostly be angry at it- and Hinata thought that this was because he had probably never felt like he was part of it. Maybe it was only when her father had reached out to him. But then again, she herself had almost been disowned and exiled from the house entirely. But she still carried it, the Hyuga crest and it's woven lick of flame, it's serene solar manji, like it was imprinted on her heart. She naturally assumed it's guilt and it's bloody hands as her own. She hadn't even thought about it consciously.

And she was probably in serious danger. But she couldn't feel… anything.

She didn't regret it, but her hand was shaking. She didn't want this- to be in this danger, to have Sasuke's life hanging in the balance while the ANBU interrogated him. She had never valued her own life much, even her father had said it wouldn't matter if she died. And maybe she would have agreed with him- before. But she had her sister, her brother and Sasuke. And her house- a purpose. It was something to live for finally. She didn't want to die, she didn't want things to be this way. It was so impossible. Neji must have saw her crumpling into tears and relented. His hands came around hers and took the ice. He didn't touch her, or hold her as she sobbed in a pathetic little ball next to him. He didn't condemn her for it either. But she didn't know what to think, this was all too flimsy to convince her that he cared for her at all. It wasn't what she'd wanted. Maybe it just couldn't work.

"So we do need to talk," Neji said, when she'd wiped her eyes and straightened. "about what we're going to do when they find out about this." The sun had set and the room was crossed by long blue shadows. The bare winter gardens outside glowed with the final half-light against the shadows climbing the walls all around them. Neji refastened his linen wrap, and the his forehead protector over it. He looked normal again. And maybe nothing had changed.

This would forestall exposure of his defused seal from the servants, and from even less senior Hyuga, who might not bother to use the byakugan in the house. Even if they saw, they might not report it immediately, they may only start a slow current of whispers. This would reach the ears of the elders, of the council, sooner or later one of them would see Neji. They might sense the changed flux of his chakra. They would find out- one way or another. And then all would be revealed.

"I just wanted to do the right thing," she sniffled as he helped her to her feet. "I'm the clan leader now, and I have to change things. I can't… "

She couldn't let this sort of thing go on unchecked any longer. But she was so worn out by the scale of her opponent, it's hundreds of hands and spies throughout the house, it's multitude of piercing white eyes, she might as well have been fighting a force of nature. She didn't feel anything when Neji's arms clasped behind her. And then hesitantly embraced her.

His warm chest was against her cheek, and she could feel how awkward this was for him. He held her stiffly. But his voice wasn't cold when he spoke.

"It wasn't wrong." Neji allowed, after many moments of silence. He'd helped her up and walked with her, his arm around her protectively. He'd taken her up through the back stairways, away from the normal evening traffic of the house.

Up on the high east point of the house, he took her to the threshold of her private wing. The two guards there bowed perfunctorily. They were young men from a low rung of the clan. But a guard post for the clan leader was a decent position, one which would guarantee them good favor with the administrative offices in the outer wings of the house. A new clan leader meant that a new entourage of attendants, dressers, messengers, guards and personal servants would be formed, she may not automatically inherit her father's retinue in the same way she would inherit his ink stamp signet, his family crest and his private quarters.

Neji was the one who addressed them. He asked if there had been trouble, and the elder guard, a man of maybe twenty-five with short auburn hair and complex tattoos over his hands, said "There was an argument, but no evidence of a serious struggle." Hinata's hands twisted in the folds of her obi, habitually nervous. She had instructed the guards not to interfere, and she was suddenly worried that Neji would find out, and disapprove.

"I heard sounds of a struggle," Neji said, his manner turned quietly serious and taciturn as he always seemed in public. It was a bit of a shock to her after his softer words in private. "and raised voices. But things seem calm now."

The younger guard nodded. "Uzumaki-san and his wife argued with Uchiha-san, but now they seem to have settled their differences." He was more friendly, and even offered a brief encouraging smile to Hinata, though Neji was the one who had spoken. "They might be getting along better now." The elder guard grunted indifferently, but nodded his assent to this. And the conversation ended there, Hinata wondered if the younger guard sensed that she wanted to conceal her instructions from Neji. She hadn't told either of them this, but the guard seemed aware of the situation between Sasuke and his teammates. Or maybe this was obvious, as was her anxiety. He may have only differed from his companion in that he cared at all, while the other was only concerned about his professional duty to guard her life. But she felt better, and whispered a quick thank you to him as Neji escorted her into her private wing.

