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.

20. Shadowplay

Hinata was right, Neji was angry.

"I don't know why I'm doing this." Neji muttered, his finger freshly sliced and bleeding.

"...why I'm even putting up with this... this waste of your time and attention.." The lawyers sipped coffee and watched with alert eyes. The entire house was tense and quieted because of the ANBU creeping through the walls. The guards and retainers were all watching silently throughout the house. But even the civilians who never touched a weapon felt it. Hinata bit the inside of her lip, slowly and methodically, watching Neji complain. The sun glittered in the wet on Neji's fingertip as he lowered it to the scroll.

"... this missing-nin, and Hinata-sama, if you think the council was going to be furious before-"

But his fingerprint was pressed bloodily into the paper. Hinata watched it, watched it shine wetly, watched it absorb, watched it dry. Done. He'd supported her, his complaints and his worries and his words now were beside that fact.

"I have to do this, Neji-niisan." she repeated. Her voice was still high and thin. Behind it an echo of someone else's voice, the iron imprint of her father's words. Her memory of him was still clear. He'd only been not alive, not of flesh and blood like her, for a week now. That was not very much space in time... between now as she stood and ignored Neji, selectively listened, and where she'd stood to greet her father at the gate. Iron locks separated these times, like the lock on the coffin, and the way the fire was supposed to make a bright line of division and create a new era for the clan. It was done, finished. But it was still close. She had to do this.

"...you keep telling me that." he groused.

The sunlight sliced between them as they walked downstairs, into the exposed east face of the main foyer, where the walls were unsealed and opened to let the sun flood through the glass. All around them was the sound of normal everyday activity, of servants chatting and bustling around, of members of her family talking over tea in tatami rooms, heading purposefully to the front of the house, dressed for business or missions. On the wide east veranda through the glass, some of the elders and their younger attendants sat on cushions and mats, the ceramic bowls of their pipes hot white in the direct sun. The sky and slice of garden behind them was piercing blue, the blackness of the wet raked gravel beneath it cut with bright shoots of green.

The gardeners were hard at work, dotted out in the gardens patchworked and inlaid around the house. It was complete comforting normality. It might have been any normal day in her house, her father might have been up in his study or locked away in a meeting with his advisors. Neji might have been off and out of her reach, as he had always been. Nothing might have changed at all. Just that Neji was beside her. Sasuke's sensei Hatake Kakashi was waiting for them somewhere in the wings of the house. Somewhere too there were ANBU, their scattered shadows, maybe they had already come in through the reserve side gates, slipped over the walls. And somewhere over her head, Sasuke was sleeping. Peacefully, like he accepted his fate.

A servant took them to where Hatake Kakashi was waiting. He was sitting calmly in a small meeting room, away from the sun and dominated by two hanging paper lantern globes. They were suspended off the ground like two hanging moons. Or two eyes, just dead white paper now that it was the middle of the day and they were unlit. The house seemed haunted selectively in both rooms and time. There were no ghosts in this part of the house, this time day, now.

Sasuke told her about how ghosts could come back in pieces, the skeleton of their bodies caught in one place, their eyes staring lidless from another. And never during the day. She bowed to Hatake Kakashi, who was unruffled as always. He put down his book. Neji made some small gesture of politeness. And then Neji and Kakashi talked over the scroll with it's legal documents, talked about ANBU things that Hinata was not fully aware of, talked over her. She listened quietly, her hands and legs folded neatly.

Because Neji was there, she couldn't ask Hatake Kakashi too many questions. And the question she wanted to ask was probably something Hatake Kakashi could not have answered, anyway. Neji had always said that ANBU could not explain too much of what they did in their closed, locked prisons. And more than that, suddenly it felt as if she would shame herself and Sasuke for even asking. Sasuke might be upset with her if she asked- if she begged for mercy on his behalf. He might resent her interference, no matter how much patience he could work up for her. She bowed her head. She listened to what was important. Hatake Kakashi's single eye narrowed, then hooded in quiet resignation, if you could even call it that. He never seemed too concerned or upset about anything, it was as if he was suspended in a distant haze of sadness, and nothing else could get close to him.

"...fine, fine." he said, and handed the scroll back to Neji. His tone was so light that it couldn't hold any feeling.

And the important thing, Hinata told herself, was that he had agreed. Sasuke would stay in the house. The ANBU would do their business here, if not under her watch than at least within her reach. It would be nice if she understood more. And it would be nice if she could talk to either of these people, both of whom had transformed themselves behind a thicket of procedural language, turned into ANBU officers and because of that, people she couldn't question or talk to in any way.

But Neji had changed back once she had woken Sasuke, and than Naruto and Sakura. He was waiting for her in the hall, she caught the tail-end of a glance he was shooting at someone behind her. It must have been her guards, both of whom were the silent weighted presence they always were at the end of her hall, behind the half-opened oak divider. But as soon as Neji saw her, she was taken along with him, he wanted to see her. He was back to his old self, tense and impatient.

Back in her cheerful little tatami room, back in the bright wash of sunlight, she rearranged the sprigs of pussywillows as he moved restlessly behind her. The six steps that he could take to cross the room. Then a pause. Another six paces. She wondered when he was going to tell her that she was completely out of control, completely out of her mind- completely out of line. She wondered when he was just going to look at her and tell her that she was being stupid, that she was a stupid foolish girl, the exact words her great aunt would have used. Her fingers were abruptly too tight and the twig broke in her hands. A pussywillow struck the windowsill and sat there, it's fuzz gleaming a bit in the sunlight.

It made no sound so Neji must have just heard her little gasp, and then the clumsy way she dropped the broken twig.

His pacing came to a halt behind her.

"What's the problem now?" His tone was wary.

"Nothing." she said softly. She leaned down to retrieve the twig from the floor. It had three pussywillows arrayed near it's crown, like soft tines of a tiny pitchfork. It was broken now and the arrangement was ruined. She put the two broken pieces on the windowsill, assessed the remaining bits. It was only a collection of twigs now, a flowerless flower arrangement.

"You should go say goodbye to him." Neji had turned back into an aloof member of the secret police. Nothing more.

"No." she whispered, staring at the fallen pussywillow, immobile on the windowsill. "He's going to be safe. I'm going to protect him. I don't have to.." she swallowed, and made her voice normal and clear. "I don't have to say goodbye. Uchiha Sasuke is not leaving."

The formality seemed to defuse the sound of his name. It was as if by echoing Neji's words, speaking of Sasuke as if he were mostly a stranger, she could make it up to Neji. She could calm him a little bit. Maybe Sasuke would be a bit more welcome then, and Neji would not be so angry.

But- back again to the impatient Neji she knew. As little as she did know. "...what are you doing over there?" His footfalls moved over the tatami to her side for a better vantage point. "I don't know why they even both teaching kunoichi that," Of course Neji agreed that the flowers, the time and effort invested in making them harmonize and create small pockets of serenity was a waste. "Though you'd do it anyway. You and those flowers..." The waste and pointlessness that was everything she liked or wanted. "...but never mind. The point, Hinata-sama, is that you should go say goodbye. I know you think I'm too hard on you, but right now I'm trying to help you. Go say your farewells now. You'll regret it later if you don't." Back, again, to the procedural voice of the ANBU officer.

Though Neji would say, probably, that she had already created this problem for herself. Being with Sasuke, knowing him and wanting to protect him, Neji would say that this was just as futile as locking yourself in battle with destiny, making your entire life about it. And just as wasteful, besides.