"Get some rest, you need to be ready tomorrow." he told her, but his gentle manner didn't return. She looked up at him, at his face edged in the warm glow from recessed braziers and candles lighting the way down the hall. It was difficult to tell whether they were any closer now, and she felt as she had for days now- too exhausted and fuzzy-headed to even know herself, much less anyone else. But maybe that was why she dared to behave so outrageously. She found his hand in the mingled folds of his long white sleeves and her ornate kimono silk.

He let her take his hand, squeeze it tightly, and he patted her shoulder- though she didn't dare to watch his reaction. So maybe something had changed. Maybe. He said a hasty good night, and she echoed the politeness- and then he slipped back around the wooden divider and into the main hall of her wing. She heard the heavier oak doors whisper shut on their oiled hinges. And then there was only the faint ruffle of hidden flames and the intricate pulse of sounds and chakra bleeding slowly from the far end of the hall, like the heartbeat and breathing of an animal spirit sleeping in it's temple shrine.

She had to go and talk to them. Acting on her worries and taking responsibility for things was getting slightly easier, now that she had done it a few times and none of her wild fears of punishment had fallen upon her. But it was still hard. It still felt like something she should not do. She might make mistakes. And then her father would be angry with her, and he would be more concerned about his bloodline. And the fact that her father was dead didn't join this chain of worries until she thought of him- his anger- and his blood.

And his spirit.

Maybe he had been murdered. Things happened in her clan, and in the secret rooms of this house. That was the polite way of speaking of it, if you did at all. Things happened. But his heart illness for the half year before had been real, it had been confirmed by both the Hyuga doctors and the senior apprentice to the Fifth herself. It was possible that both Hinata and her father had inherited a heart murmur from her grandmother, yet another Hyuga clan leader dead of a heart attack in her mid-forties, while still relatively young and strong. But there was also the matter of Neji's Fist, his chakra-laced fingertips, that had struck to the upper chambers of her own heart, seized the muscle- whether he'd created or just exposed the weakness there. Maybe it was both. Or maybe it was just conincidental, because she didn't want to think about her father beset by jabbing fingers, as if his illness had been crafted with the Fist. But it was all possible. It could be true, it wasn't as if she had reason to believe her clan was above any of this. It made her feel sick to contemplate. But it had to be left, she could only handle one horrible problem at once. And there was this last, necessary meeting.

They were her friends, and she shouldn't have felt nervous. Sasuke had patiently overcome her shyness, and now she went to him without worry that he would reject her or be bothered by her. There was no reason to worry. And this was her place of refuge, this bedroom. The only lit room. Here in the silence of her private wing.

This was the deepest and most secreted part of her private wing. All the paper doors were dark and silent except the furthest one, her bedroom chamber, where Sasuke had slept since she carried him home with her, a bloodied and heavy secret. She would have to tell her teammates, and the Hokage of what she'd done. She would have to tell her sensei Kurenai, who had been at times like a second mother to her and who's alert, soft red eyes would see immediately that something was wrong. Kurenai had intuited Hinata's guilty secret of a crush on Naruto, surely she would read the currents of attraction between herself and Sasuke. And then, with the beginning of a slow sinking feeling in her stomach, she was reminded that she would have to tell Sakura. About everything. About Sasuke. And Sakura's affection for him was well-known, it was discussed endlessly with Sakura's friend Ino while Hinata sipped tea with them, and tried to feel less out of place, even as she was glad to have girlfriends, like a normal girl, finally….

...Sakura was a friend, she was a protector, Hinata couldn't imagine being in a position where she might take a boy or a lover away from someone like Sakura. The idea that a man might want her was ridiculous- or so she couldn't help but believe. She was shy and Sakura was so confident and interesting and knowledgeable. It was true, maybe, that Hinata was not so worthless as she had thought, she was possibly pretty and skilled in her water arts, and in her softness which was maybe useful under certain circumstances, but-

-she couldn't run away now. It was a bit improper at best, but she was inside the inner circle of their team now. She was friends with Naruto and Sakura, she was involved in some nameless undecided way with Sasuke, she was friends with all members, but not with all members together. She couldn't step in to the faultline of the fracture between them, that wasn't her place. But she couldn't turn away and act like it wasn't her business either. There was no polite set of manners and things to say for this, not that she knew of. She closed the shoji door that sealed this part of her wing, and turned. The waxing moon slice of her bedroom door glowed with lantern light. And with the wisps of voices she couldn't quite make out. Two mismatched parts of her life crashing together.

It was too late now. They were all highly trained ninja, they would feel the distant whisper of her chakra and even her silent footsteps, the energy spirals of her body would give her away, even as the low slots of light threw her shadow over the door like a blotch of fresh ink. And there was her apprehension, the quiver of her hand on the doorframe.

"She's coming. Ask her yourself." she heard Sasuke say coldly to one of them. She parted the door. They knew she was there.

--

At most he won himself ten seconds of silence. A handful of breathing room. The darkness outside gathered slowly as night fell over the cliffs and deep into the valley, and the high wooden shell of the village.

It didn't last. You couldn't hold off these two, they wanted their answers. They were lit up with six years worth of frustrated worries and anger and- honestly, he couldn't deal with this much recrimination right now. But he didn't think he'd ever be able to deal with it, not gracefully and not without this hassle. It would never be easier. Every part of his plan, every angle and facet and contingency in the careful sequences he'd put together in his head, pointed to this confrontation. It was like an abyss in the middle of a maze, all the circuitous routes lead right to it. It was always best to avoid an unwinnable battle. But this was unavoidable.

Ten seconds. They looked at him, momentarily too shocked to speak, or else just pushed so far by his behavior that they no longer had any idea what to expect from him. He looked back, and found that he could hold their gaze, now that he didn't feel like he was being dishonest with them. The facts were the facts. He considered acting aloof and indifferent, it would almost be natural with them, he'd always held them at arm's length, trying to protect them from the horror he lived with. They didn't need to know about the ghosts and the nightmares, even if he could have even begun to explain. And his mission was his own business. He'd never really meant to hurt them. He didn't even really dislike them, despite the jealousy and the guilt and his own inability to handle any of it without lashing out and shoving them away. But he had hurt them, that was the fact of the matter. And he owed them an explanation.

"..huh?" Naruto said, blinking. He was the same, his usual intent obtuseness surfaced right on cue. His strange charisma never seemed to help him be less intently dense about things. Sasuke shot a look of tired irritation his way. But he shouldn't have expected anything else. Naruto was Naruto.

"I'm back and I need to clear my name." he said, hoping that Naruto would get this basic point. He had so little energy for this. He really wanted a drink, frankly, but he didn't want to bother getting up to deal with the guards and the summoned servants. And these two might think he was running away if he left the room. All of this was aside from the fact that the old woman might cut him off, she'd made some nosy rumblings about him drinking too much. That would be just too much aggrevation at once. So he stayed put. But drinking seemed like an excellent way to handle this, he still thought that it might be easier to just get drunk with them. He sometimes could be less inhibited then, all his raw little emotions would be anaesthetized, and he'd feel nothing. Feeling nothing would solve this entire problem. It would help him look powerful and untouchable again.

Which was probably why Orochimaru had plied him with the drugs and the drinks in the first place.

And he felt worst about the lying. About the deception, the need to act tough and push them away and spit in their faces. It was too much guilt. He couldn't take this anymore. If you stripped the comfortable lies he told himself, there was nothing but the ugly truth of what he'd done to them. And to himself.

And nothing to do but let them take his hands, finally. Take him back to the village, to the start of the nightmare. The gates of the Forest of Death. Stop fighting, Naruto had said. Just stop fighting.