The twig she held had broken in her hand again. It's insides were sponged green and white, they tore raggedly, more like rubber than dry wood. "Neji-niisan, he has to be safe. I won't let.." she heard the weakness in her voice but continued anyway. "... anyone hurt him." Again, trying to steady herself. "I won't let anyone hurt him."

"I'm the leader of the Hyuga clan." she said, when she heard Neji's sigh of exasperation behind her. He had retreated to the his pacing again. The steady staggered half-rhythm of his feet over the mats. "I'm the leader of the Hyuga clan." she whispered it to herself, trying to make the words feel right and sound like they belonged to her. Her father had a way of saying it, a hard edge of authority in his voice. I am the leader of the Hyuga clan. She practiced in her head, trying to make her voice sound like his.

"So you are." Neji replied sourly. "And I see you're misunderstanding me and Hatake. This legal loophole... idea.. that you had-"

No. No. She was not mistaken. "The clan has the right to reject any attempt to take a member into ANBU or village custody-" she began hurriedly.

"-yes. I don't mean that."

She fell silent.

"I mean that you can't protect him." Neji said emphatically. "You can't protect him from himself. And if the village orders his execution, you can't stop it. If you have... if you are even thinking of using the clan's influence to try to halt an execution order, or to harbor a condemned criminal, then get that thought out of your head right now! I'll go along with this.. this waste of effort to keep him here. That missing-nin should be in an ANBU prison- but I will allow this. I will not allow that. I'll protect you from yourself if necessary."

He had a ringing voice sometimes. His normal speaking tone was almost soft, rasped edges, it was an illusion of softness like finely grained sandpaper. But when he was warming to his subject this way, his voice went up and turned hard and glassy. Ringing in her head- I will not allow that!

"And would you stop.. whatever it is you're doing.. stop snapping that thing in your hand- stop it. You're acting like a..." His heated, exasperated sigh. "I don't even know where to begin with how you're acting. If you have something to say then talk to me and stop tearing apart things like that. What's gotten into you?"

There was nothing to say. She'd said everything and he had not believed any of it.

"I'll protect you from yourself. And the way you're acting..." he was closer, he'd moved to face her and his feet had come to an abrupt stop squarely behind her tense shoulders. "...and I can see that it's going to be far more necessary than I'd thought."

She put her hands down on the windowsill. Her hair unraveled over her shoulder and fell down in front of her. The sun banded it with a deep blue, the color bands of shifting deep waters in the ocean. The mark of her mother's foreign village and her blood that was the source of everything that was wrong with Hinata. Everything that was soft and different and broken. Everything that maybe might be worth something- but not here. Not never. Not ever in her reach.

"Hinata-sama. Turn around, stop that. If you're going to drag us both on wild schemes then you have to talk to me." The scuff of his feet on the mats. His hands seized her shoulders and turned her around to face him. The sun cut past her, ignited the hot white of his eyes, the warm red tinge of his hair. She could bow her head and refuse to look at him, but she knew he'd just lose his temper entirely then.

So she faced him and she tried to hold his gaze, but she felt small and as if she were shriveling at the edges. She wasn't wrong, she was sure of that. It was right. But she just couldn't seem to stand her ground with any kind of force and confidence. Sakura would have. And Naruto would, he did this naturally, he didn't seem to even know how to not do it, to do anything else but defend himself and others, and what he knew was right. But she wasn't like them. And Neji was glaring at her expectantly. So she said, as best she could "I'm sorry."

A blanket apology for everything since she was wrong even when she was right.

Neji shook his head. "No." he said. His impatience had frozen into a tight worried frown. "No. Don't do that. Don't give me that.. that avoidance and that passive thing you do. Don't apologize. You're the leader of the Hyuga clan- stop it."

Neji really did say it with more conviction than she did. His voice had gathered a ragged edge of bitterness now. She found that she could look at him and not be ashamed. She could meet the full brunt of his gaze and the burning whiteness of his eyes, their sharp icy clarity and their cutting edges.

And he was right. She couldn't be a jellyfish and a reformer. As soon as she started to act as the leader of the Hyuga clan, she couldn't then retreat and scuttle under her bed to hide. She had to stand up straight and meet the consequences.

"I'm going to protect him." she said. "Because-"

Neji sighed, and he didn't roll his eyes, but the sharp, irritated shake of his head, the way he just dropped his hold on her and turned back to his pacing- he didn't have to say anything.

She kept talking, trying to pour the words out. "-because it's right and because he's our blood and because it's my fault and my father's fault and-" She was so close to desperation, she could slip into it any moment herself. She was just as emotional and panicked as any villager that Neji may have to assume his cool professional manner for.

"Oh, spare me." he snapped.

Like a snapped twig. The words fell apart even as she said them.

"But..." she tried.

"No. Spare me. I'm tired of hearing all of that." He had turned mostly away now. He wasn't pacing, he stood at a strange angle to her, mostly presenting his back and the barbed angle of his shoulder. The clenched fist down at his side, below it.

She tried again. "But it's true-"

"Is it? Is it really?"

Now he turned to face her.

"I'm tired of this. I'm tired of having him here and just not saying anything. I'm sparing your feelings, but maybe I should protect you instead- yes, from yourself!" When he turned and she saw his eyes, she realized how angry he was. His anger was so stop and start, so explosive and at the same time so much like a timed charge, a controlled demolition. He could seem to put the genie back in the bottle, reverse the fury of his words and their damage, turn it on and off like a lightswitch. "I was thinking this morning as I watched that missing-nin bring ANBU to our house, invade our place while we have so many concerns of our own! He uses Uzumaki, and Uzumaki and Haruno both just keep letting him control their life- no, I won't let you do that."

She couldn't look at him anymore.

"I was thinking that I'm not sparing you pain, I'm letting you harm yourself!" He held up his hand, silencing her. "No. You've already told me- I don't want to hear it all again. And don't even try to explain, I know what's going on."

Her own hands were fists balled up at her side, her own shoulders were taut and sharp and locked into an iron cross now too. She was actually standing against him, the words were just the next, easy step. "That isn't true, Neji-niisan-"

"So you keep telling me! But do you really want to talk about this, Hinata? Do you want to try to convince me? Fine- tell me. What has he done to make you think that-"

But she couldn't hold his gaze. Her cheeks burned, she looked guilty, she couldn't just... talk about this.. with him.

"-exactly. Nothing. He's done absolutely nothing. He's told you a few sugar-coated lies. He's conned you into sleeping with him- yes I know about it! The entire house knows! He's got you thinking that you're his only hope, that you'll be the one to save him, he's already lead Uzumaki around by the nose this way for six years! He'll lie to you until you're not useful to him anymore and then-"

The wood and paper absorbed most of the sound. But something in her vibrated, rang... like a tuning fork struck and set into motion.

Somewhere beyond her feet and her concentrated stare at them, Neji exhaled, tried to get his temper back under control. This sort of outburst was rare for him, but the threat and the trigger of it was always visible. She always felt it's tripwires, and she always stepped so lightly. She always followed the battle lines he drew, and she left him alone, and she never questioned him-

-and when she had the first time, he'd thrown himself at her, put his hand through her chest, driven his fury straight through her heart.

And she had survived, one skipped heartbeat, one momentary heart attack, one chance of certain death that she had nonetheless gotten up from.

And some part of her did not fear it, now.

"I think.." she said softly. "..that I will still protect him." She worked her fingers apart. Slowly they came out of their clawed fists.