"….do you mean that, Sasuke-kun?" Sakura said guardedly, and he stopped watching Naruto stare at him, faced down her hard adamantine gaze. Naruto was the same, an older and more secure version of the heedless whirlwind of energy and dumb jokes and sunny optimism he'd always been. He was even glowing with health, which made Sasuke feel even paler and more sickly- and shorter, which was just insult to injury. But Sakura was different. He held her gaze, some part of him still could reach the protective contempt he'd held between himself and their friendliness and loud voices and pushy attention. But she was not the same, she'd lost that simpering way she talked to him, the way she flirted in that fakey sweet voice that seemed…

…so obviously not who she really was, like she was just acting the way she thought she was supposed to. Or that she thought he wanted- which was ridiculous, he found that drippy obsequitious stuff from girls to be confusing and pointless. It seemed obvious to him that he was too young to be involved with girls, and it was even more clear that this was an act Sakura put on for his benefit. Like so many other girls did. But they were more consistent with it, so maybe they really were the frivolous little fluffy creatures of helplessness that he was allegedly supposed to want. But Sakura would bat her eyelashes at him and then turn and yell at Naruto like she was a demon possessed, so- really. He didn't understand why she bothered. And he sure as hell didn't miss that nonsense, but he could do without her scrutinizing gaze, too. He really had to do something about being wrong, her being right, and both of them knowing it.

Straighten up and fly right. That's what his father would have said. Get himself together. Get right with god, he could have chosen any of this trite little handful of phrases. He just couldn't take being wrong anymore. It was a vicious assault on his persistent goddamn conscience. And this annoying person who loved him needed an answer. He owed her an answer.

"Yes." He said to her shortly, but he kept his temper. "I'm through with Orochimaru."

It may well have been the other way around, Orochimaru being through with him. But never mind- he was through with this whole mess, the big picture of wrongness, and that was what they must have wanted to know. They might not have known about the particular mess with Madara. And that was just as well, Madara was something Sasuke preferred to not think about at all. Much less speak of. It was like calling a demon, uttering his name. The hold Madara had over him was almost supernatural anyway, it felt like a blood curse conjured up through illicit magic. It was bound up with his desperate loneliness for his family, and this demonic relative of his…

…knew that very well. And used it. And it was not something he wanted to show to Naruto and Sakura. This part of his life would stay hidden- for now. They thankfully didn't seem to know, or didn't bother to mention it. Maybe they knew Madara only as a faceless threat to the village. And another stupid grin had started to twinkle it's way across Naruto's face, the suggestion of fangs flashed from his white teeth. "I knew he wouldn't take your body," Naruto was gloating, back on his usual bullshit about Orochimaru. "I knew…" Sasuke was busy thinking of how, no, Orochimaru hadn't taken his body in that sense, in the transfer jutsu but- Naruto's hand found his uninjured shoulder, took hold of him and caught him in that rough half-embrace. ."...because I definitely was going to bring you back. I didn't even have to break your bones to do it!"

He couldn't be indifferent. The hearty slap on the back, the strong grip of Naruto's fingers twisted something inside him, made him remember. Not the fighting or the moments where they'd sort of gotten along. Or this strange fractured relationship that had floated between them like a comfortable ghost… that followed them faithfully and bound them together. Naruto and his stupid bond… But stupid idiot Naruto was his friend. He couldn't forget that. The threat of a lump in his throat made him shake Naruto's hand off.

"I came back by myself, idiot." he grumbled.

"And you're staying?" Sakura pressed, her eyes still fixed upon him and her hands- not tensed visibly, but still held close to her kunai pouch, ready to gather chakra and wallop him one should he reach for the electrical clouds again, or fly into another rage. She was ready, and he could see Naruto's muscles poised to coil and spring. They were ready for any kind of fight he wanted to start. They were ready if he threw up his hands, too. They really did have him. So he bowed his head.

They probably didn't miss it as a significant moment of surrender. But he made it clear- he looked her in the eye, then nodded once. It would have to be enough to convince them. An elaborate speech of contrition was beyond him, and Naruto was grinning, and saying something stupid about how some bastard needed a hug, and Sasuke harrumphed, because he most certainly did not need a hug, nor did he want one. Or- fine- he would be sort of all right with one, but he wasn't going to admit that directly. And Naruto tackled him, almost shoved him off balance, Sakura's wiry strong arms circled his waist and both of them made a wrinkled mess of his pressed linen Hyuga robes. Their warmth and their closeness reminded him that he was not worthless to everyone, not everyone thought of him as the weakest link of the broken, defeated Uchiha clan. Not everyone hated him as much as he hated himself. It got to him. The two of them. Finally.

He was no better at lying to himself than to anyone else. And he was alive. Still. His heart whispered against theirs. "Dumb bastard," Naruto said with his easy affection. "You were just scared to come back 'cause you knew I'd kick your ass even worse than before! Admit it!"

"Naruto, don't tease him." Sakura groused, but the relief was clear in her tone and in the way she tightened her arms around him. "Sasuke-kun is tired. And Sasuke-kun, you put us through hell and I was worried! You'd better be through with that snake!" She managed to administer a soft jab to his ribs even through the crush of their bodies and tangled arms. He thankfully didn't have to say anything, hugging didn't require words. Maybe the embrace would speak for him. He got his aching, swollen hands around the two of them. He got the little spot of dangerous warmth in his chest under control, so he wouldn't say anything too embarrassing.

"The snake and I are getting a divorce." he muttered. "Let go. I'm staying. All right?" That was enough hugging and enough dangerous emotion.

"About time." Naruto said cheerfully, patting him hard on the back before stepping away. "Hey, what happened to the bow on your ass? And where's your Uchiha fan?"

This idiot clearly had a sick fixation upon what he wore on his ass, and why Naruto would be even looking at his ass at all was something Sasuke didn't understand. And it was a sageo, a samurai's woven sword sash and not a fucking bow, for Naruto's goddamn information. He'd find another moment to educate Naruto on this point, and also on the matter of Uchiha Tetsuya's triple fan crest, this idiot clearly didn't recognize it as Uchiha clan heraldry. But that would be something to pound into Naruto's thick skull later, he had a lot of other talking to do.

Sakura's sudden disturbing ability to drag information out of him was balanced by her other ability to make Naruto shut his big loud mouth. She put a stop to all the tense circling around the tatami mats, all three of them on their feet like there would be a first blow any second. She got them all seated together on the mats, the two of them facing him, and it made him think the worst might be over. The words had been said. And he'd made his admission. He watched the light fading over them from the windows, the section of a rapidly cooling sky that he could see. The sun was setting, out of sight on the other side of the house. Hinata's rooms pointed to the sunrise, now there was only the dark line of ceramic tiles arcing up into the main part of the house. There were the frozen curves and long slender bones of her bonsai trees turning the same deep blues with the failing light. Dusk was falling. Sasuke got up to find the matches in Hinata's teak dressing table. Sakura stared at him, he remembered a moment later that his casual handling of Hinata's things must look completely bizarre to them. But he did practically live here. He ignored Sakura's rapidly escaltaing incredulity, and Naruto's silent 'huh?' face. He lit the four lanterns. He sat back down without comment.

Sakura sent Naruto to tell the guards to have dinner sent up, and to see if they could find Hinata, if she was finished with the day's business. "So she's running the Hyuga clan now?" Naruto chatted away happily. "This whole bigass clan? Hinata-chan?"

Sasuke nodded sternly. But he wasn't untouched by the wonder of that, the scope of her inheritance. Hinata would be in charge of the entire Hyuga clan, it's vast wealth and it's hundreds of members. And maybe that would make things easier with the village. Or maybe the Hyuga were so influential that they had used the Hokage's office as a blunt weapon against the Uchiha. Maybe they were the cold hand that moved the village's puppet strings, Sasuke was unfamiliar with the Senju clan and their supposed link as the upper half of Konoha's uneasy clan marriage. Maybe they were controlled by the Hyuga. Or maybe the Hyuga had nothing to do with it.

But he kept this interplay of suspicion to himself. Naruto and Sakura may not know about the Konoha plot against the Uchiha. And- possibly- the entire story might have been invented by Madara, it wasn't as if Madara was particularly blessed with credibility. That was too many old bad memories for now, Sasuke had a lot of thinking ahead of him, and the interrogation- though maybe the ANBU would know something. They could at least clear the lies from his head. And that would be like the end of an evil spell, like he was under the dark wings of an invisible and oppressive demon. The curse seal had been so seductively persuasive, he hadn't realized how much it had muddled his thinking and stunted his will, not until it's strings were cut.

Sakura insisted on tending it. Reminding him of it's sting… and what it had been. What it had done to him. Orochimaru's most potent drug had been power. The false power of it's adrenaline rush, really. The absolute omnipotent feeling of confidence, like he could just burn or hack his way through anything that threatened him. It's bloody smear on his body was like an endless hangover. He thought about how he'd felt under it's sway, and grimaced. It had broken his line of decisions, pushed him and maybe moved him where he wouldn't have dared to trespass. There was a real motive question there. He sighed, letting Sakura indulge her apparent need to fuss and tsk and poke at him. Maybe he could plead insanity.