The imprint of silence came before his answer. She used it to move to the windowsill again, look outside and at the sun on the ceramic tiles, the little birds hopping around in the bare trees, the little blades of new green leaves peaking out from their bare arms.

"Then as an ANBU operative, I have to assess the attitude, motives and capabilities of the prisoner." Neji said blandly, as if he were reciting from his procedural manuals now. The edge was hidden like a knife up his sleeve, held close to his vest. "I have to make a complete report, and I have to help Hatake in monitoring the situation of an ANBU interrogation and target recovery operation, I have to-"

He had to, he had to, he had to. He wanted to go fight with Sasuke.

She didn't see his face. Maybe he had buried his true feelings, and she would not have seen anything. Nothing she didn't already know.

Maybe there were things she had to stay out of. But not because she was too helpless to intervene. But because she had, and now she had to accept what would happen. What little protection she had won for him, maybe bargaining away what little respect Neji had for her. What little she could do. It was done.

"Please don't hurt him." she whispered. But Neji was closing the door behind him, and probably hadn't heard.

--

Sasuke wasn't afraid of this Neji asshole.

Sasuke would have actually preferred to sleep in and not have to deal with Naruto and Neji; or in fact anyone but Hinata, and another few hours of sleep, and no talking until he'd had at least two cups of coffee and a hot shower. But since Naruto had already ruined his morning... all that dangerous emotion stuff... fine, he'd deal with the Neji asshole too. Neji was merely an annoyance with a yapping voice, something that lacked a snooze button, that's all. Sasuke wasn't awake enough to work up any decent rage.

Though this Neji asshole seemed to require some educating on this point. Sasuke wasn't really awake enough to pound Neji's face in either. So he'd probably have to talk. Pain in the ass. At least Neji was good for something, he made Naruto disappear.

Good trick, that.

Neji was talking to Naruto, but Naruto was out of sight down the hall. Sasuke could only hear the whiny muffle of Naruto's voice. No words. Just the familiar high-pitched boring drill sound of it. And it kept Neji busy for a moment.

"Go, Uzumaki. Now. No, don't argue- what? No! No, my relationship with Tenten is... Look, go say that to her. No, I'm inviting you. Of course she'll 'kick your ass', you're being a- Naruto, just go downstairs and get out of the way. Yes. ANBU business. ...what? No. No. No, go bother Hatake Kakashi to see his badge. No, ANBU officers don't have badges, it's not like on television... Naruto, leave. Now. Now. Yes, I have no discernable sense of humor. Go laugh downstairs. Naruto... Fine. Fine. Go."

Not that Neji pulled it off with much poise or style, but Sasuke waited, arms crossed. Finally Neji got Naruto to go downstairs and wait with, presumably, Sakura and her stated intent to go talk to Kakashi. Sakura was in fact probably conferring with Kakashi about how to best handle Sasuke, sharing her concerns, helping Kakashi be an even bigger pain in the ass than she was. But- no matter. Hyuga Neji was here to entertain Sasuke in the meantime.

As a blank target, an animated taijutsu log, a place to slam his fist and spit venom and work off his fury.

Though Sasuke was rather short on time. And patience.

Neji stood between him and the hallway, the bend in it that made the blind corner, and the closed door that lead out of Hinata's private wing. Kakashi, Sakura and Naruto were somewhere beyond it. ANBU, silent and gathering, further out still. But present.

"Out of my way." Sasuke said boredly.

An invisible hanging weight, all around him. They were there. Kakashi was not the only one. And there- yes, the guards behind Neji had seemed a bit ruffled. Sasuke had seen their exchange of glances- right. Of course ANBU were already on the property, the house's grapevine had picked up their quiver and jumped.

Neji actually stepped forward. He didn't conceal his intentions in any way, he all but planted his feet. That same look in his eyes. That taking something of mine look, and though Sasuke basically had no patience for Neji at the best of times, he paused. This was interesting. Useful information, he was going to have to fight this son of a bitch somewhere down the line, anyway.

"You're in my way." he said, much as he had before. As if he were not particularly concerned, and he could feel the muscles of his face taking on the Zen mask, the vague look of disconnection, the only thing that had worked on Orochimaru.

And Neji, as scary and formidable as he clearly thought himself, was still a cosseted little rich boy from a good family, someone with prissy little morals and hypocrisies and- anyway- not even in the same ethical galaxy as Orochimaru. Neji couldn't even imagine someone like Orochimaru, the sheer scale of that depravity.

Neji in fact crossed his arms, totally ignorant of all of this. "I warned you once. I'll warn you one last time."

Of what? Sasuke was trying to stay expressionless, but this was really a waste of his time. Neji could at least get to the damn point. And- never mind, Sasuke would shove the point at him instead, since Neji refused to get to it. "You believe that I'm completely ignorant of the Hyuga clan and can't understand the threat they pose to me," he rattled off. Because, of course, Sasuke had never been in a noble ninja clan himself, and naturally also because the damn stuck up Hyuga clan was the standard of all evil for the known universe. "Fine. Get out of my way."

Neji actually slammed the palm of his hand to the wall, barring the hallway with his arm.

Sasuke allowed himself a sigh. "I don't have time for this." he said.

Neji raised one eyebrow, and somehow managed to make himself look even more snobbish. "I suppose running away from your problems takes up a lot of one's time..."

That wasn't worth responding to either. Maybe, Sasuke thought, he should just grab Neji's thumb, do it quick before he could react or whip out the Fist, wrench it backwards, twist, dislocate-

"... though you've invested plenty of time in suckering Uzumaki and Haruno. You've managed to sucker Hinata too." Neji shrugged with his free hand and shoulder. But his eyes stayed diamond hard.

And that was a different thing, that accusation. Neji was very pale, the flesh around his eyes and nostrils and lips would swell and turn spectacular shades of inky purple once Sasuke smashed his fist through Neji's skull a few times. His eyelids would swell almost to the point of shutting fully, and actually, Sasuke was still partial to that whole 'beat Neji in the face until his eye sockets collapsed' idea, that would be fun. "You don't know what you're talking about." he said, repeating himself- and getting tired of it.

"I think I know exactly what's going on. You aren't subtle, Uchiha."

Hinata didn't want him fighting with Neji. Hinata didn't want him fighting with Neji. Hinata didn't want him fighting with goddamn asshole Neji-

But he got his temper back under control. Because- this asshole wasn't worth it. And because he had better things to do. And because there would be time after to beat Neji to a pulp at his leisure.

But maybe he had a minute... He crossed his own arms. He looked down his nose at Neji, Neji and his stupid pretense of bulldog protectiveness, Neji who was being motivated by something else, it was whispered under the tone of his voice.

"I don't like the way you talk to her." Sasuke told him, with vague boredom. "I don't like the way you talk about her, either."

That did it, Neji's face froze into silent fury.

"You can't push her around any longer. She's afraid of you- but I'm not. You and the rest of your ridiculous family-"

Neji laughed, cold, sharp and humorless. "You really have no idea!"

Sasuke waved him off. "I'm going to the ANBU. Out of the way."

"I am the ANBU, you arrogant little punk." The snarl in Neji's voice was familiar, but why did he gesture to his side, why that recurring twinge of body language? It looked unconscious. "Real tough guy... You'll be tough until Morino has some quality time with you."

Because of course, spoiled little Leaf-nin Neji had be subjected to Orochimaru for six years, and because he of course had suffered more than anyone else, and of course he knew everything, and-

-never mind, Sasuke was tired of listening to the garbage come out of Neji's mouth. Neji didn't deserve to know this, but- "You're embarrassing yourself again. Asshole, Orochimaru designed most of those torture techniques. The rest are taught at the academy. You and your ANBU and this soft little village-"

That gesture again. That flicker of Neji's hand to his side. Something about that...

"-can't do anything that hasn't been done to me before. He did it all. There's nothing left. Now- out of my way." Sasuke looked pointedly at the arm Neji had braced to block his passing. This was proving a lot more annoying than he'd bargained. He needed to remember what he wanted, his end goals, not get too caught up in his old way of thinking...

...about how no one in this pathetic village could oppose him. The logic of the Sound Four. The hatred of softness and compassion and the idea that brutality was strength. That sort of thing. Fucking Neji was being such a blithering, oblivious temptation in that direction, reminding Sasuke too much of how much he'd invested in fucking hating this place, hating it for just existing...

...for not being there for him. Same old story. Making him think about fighting his way out, running back- fine, to nowhere, to Orochimaru. Not an option. But the adrenaline was prickling in his veins. He could fight- cram a tsukuyomi down Neji's throat to keep him busy, and then the guards...

Fight them to a standstill. Fight the guards, the retainers.. Sasuke was feeling better now. Sakura was, granted, not entirely useless, she was an adept healer. Her chakra was stronger than the old woman's herbal crap. So if he wanted, he could fight.

Maybe fight his way out of here. Being out-muscled by the retainers, out-numbered, it only meant that his tactics would have to change. He could run and he could use genjutsu, he could fight them by avoiding fighting them, he'd seen Itachi do that plenty of times. And if they were any good at all, they'd kept an eye on him and attempted to size him up, figure out his habits and manner. He'd been lazing around, doing nothing- well, other than that incident where he threw himself at the taijutsu logs in the training yard like a crazed animal- other than that, he'd been as docile as a pathetic little brat. Just like the pathetic little brat they thought he was anyway. He'd even just taken it when they'd used their gentle fists on him. He didn't resist them. They'd never seen him really fight.

They wouldn't know what to expect.

Other than, maybe, some hyperbolic gossip about how he'd been the student of a sannin, learned all kinds of forbidden jutsu...

So it was an option.

Aside from the fact that it was counterproductive. Aside from the fact that it was fucking stupid, besides. Sasuke rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, sympathetic ache of the sharingan behind his pupils. Fuck it. Enough of this Neji bastard.

"Out," he said with finality, glaring warningly at Neji's smug, certain, stupid face. "of my way. Now." Neji frowned a deeper crease between his eyes and opened his mouth to retort.

"Neji-niisan."

Behind him, just as Neji drew breath. Neji's eyes immediately darted over Sasuke's shoulder.

Just a breath at first, a whisper. But then she spoke louder.

"Neji-niisan. Please."

Her softness was like the Fist, velvet and seemingly so harmless. So devastating. Sasuke saw something bend and crumple in Neji's face. Some stray part of his feelings that he just couldn't keep inside- and Sasuke saw it clearly. Not just the sound magic, the way Neji said her name and the ridiculous honorific- Hinata-sama. Not just the way the others said it, like she was a princess or a shinto goddess, some animate spirit. Some ghost of the past, no-

-or maybe yes. Maybe that was it. Some shared history between them. Sasuke considered, watching this ridiculous posturing Hyuga Neji asshole look right past him- through him in fact- as if he wasn't even there, as if Hinata's presence was so all-consuming that she blotted out everything else in his field of vision. The old woman had said that. That there was a history there.

Something that Hyuga Neji feared, some chink in his brittle little armor, his brittle anger and his protestations of superiority. Hey you. How old are you? The way he'd been from the moment Sasuke had first met him, some supercilious upperclassman in the nervous scatted crowds at the chuunin exam intake meeting.

Sasuke turned partially, looked over his shoulder. Hinata was there, the sun was behind her and it lit a blue flame around her head, little staticky bits of her hair were alight, little white traces burning. She still looked tired and sad, the bruised circles under her eyes, the way she wore her fear and her uncertainty with such natural pride. She was... exactly as he'd seen her, the moment when she came into the room on that first morning. The fear in her face, but also the firm unquestionable tone in her voice. A queen, just as he'd thought. A white swan- no a cygnet still grey around the edges. A cygnet just unfolding her wings.

And looking at her was a lot better use of his last few moments than smirking at Neji.

The Neji asshole made Naruto disappear. And then Hinata made Neji disappear. Sasuke liked that. He was smiling despite being in the wake between foul moods, his anger was in brisk transit as the ANBU gathered, as the reckoning moved into place. As Neji muttered some embarrassed fragment at her, clearly unwilling to have any sort of conversation in front of a witness, Sasuke turned his back on Neji. Ignored the way Neji shut the door to Hinata's wing behind him just a bit too hard. Sasuke held out his arms to her instead.

Never mind her annoying family and her waste of a cousin- there were actually better things to do than beat the crap out of idiots who deserved it, who wouldn't mind their own business-

-never mind that right now. It didn't change this. What mattered. Her.

And this feeling. Something other than hate. Something that he could actually hold on to, build upon, do something with other than just be another force of chaos and brutality and terror in the world, another out of control psychotic like Orochimaru. No, like Madara. And- no. He was not like this.

Not anymore.

"Come here," he said, pleased.

She did come to him. She stepped into the layered shadows of the hall, and he saw her come apart at the seams as she did. The authority in her voice collapsed and she was almost in tears by the time he had her- by the time she was close enough for him to grab and hold tightly. She was shaking, and it was probably this Neji asshole who had done it-

"No," she whispered against his shoulder. "No, it's not that..."

Which was a big lie. He told her so as gently as he could. He stroked her hair and held her, and she stopped shaking. Her hands, locked around his waist, unclenched and she relaxed-

-a bit. He looked down at the crown of her head and the bit of her cheek that he could see, she was clinging to him like she was...

..well, she probably was terrified. It was normal to feel that way, probably. She was new to this kind of power, and she didn't seem to be the type who relished it, either. He told her it was all right, which seemed to be the only thing he could ever find to say. It was the only thing that felt right to say- it's all right- to try to comfort her. He was never sure what to say, he was still new at this. But it seemed to do what it should.

"..is it really okay?" she asked, and her voice was just a greyed shadow of even it's usual weightless softness. She meant the legal strings pulled, and- yes, it was fine. He could have lifted her chin gently to kiss her, but a kiss to her forehead and another to her temple instead, she lifted her eyes to him and he slipped his hand over her cheek, kissed her properly. Yes. It was fine. And.. yes, he was grateful for it. She whispered about how she worried that he'd be insulted, but-

"No, it's fine." he whispered. Kisses to her ear and the soft flesh of her neck under it, and he could feel her pulse and her warmth and her aliveness. It was amazing that he'd gone so long without this, this very basic closeness of another living person. Ghosts weren't very satisfying company. He eyed the guards over her shoulder, opening one eye to do it. The door was shut, right- Neji had slammed it shut in his impotent fury. Good. There was enough privacy here, but-

-she wanted him to come into her bedroom, he had a sudden image of her pulling him down to her bed, pulling open his Hyuga shirt and his own hands pulling down her zipper, her hair spilling over the pillow-

-but, no time. Dammit. Well- later. "Of course I'm coming back." he said to her when she had pulled them both through her open doorway. The sun was flooding the room now, it was well past noon. And her tiredness, the stress etched into her face like faded bruises... none of that changed how singularly beautiful she was, how the sun reflecting off the polished wood and bleached paper changed the whiteness of her skin, the way it was so soft against the color of her hair, the crystal clarity of her eyes... Well. It was all really sappy, all of this. It was the sort of thing he'd have found nauseating if he'd heard it from anyone else. But maybe it really was this way when you were in love. Being a sap was all right with you. And- maybe he was.