And it's torn pieces were still there in his flesh, though it's active chakra circuit was cut and it no longer functioned the way it should. But he could tell from the way Sakura cursed under her breath that it was still very bad. She knelt beside him on the tatami and he endured her probing fingers. He leaned back and let the wall support him. The warmth of the furnace had suffused the wooden frame of the house again. Sakura did something to kill the surface pain, but he could feel the poison skeleton of the jutsu in there. It wasn't just the pain of his inflamed shoulder joint. She was forcing the skin to close up, but the snake poison was still in there. In some final way, Orochimaru's teeth were still in his neck.

"It's not infected, it's the mark." she told him, slightly out of breath. She sat back on her heels and he saw the glimmer of sweat on her forehead and cheeks. "The flesh wound can't heal because the jutsu is disrupting the cellular processes. It's not going to poison you seriously, but the tissue is necrotizing, and those capillaries can't be repaired, even when Tsunade-sama cuts out the remains of the jutsu. It's…" she sighed, and gave him a mingled scolding and apologetic look. "…altered the chakra system in your arm. So when you cut the mark off, it started to disrupt your immune system, and normal repair of the skin and muscle and-"

This was a lot of complicated medical stuff and he wanted a straight, direct answer. He gave her a look that made this clear, and she said tersely "Sasuke-kun, I can force the skin to heal so it won't be open. But the infection is still in your arm, and it won't heal until Tsunade-sama can see you and fix it."

"Fine." he said, flat and indifferent. The point had been to get rid of the mark and Sakura seemed to understand that, even as she eyed him with worried disapproval.

"I wish you hadn't used a kunai." She dropped her gaze to the tatami, to her utilitarian, manicured hands joined in her lap. She meant I wish you wouldn't hurt yourself this way, though she did him the courtesy of not saying it out loud. She wished he was less self-destructive. She wished he hadn't nurtured his worst and most spiteful impulses and finally tangled himself up in them. She wished the same things he wished.

"I'm not leaving." he said again, hunching the one shoulder he could move. "Don't worry about me." She always made him feel like he was being an asshole to her, even when he tried not to. She looked at him with a slow set of resigned unhappiness on her face. She'd pinned back her hair, probably to help with her work. Sun and happiness and good living had brought a deeper tan to her skin. Her eyes were clear and bright. She was very pretty. He looked at her and wondered what it would have been like. She was smart. She wouldn't take one ounce of bullshit from him, either. She'd force him to straighten up. She was pragmatic, he wouldn't have to worry about handling everything himself. And she was married to Naruto, he'd never figured out how he actually felt about her, she was a completely safe thing to contemplate. She was so different from Hinata.

And Hinata was so different from her. Soft-spoken. Gentle and mysterious, in the different tenor to her silences and her few words. He missed her. She would be a great character witness for him right now, at least she thought he was a good person. Sakura knew too much. She was calming down now, working her way through her own doubts. It was taking her a moment or two.

"I am worried." she shot back, her eyes flashing back to his face, and then down to the wound. "We didn't know what Orochimaru was going to do to you."

"He didn't do anything to me." It was a lie, and a clumsy one. He had no particular talent for lying. But his guilt and his awkwardness were enough to cover it, he'd spent this entire conversation talking in guilty little cringes anyway. "I'm okay. I just need to be pardoned by the Hokage."

And he left it at that.

It was a conversation full of broken ends, no natural rhythm to it. Every word he said seemed wrong, so he thought he should stop talking. But Sakura hadn't forgotten about the matches. That hadn't escaped her notice one bit. "And you're going to stay with Hinata-chan?" Since he so obviously already was. And he should have seen this issue coming too.

"You're married to Naruto." he said, uncomfortably. He had no idea how she felt about him either.