"Of course I'm coming back.." he whispered, his lips brushing her ear.

"...you're not really going anywhere.." she murmured, her arms tightly around him now.

"That's right. Don't worry." If he could make her feel better just by kissing her, holding her tightly this way, he'd do it gladly. If he could have found better, prettier words, and somehow not felt like a colossal dumbass saying them...

"Hinata, don't worry. I think it's real. And it's fine, I'm not leaving." But this was no more than he was saying to Naruto and Sakura, she deserved more than that. He swallowed hard, pushed ahead. "...I don't understand this love business and I don't have much experience with it. But I might love you, all right? Don't worry. It's going to be all right."

That seemed to help a lot. She didn't relax all the way, but she let him cuddle her. He didn't seem to be fucking this up too badly, which was reassuring. He wasn't feeling great about his ability to relate to people lately.. some idiot was... well, maybe it wasn't really Naruto's fault either. For once.

Hinata found a way to press herself closer to him, it made him feel like less of a guilty murdering piece of scum, less like someone who didn't deserve any of this. "... um.. I think I might too. That's why... I'd protect you as the clan leader even if I didn't.. feel that way.. but I think I do..." she was still whispering, leaning up and pulling him down to whisper in his ear like she was nervous about being overheard, or maybe just because she was as uncertain as he was.

"Then don't worry. We'll figure it out later." One last kiss, proper, their arms locked around one another. Perfect security. All the bullshit love songs actually sort of had a point, he had to admit. Moments like this really were everything, they stayed with you and burned in your memory. Maybe he'd walk through that interrogation with this moment and it's heat still clinging to him, warming him through all that, the loneliness and stress to follow...

A gentle kiss, not like the others that were hurried and intense. The taste of her made him regret the time lost overnight, when she was upset with him and he was too lost in his own anger...

..and about that, he thought he shouldn't part with her on a bad note like that. "Don't worry about them. The team will be fine... and Naruto's being a moron about it, but he's right... all right? Don't worry..." He whispered that to her, over and over, it seemed. It was like trying to kiss the tension out of her, trying to just love her enough to solve all her problems, save her, make everything all right for her...

.Probably futile. But never mind, he thought that it could probably work out between them. It would just be a matter of getting his own head straightened out, wouldn't it? And doing right by the two of them, by Naruto and his determination. "...it's going to work out." He pushed aside her hair again, whispered the words against the warm softness of her cheek, the graceful line of her jaw. "I just have to fix it. It's my fault. But I can-"

"I have to fix my house," she whispered urgently, clenching at him again. "I have to-"

"You will." he said to her. "All you have to do is..." he frowned slightly, wondering how he could explain this cleanly and easily. But he did know a little bit about how confidence worked. He told her about what he'd seen, the way Orochimaru could take a subordinate with proven and high levels of skill- and just break that person down. Once their sense of self was destroyed, once their confidence was snapped apart-

"...then that was the end of them. They were immobilized." he told her, keeping it clean and neutral, no ugly details. "Confidence is almost everything. You've had yours broken, that's all." It wasn't the time to get into how she'd been broken down this way all her life, and he could tell- no, nothing that complicated. "You're right. Remember that you're right. All those..." ghouls, rat-bastards, abusive pieces of festering shit "...people in your house, the people in your family that try to tear you down, they're wrong, Hinata. They're afraid of you because they know you're right."

Remember that, he thought. He could hold her as tightly as he wanted right now, he could force out as many clumsy words of affection as he could mange. He could kiss her, and kiss her again, and try to help her see what he saw, how pretty and smart and fascinating and graceful she was, how those fucking bullies she was related to were full of crap-

-but he couldn't stay with her. He couldn't stand guard over her, for now. "You'll be fine. You're stronger than you think." he said. She looked up at him, the sun turned her eyes a clearer white, like cold mountain water. She nodded. She pulled herself back together, he could see how practiced she was at doing that, with silent finality.

"Then don't worry about me either." she said, and managed a small smile. A genuine one, though.

"Good." he said. And managed one of his own.

She really was strong. And if nothing else... yes, it pained him to admit it, but she had good friends in Naruto and Sakura. She had other people who could support her in his absence.

And he didn't quite think that this village, with no other sharingan user and with a Hokage wrapped around Naruto's baby finger, was exactly going to torture him to death.

And, it probably was real... the way it felt now. The twist in his heart, her fingerprints burnt into it. This feeling. He didn't have the words for it. He'd never really felt comfortable expressing his feelings in any kind of detail. If he could have just taken her hand, her sensitive byakugan-taijutsu fingers, and pressed them into his heart, if that would make her feel that he meant it, really feel what he was feeling... Then again, a byakugan-user probably could see his heart just fine. He smiled vaguely at that. His mood was strange all the sudden. Not as bad as he'd thought.

Well, better that then more fury. She grew solemn and worried about keeping Kakashi waiting. He managed to talk her into one more kiss, this one so deep that she murmured wordlessly against him; and something deep inside him glowed like the sound of a heavy iron temple bell, a feeling of deep warmth in his chest, his skin tingling where her fingertips pressed into his cheek and neck, the gentle burnmark of her lips. But- fine. On with business.

Downstairs past more gawping Hyuga, though to be fair they stared a lot less now. They seemed to be getting used to his presence. The same lazy murmurs seemed to stir amid them in his wake, the traces of that's the Uchiha boy, and well at least there's one left, too bad about the brother. But he didn't listen too hard, it was too much complicated emotional stuff. He just wanted to walk with Hinata, his arm around her. Her beside him.

It felt very right somehow. The two of them together. Clan leader and her protector. It made him remember- right, Uchiha Tetsuya, and his own maybe-destiny of clan restoration. All the anger and recrimination just got in the way of the simple logic of that. It wasn't so bad to just feel good for a change, to just do something right. Even Naruto and Sakura didn't piss him off so much, when he got to the room where they were sipping tea with Kakashi. Or, to be exact- Kakashi was sipping tea. Naruto and Sakura were loudly talking, as usual. It all felt normal. And it did feel right. That sudden, strange disorienting feeling that he'd walked out on them for only a second, that he'd never really left them, never really run from them. That- sure, they were angry at him for it. But that was just bullshit, just stuff in the way. The team itself was complete, it closed it's circle easily, took him back in.

Without question or hesitation. No stupid jokes from Naruto now, though he wanted to clap Sasuke on the back. He wanted some sign of friendship. So Sasuke took the hand Naruto offered, made a few vaguely affectionate insults. Shut up, idiot. Dead last. They were almost terms of damn endearment by now. He let Sakura hug him. He did what he could to hug her back and not be a stiff-necked asshole about it. He let them... and it was like just letting them was enough.

Apparently he was now more okay with being a big sap than he'd thought. He didn't say anything too embarrassing, he had the sense to keep his mouth shut. But nostalgia was defeating him, it was like the hatred couldn't stand at all until he got himself the hell away from people like this, people who cared about him. It had always had it's hooks sunk deep into him. There were plenty of memories he could summon about being in this team and being happy. Soon enough Kakashi stopped just making idle remarks about Naruto not shouting too loud and Sakura not giving Sasuke too much of a hard time about his shoulder. Hinata had made a polite excuse and slipped away, his team problems were still too much for her. And it was not her problem- it was his. He had to fix this. Finally Kakashi put down his book and it vanished back into his side pouch, it was time to go.

Naruto and Sakura and their loud voices, their pushy affection, all of it was left behind and swallowed up by the imposing reinforced silence of the house. Kakashi took him away from the room, down the hall, through the gathering invisible weights, the gathering silent storm of the ANBU. Interesting, this way of subduing and taking in someone who was a flight risk, who might just flip the fuck out, start fighting at any instant...

"I think you're ready to do this." Kakashi said calmly. He smiled his one-eyed cryptic smile. And... he was right.

Though Sasuke still wasn't very happy about that tree incident, Kakashi had better not try to tie him to anything else.

"If you don't run then I won't have to tie you up." Kakashi and his infuriatingly calm logic. Naruto's idiot grin a few hours before- it hurts, huh? Then stop struggling! Ha ha!

Harrumph harrumph. Stupid Naruto. Stupid Naruto being right. Stupid goddamn clumsy idiot Naruto. But the bite of anger was gone, he couldn't summon his rage, or the toxic burn of what he knew was jealousy, the urge to blame all of this on Naruto, the one who'd never wavered, never did anything else but hold out a hand into the storm, no matter how hard Sasuke slapped it away, never did anything but try to rescue his friend.

"Try to relax," Kakashi said to him in an undertone. Naruto and Sakura's whispers faded behind the shoji doors that closed between them. The flat glances of Hyuga servants and guards interceded, and the paper maze of Hinata's house closed around them like an origami flower.

"It's good you made it out alive." Kakashi said instead of I told you so. Instead of it didn't make you happy, did it? "Don't worry, we're here for you." Like nothing had happened. Like there was a way out of this mess. A light at the end of the tunnel, but they weren't taking him outside. They were taking him further into the house. The guards were now joined by invisible shadows with white porcelain faces. Sasuke could feel them there.

His throat was dry and the words came out with crackled edges. "It's too late for me." He'd resisted them for six years. He'd lived more than half his life for revenge and nothing else. For an end that might prove he was worth something- to someone. Someone who wasn't Naruto. Something that wasn't this team. And this village. And that thin margin of time when he let them start to help him.

"You're alive." Kakashi's tone was almost conversational, his calm was so pervasive that it sucked the panic out of your lungs and veins, dismantled the worried voice in your head. Sasuke looked down at the angular paper hall yawning in front of them. Sunlight on paper rather than the darkness he'd limped into, away from Naruto and the Valley. "You're alive, you're here with us. You know there's a problem. We're here to help you. It's never too late, Sasuke."

The way Kakashi said his name was so different from Orochimaru's hiss. It was an instant key to memories, things he'd forgotten like the long training sessions up on the high rocky plateau, the punishing lessons in chidori and sharingan-taijutsu. Kakashi was a hard taskmaster and he'd been so comforted by that, felt that he was finally being taken seriously. "I don't deserve a second chance." He heard himself say. Maybe he should not have said it.

But Kakashi didn't seem bothered, he could take all of this in stride. He could handle the entire explosive mess of the team, all it's furiously moving parts, even as it had spun apart. Maybe it really did pull itself back together seamless just because he was there. Before he'd arrived, they'd argued and bickered and- Kakashi patted Sasuke's uninjured shoulder. "I said don't worry. We'll take over from here, okay?" His smile that was just one closed eye. "It's all right."

Almost the exact words he'd said to Hinata. Probably Kakashi was just trying to make him feel better.

Even if it was hard to believe he was forgiven, that he even should be forgiven...

But it was done, the graceless surrender to the village, this moment he'd avoided for so long, the first step back on the straight and narrow. "Don't worry, we can help." Kakashi said, leading him into the gloved hands of the ANBU.

--

Hinata didn't watch them take Sasuke away. She saw one ANBU officer in the hallway, his mask flipped up, she could see his face. He was just a normal young ninja like herself. Not a fearful demon or a supernatural creature of darkness. But one was enough, she turned away.

She had to remember that this was the right thing to do. And that Sasuke was so adamant about this. She remembered how his arms had locked around her as she lay next to him the night before. They were both upset about how the dinner with Naruto and Sakura had gone, but they were trying to make the best of it. He kissed her and she kissed him back. The warmth of his skin and the feel of his lips was familiar and it brought her heart back into focus.

Back into the picture. She'd been so caught up in that daylight world with Naruto and Sakura, and while she was angry with Sasuke, she thought he was being cruel, if not that at least he wasn't trying very hard not to be cruel to them...

Or maybe he was doing his best. She trusted him. She did. This just wasn't her business. It wasn't her team. And there were parts of Sasuke that she just didn't know yet, parts of herself that he didn't know about yet either. It was so early on, just the first hint that maybe something might come of it, a brief little blaze, a little accidental affair...

...just like the heroines in the romance novels... always getting themselves into trouble and falling in love like they'd tripped over their own feet, falling into the right set of arms, finding the right other person just by chance.

And she couldn't do this for Sasuke, couldn't put his team back together or deliver him like a thank you gift to Naruto's doorstep, make it all right again. All she could do is remember how they'd lay together and she'd been almost asleep. Sasuke had been whispering to her, saying that it was his fault and he had to fix it. "I have to fix it." His voice so single-minded and obsessively determined, like it was all he could think of.

So it was out of Hinata's hands. She couldn't do anything. So she should do nothing.

Look away.

She had permission, Sasuke had told her he'd take care of it, she didn't have to worry about him. And he didn't have to worry about her. And- well, it was up to her to make things at least look all right.

And maybe then underneath that they wouldn't be so bad, they might start to be a bit better. Naruto and Sakura were her guests and she had to be a good host. But it wasn't just that, she wanted to be around them. To just feel like their friend again, like things hadn't changed too much. She knew they didn't blame her, she was so insulated from all of this. She'd been right in the middle but somehow they kept her safe and Sasuke kept her safe too. She could be there but stay unscathed.

So the least she could do was get them a decent breakfast. And after that, a proper guest room.

They weren't doing very well, they seemed to still be staring after Sasuke, wondering what happened to him, why he was there so briefly. Even when Hatake Kakashi took Sasuke away and Hinata suggested they go to get something to eat, that things should go back to normal now...

...because there was nothing else to do but wait now, let the ANBU work. And let Sasuke fight whatever battle he was so determined to fight. Alone, it seemed, as always. They were resigned to that, but they seemed to need a minute to adjust. Their teammate back, so briefly. Back and gone again.

The servants brought tea and coffee, orange juice for Naruto and some for Hinata too, because being around Naruto was an excuse to be silly too, to be free like he was. Sakura asked for the legal details and Naruto listened, his bright blue eyes glittering at Hinata like the clear sky outside. They sat near the window so they were in the sun, outside it was warm and it was a beautiful day. Hinata explained once more, this time completely so they wouldn't have to worry. Sasuke wasn't going anywhere. The ANBU would do whatever was necessary and then-

Then anything that happened next would be up to her. She could protect him. The village couldn't kill him without taking him off the property. They couldn't take him off the property without having to go through the Hyuga clan. Neji disapproved but she was the clan leader. And it was important, protecting one of their own. Neji didn't agree but Sasuke was part of their clan. Even their own records called the two clans one and the same.

Main house and branch house...

But before that, something better and more fraternal, something other than people just killing one another and burning jutsu marks into eachother and tearing eachother apart for little pieces of power...