"That's not why!" Fortunately she was as impatient with crap from him as she was from Naruto. He managed a mirthless fraction of a smile, and his hair was hanging in his face as he bowed his head, hiding his expression in the angle of the lantern light. "I love you- and Naruto loves you. We both missed you. We..." her tone was scolding, it made the words easier to take. "We both wanted you back, but not…"

And her silence told him more or less what the story was. He didn't know very much about childhood crushes, whether you got over them, whether you carried them into adulthood. Or maybe they matured into something else. He'd loved obssessively, but his love had convulsed upon itself and crushed it's spine into something more like obsessive fixation. It wasn't the same thing. Sakura, for all her yelling, was not as messed up as he was. She was normal- relatively speaking. He decided he couldn't really know how she'd felt. Or how she felt now. He just knew that she'd seemed more interested in having a competition with her equally loud friend. "I think you wanted something other than me," he said, and his hesitance made it come out in odd little pieces. She finally looked away from him, for the first time that day.

It wasn't gratifying at all. She wasn't ashamed, she just seemed pensive. She had turned slightly, and was looking down the hall after Naruto. She could probably see him talking with the servants from where she stood. "You're our friend. We love you." she said. "We just wanted you back. And we wanted to get you away from him. That's all. We just wanted you to come back to us."

He took her tone first for weariness, spent energy dealing with his resistance and explosions of temper. But sound magic revealed it a moment later as sadness. She must feel the same way Naruto did, unable to grasp why anyone would do this to themselves. Why it would ever be necessary. He shook his head and gave her the only answer he could.

"It doesn't matter now. I'm back."

She had thrown her arms around him before, when they were both much younger. And he'd sat dumbfounded and not sure what he should do, so unused to being loved or wanted by anyone. She hugged him with more grace now, as if she had lots of practice hugging wild, crazed teammates- and with saving lives, for that matter. Maybe she finally had come to see him as just another wounded person, another injured shinobi who'd limped into her care.

She wasn't kidding about all the protestations of love, though. She wasn't lying. It wasn't a fake act, she wasn't trying to impress or cajole him anymore. The strength in her arms whispered that she didn't need him anymore, either. She wanted him. It was a completely different thing, and she had a soft, warm voice, a genuine strength of will to her affection. It wasn't nothing, the way these two cared for him.

"Food's coming." Naruto announced, galloping back into the room and pushing the door closed with his flexible bare toes. "Hinata's on her way 'cause they saw her in the main hall or whatever, she's with Neji. And heeeeey, bastard, so what's this about you and Hinata? You're sweet on her? Haha! Look, Sakura-chan, he's blushing! Haha, you just totally lost your cool, I can tell you like her!"

That said, while he was glad they were there, he definitely wouldn't mind kicking Naruto in the face.

And it wasn't really their business, though they would butt right in. That hadn't changed. And they were Hinata's friends- his friends too, he reminded himself- so they would naturally want to know what was going on. Sakura got Naruto to sit and simmer down enough to listen, and then she started perfunctorily invading his private business. He gave her a long, sour look of disapproval, but she was undeterred. She wanted to know why he was here, at the Hyuga household.

He told her- a judicious editing of events. "I don't know what Orochimaru's up to. I remember that he-" it had been a beating, really, but they didn't need to know that- "disarmed me, and knocked me unconscious. After that, something happened. And I wound up here. Hinata found me in the forest." He looked hopefully at the door and the hallway beyond it, as if the servants would materialize and distract Sakura from this line of questioning. "I don't know what's going on. But I'm tired of Orochimaru and I'm staying here."

Here being the house, but also the village. Sakura was unfortunately also shrewd enough to pick at this point. He sighed pointedly, but indulged her. "At the house. If I can." he admitted. "If it's all right with Hinata's family. But she's the clan leader, so she can do what she wants."

"So Hinata-chan found you and took care of your injuries, but…" Sakura was talking contemplatively, as if mostly to herself. She twisted the heavy hem of her leather skirt belt between her fingers thoughtfully. "….you're going to stay with her now?"

He didn't know how many times he had to say this, but he sighed again and repeated, patiently. "That's right. I'm staying here. I like her. And she likes me." He fixed them both with an even, stoic look, as if he were proclaiming the letter of the law. It was simple, after all.

He should have been more prepared for their consternation. But he couldn't have imagined how they'd react, he didn't know much about how they were connected to Hinata. They both looked at him like he had two heads. It shouldn't have shocked them that much.

But maybe they thought he wasn't good enough for her? Or they worried that she was too gentle and kind, and he'd be rough and careless with her, or that he couldn't really love another person, or… well, he wasn't very confident about any of that himself, was he? He didn't want to talk about it, he couldn't be sure if he could withstand much scrutiny. And it would be too humiliating, he'd like to keep some of his dignity.

"But…" Sakura looked baffled by this, a little frown on her face, and maybe she just found it too incongruous. It didn't look as if she were jealous, or that she feared that he'd be some kind of horrible mean bastard to Hinata, but clearly this was coming out of left field for her. She blinked, and it annoyed him, this was not her business. They were owed notice that it was happening. But they were not owed a detailed explanation, nor did they have any business acting so surprised. He was going to have a hard time keeping his temper if they didn't stop gawping at him that way. Luckily Hinata was coming, he felt her closing in, somewhere behind the walls and paper doors and the outer circle of the lanterns' light.

"She's coming." he growled at them, shooting Naruto a warning look in particular. Hinata's soft footsteps were in the hall, and the gentle waves of her presence were approaching. He was attuned to this now, like there was an ancient hint of the byakugan in his eyes. He could feel her instead of see her, her approach whispering through the walls. And she would be better at explaining this, he thought. She was a girl. And girls knew about these things. "I've told you what happened." he told them summarily. "You can ask her yourself," He was short on patience and it must have come out even more ill-tempered than he intended, Hinata opened the door, heard him, and looked at him with something close to terror.

Which was not the impression he wanted to make on these two, that Hinata was afraid of him. But even beyond the need to just not look like a completely out of control crazy person for once, he saw that she was upset. It wasn't just him, either. It was something else. Probably that Neji asshole. She needed to be comforted, and he was not used to being comforting in front of an audience. But to hell with his dignity.

This was more important. "It's all right." he managed, softening his tone a bit so she wouldn't worry. "Naruto's just being stupid. " And Sakura was poking her nose into his business, but never mind. He held out his hand for her, and her eyes jumped nervously from him, to Naruto and Sakura, to his bandaged, swelling fingers.

She was still dressed up like a silk doll, at least five more kimono layers than were necessary, all kinds of wooden hardware in her hair. She was still being shoved around by her family, and he really had to step up his tactics in terms of protecting her from them. Her eyes were pink-edged from crying. And hesitantly she stepped forward.

She turned to close the door. Her hand was shaking badly, and he saw that her body language was closed tightly, like a locked ivory casket. Some Hyuga piece of garbage or another had been at her for certain. But at least he could put his arm around her and comfort her. And maybe these two nosy busybodies who needed to shut up and mind their own business could comfort her too.

And she did seem comforted by it. The shaking and fear faded from her like a cloud falling away from the sun. He was not a romantic person who thought this way, but she seemed that graceful to him, that supernatural, like a crystal clear sharingan memory. But this one was someone who he could actually have, someone who'd actually want him back. She was uncertain, but she came to him. She acknowledged him in public, in that small way. She took his hand.

And it meant everything.

"Hinata-chan, so you like this grumpy bastard?" Naruto said tactlessly- and ignored the acid glare Sasuke shot at him. "See, he's all embarrassed and his face is all red! He's got a crush on you for sure!"

"She already knows I like her, you moron. Clumsy dead-last loser. Shut up." he hissed at Naruto, but Hinata was watching Sakura, she wasn't bothered by this. She looked tired, and the last thing she needed was more arguing. He buttoned his lip. And Sakura at least had a grip on her manners.

"Please come in, Hinata-chan. I've called for dinner. We can eat together, okay?" she said encouragingly, thankfully able to smooth this over a bit, and make this meeting a bit less excruciating. He would have been grateful to her if she wasn't pissing him off. But Hinata smiled weakly, and she let him pull her down to sit beside him.

"It's… true." she said shyly, when they asked her the same question. "Um… I like him." She glanced at him for encouragement, and he nodded.

"And I like her. Understand?" he reiterated to them stonily.

And it was something that other people knew now, not just a secret liaison between them. Or an illicit little drama that her family tolerated. Or yet another scrap of approval that he wanted, but would never get, that would lead him into these sick little agreements with scum like Madara. He wouldn't be that alone now, it was something that existed in the outside world, almost like it was real.

Like it was real.

Maybe it really was real.