She told them, and they understood, and the servants came with more food. Naruto was always so happy over simple things like this, meals and a place to sleep, the simple luxury of friends and love and a family. It was always new and amazing to her, somehow who was so easy and free with happiness. She watched Sakura watch Naruto too, she could see that Sakura felt it too, the heat of Naruto's easy joy, like it really wasn't that complicated at all. Like everyone could be that happy.

So different from Sasuke.

And he had always been there, unspoken, the name that Naruto and Sakura talked around, but who's absence was always felt, like a fourth person in the room. An empty space cut out of the middle of the both of them, even in their marriage. And Neji said horrible things about that, about how he really had to wonder what was going on between them, marrying and being so focused on some missing-nin, Neji said that like it was a curse, like it was a filthy word. Missing-nin.

Disloyalty. But it was more than that, it was the old scar in Neji's side. That wound had almost killed him. And... Hinata shouldn't judge, she'd never almost lost her life for someone and then had to wonder, to think that this person probably didn't even care.

Naruto and Sakura were talking to one another. They let Hinata just sit with them, and she didn't have to talk until she was ready. She could just be with them.

"Naruto-kun. Sakura-san. Um.."

Until she was ready to step up and help them with this. Even though she hesitated, and wondered if she should say anything at all.

"No, it's okay Hinata-chan. What is it?" Sakura replied, a little less worried now.

"...nothing."

"Awww Hinata-chan, it's okay-"

"I just wanted to make sure..."

That they were okay. That things were okay. It was pointless and empty, she could see that nothing was okay.

Sakura nodded distractedly, she seemed to be thinking rapidly to herself. Her eyes never seemed to focus on what was in front of her, her gaze was fixed somewhere in the middle distance of her thoughts. Hinata looked down and her knuckles were white. Her lips grimly compressed. She was drinking her third cup of coffee, and she didn't seem to notice what she was doing at all. "It's all right, I'm just.. " Sakura sighed. And she shook her head.

"It's all right, Hinata-chaaaan." Naruto said to her, singsong. He slung his arm around her shoulders. "We've got our teammate back."

"..someone just needs to let our teammate in on this." Sakura's hollow focused concentrated distanced, furiously calculating glance beaming over Hinata shoulder, into some future and some past she couldn't see or even imagine, she was not part of their team.

"..he doesn't mean it. He's just being a dumbass. It's not serious." Hinata was watching Naruto say this to Sakura from the outside, where it was safe and she could run away and hide any time she wanted. "Oh, come on, Sakura-chan. He always says that crap. It doesn't mean anything, it's just him."

"... maybe if it was the first time, the second time.. the third time... "

"We promised we'd-"

"I know what we promised. I'm not giving up. I'm just... I just wish he'd act like he cared about us for once. I wish he's just..." Sakura seemed to remember that Hinata was there, that this wasn't something they normally said in front of her. "...I'm sorry. Listen, Hinata-chan, don't worry, everything's fine..." She pinched her nosebridge and braced her elbow on the table. "...I'm okay. Just.. give me a minute."

And it wasn't Hinata's problem. Everyone was just inviting her to walk away from it.

"Hinata-chan, it's just that we don't want you to get hurt." Sakura sighed, from across that same distance. "It's kind of a mess." Then her careful, brave smile for Hinata's benefit. "It is okay. I had no idea, I mean... but maybe it will be good for him to not be so alone anymore."

"...he's not alone anyway, he's just being stupid." Naruto insisted through a mouthful of rice.

"Maybe..." Sakura reflective now, her eyes on the horizon outside, the sunlight falling over them, sparkling on the simple everyday white rice bowls, the little teacups, the steaming coffee pot. Simple and everyday and yet they were so safe and so untouched, the three of them. They never went to the dark places that Sasuke had thrown himself into. "Maybe it's different if it's not just someone he's friends with... if it's.. you know, a girl."

"Heh. Maybe. But he'd better act right, Hina-chaaan, otherwise me and Sakura-chan'll kick his ass into next week." Naruto grinned, infectious and like nothing could stop him. Nothing had to be worried about.

"That's right. If he doesn't treat you well, tell us. Call me immediately." Sakura's cooler, gentle but forceful smile, her affectionate bossiness.

"Yeah! Doctor's orders." Naruto's arm around her again, cuddling her and they were her friends, she just couldn't imagine how Sasuke had thrown this away. Love was something so precious, you didn't just walk away from it. You didn't walk out on the people in your life, and it wasn't her problem, it wasn't her business. His taut whisper, I have to fix this. She was angry with him, she wanted him to not be this way!

"Yeah... well, he doesn't really mean it." Naruto said. Subdued.

"...It's okay Hinata-chan, it just hurts, that's all."

"He does care about us, come on don't say that Sakura-chan-"

"...I'm not saying he doesn't. He just.. acts like he doesn't. I looked him in the eye last night and I couldn't tell if he really cared about us at all." And then as Naruto started to protest, Sakura said with hurried firmness. "-no, I know he doesn't mean it. It's just so exhausting to deal with him when he's like this."

"He's just being stupid."

The two of them talking to one another, reassuring one another. They were so determined, all for one person. One person who didn't even...

...bother to make an effort not to be hostile to them.

Or did the best he could but Hinata couldn't understand it, having this friendship. She couldn't imagine pushing her own team apart this way, taking Shino's concern and Kiba's rough affection, just throwing it in their face-

"So don't worry about it, Hinata-chan. He'll stop being a dumbass soon, he just has to do stuff like this. S'the way he is."

Sakura accepted that. But only for a minute. She couldn't pretend anymore.

"-I know, but why can't he just stop acting this way? It's been so long, why does he still have to do this?"

"-it's the way he is-"

"He's almost nineteen! He's only a bit younger than me! If I can grow up and you can grow up and we aren't kids anymore why can't he-"

"Aw, Sakura-chan... he doesn't mean it-"

"We always say that!"

"He doesn't mean it! I know he cares about us!"

"Why can't he act like it? If he does and he won't admit it, he's making us go through this for nothing, and-"

"He's our best friend! He's my friend, my first friend-"

"-I know, I want him back, I know we'll never give up and we promised. But he has to stop this-"

"...maybe if we don't... You know, I'm just saying... if we don't take it maybe he won't talk to us at all."

"... No... I.. we won't put up with that."

Sudden flat silence.

Before that, their voices raised and their eyes bright and flashing in the sunlight, the sparkling of dishes and glassware around them like razor edges. Hinata cupped her hands around the warm ring of her teacup and watched, silently like she wasn't there it all. It was like they'd forgotten she was there. She had an uncomfortable feeling, as if she'd walked in on them in their bedroom or-

"It doesn't matter. We're there for him." Naruto growled low like that when he meant it. It was the voice of his raw determination. "He's our best friend and we promised."

Sakura's silent face, the grim set to her lips. Her gaze focused far away. Calculating. It was like a doctor assessing a patient, having to decide when nothing more could be done for them.

It was like Hinata was seeing something private that she should not have been allowed to witness, some private part of their marriage. They changed the subject and they talked about Naruto's new mission and his elemental jutsu. After that, Sakura's progress with melding her own elemental affinity to her medical ninjutsu and after that- nothingness, just empty sunny things. Just their simple happiness, or what they would have had...

...except for that dark shadow, that unspoken name. Hanging heavy over them all like a dark cloud.

An unsolvable problem.

Their problem, not hers.

--

Sasuke had some idea of what was going on. They were taking him away. Away being distance. They were taking him to a far corner of the property. They must be, they had to interrogate him in secrecy and they- wait, he thought. That scroll on the wall, it's broken ink Zen circle. He'd thought they were walking down subsequent halls all with copies of the same scroll- but no, look, it was missing a tassel at the end. One corner had only frayed red silk threads. No, it was the same one, and they were walking in circles.

"...genjutsu..." he muttered. It was a bit annoying anyway. He expected it, but-

"That's just the standard procedure." Kakashi said. His hand was still warm and heavy on Sasuke's good shoulder. And his voice was the same warm, subtle weight.

Fine. Expected but annoying. Same for the shadows of the ANBU that trailed them like traces of smoke.

All that he could see was himself and Kakashi. Anyone who watched them would see only two people, but-

-no, they were not alone. The ANBU were there, silent moving figures. They were in the back parts of the central house now. The air was flecked with dust through slats of sunlight that crept in. The shoji that cut the daylight apart were abandoned at open angles. The tatami rooms they passed were either disarrayed or stacked with stored boxes and stripped bare. There were chips on the wood varnish, ragged chewed patterns. Completely unused, and now Sasuke was fairly certain they were actually going somewhere. There were no Hyuga here, no servants, this entire wing was back in the narrow-halled warren that made up the rear shell of the house.

This area too, he dimly recalled, was surrounded outside with a small dense forest. There were willow trees planted all over this back part of the central building. That wooded area continued out for a few hundred yards. He had not have the time, the freedom, the space in his own head to go out and traverse the property, see what was where. But he'd been on the roof, looked out at their land folding out under him, sectioned with woods and open gardens and the black ceramic caps of other buildings, guest houses, gardener's sheds. He had some idea of what was where. This woods had presented itself to him as a thick bed of needles, raw wooden spines growing up around the back part of the house like a tangle of thorns. The trees were bare but the ground was hidden beneath them, he'd only been able to see their interlocking claws from where he stood on the roof. The places under them would be quite shadowed, even in the piercing mid-afternoon sun.

A sunny day, a painfully clear blue sky. A few entirely unserious, lazy white clouds, fat and fluffy. A beautiful spring day, the daylight silvering the dark circles under Hinata's eyes, somehow giving her grief and weariness a glitter of nobility. The sun flashed him across the eyes as they left the house through a blazing rectangle of open door, spots burnt into his vision for a moment, after that long genjutsu of halls and deep shadow. He looked up as they moved him forward- not just Kakashi, not just Kakashi's hand- they, the ANBU. They were there, they were all around him. He'd felt them like prickles on the back of his neck for hours, they must have infiltrated and staked out. He couldn't see them- not yet. But-

-never mind. He was being arrested. He was being taken to be interrogated, where they'd stuff him into a small and dark room and keep him there for a good long time. He looked up, into the blue dizziness of the sky, the hot glassy dappling of the sun over the untidy, forgotten little garden they passed through. A beautiful sunny day for his arrest and interrogation. It seemed wrong. But the day after the massacre, the sun had risen again into a crystal blue sky. And-

-yes, the universe didn't give half a fuck about him, his little problems, his insignificant life, his-

-no. He had to not do that, piss himself off on purpose. Had to stop thinking like that. Stop it.

Because he hadn't really said goodbye to Hinata. Not properly. And it was by her choice- because you aren't leaving, she said. And it meant that she trusted him, and also that his purpose was clear, he had to come back to her. He had to get himself through this alive, come back to her alive and, more than that, put back together. Maybe some snake-shaped incisions in him, some scars to add to his truly impressive collection, but alive. And he had to keep his fucking head straight. Now.

...a bit tricky. All these masked shadows on his trail...

Making the sunlight and the blue sky seem so hollow, like it was just a thin illusion over darkness and the memories in his head. The parts he just did not remember. The parts he'd probably made himself forget because they were just too horrible to look at. Even he couldn't bear it. And he did consider himself tougher, more hardened than most. He'd seen horrible things, the blood flying from the cut Itachi made in his mother's back, the way Itachi jerked and twisted the blade and the force of it severed...

..their mother's spine. That wet rubbery sound. Things like that. Things like the children, and the dogs- Sasuke turned his head slightly, edged Kakashi into the field of his vision, shaded his eyes behind his long bangs. Thought about the dogs. Orochimaru had hurt children. And he'd done horrible things to animals. It was the cats that had gotten to Sasuke the most. The cats and the little kids. But the dogs...

Stupid half-memory, Hinata telling him that Kakashi had witnessed at Naruto and Sakura's wedding. He'd summoned his ninja hounds. Nine witnesses, all with little bow ties for the occasion...

Cross out the rest of the memories, the dogs and the experiments, the butchering of a litter of puppies- no. This was useless. This was not something to remember. It was meaningless. He'd willed it to be unremembered.

To fade away into any of those sinkholes of absolute blackness... There were many, dropouts and dark spots in his memories. Whole weeks gone, seasons lopped down to fleeting memories of days, single touches of time, as if the drugs he'd been given to help train his body that much faster had accelerated his mind as well. Broken some crucial machine part of his memory. That, and Orochimaru's hypnotism, like everything inside his favorite pupil, his apprentice, his chosen one was just stage sets, just memories to backlight or push into darkness and...

..anyway, Sasuke knew intellectually that other people suffered. Other people were orphaned violently in wars and in revenge killings, in bloody clan feuds. Others still were tortured, had their minds picked apart by enemy villages, by interrogators using hypnotism as an icepick and chisel. Or as a sledgehammer, and it wasn't as if he was the only one in the world who had ever been tormented this way, who had ever found himself all alone in the cold and dark as a small child.

It just felt that way.

And he thought it should be that way. He didn't believe in any gods or spirits, there was no comfort in religion for him. There was even less in the insulting, stupid preachy empty words that others parroted at him, these people had no idea what he felt. Their little clichés were worthless, powerless in the face of what he was going through. There was just nothing, no point to any of it, nothing but waste and pain and loss-

-unless, the loss made him stronger. The loss made him so unique because he was the only one who could ever have lost this much, have felt this much pain. It meant that he was the one who had struggled the hardest. The Uchiha survivor. The strongest of all, flayed the most by pain.. yes, unimaginable to everyone else. He was stronger and better and superior- better than all others for it. Because of it. Made the strongest in the entire world...

It should be that way. It should have made him the best. Special. The only one who had ever suffered this much.

Kakashi had been annoying about it. Refused to let him get away with the conceit of it- I'll kill that person closest to you! Something like that. Kakashi had turned it around on him- that person is already dead. Defeated his logic. Destroyed the pretense of his specialness.

Pissed him off.

No way he would listen to Kakashi after that. No fucking way.

Stupid. Fucking stupid of him. Pointless. He shook his head crossly. Tendons in his neck pulled at bones and ligaments in his shoulder. It's dull bloody smear of pain.

Kakashi felt it when he tensed up, it was annoying. "... easy now." Kakashi said, his voice level and calm. "You're okay. Rght?"

No, he wasn't. "...of course." he muttered impatiently.

Sensed Kakashi weighing whether to ask, but going through with it. "Scared?"

"No."

That pat on the back again. Kakashi trying to reassure him. Or maybe Kakashi playing the good cop now, and whomever was waiting on the other end of this walk would be the bad one, the one who tied him up and screamed at him while Kakashi lounged in the corner and made vaguely soothing noises, that kind of manipulation. That kind of ancient interrogation bullshit.

And he'd learned that Orochimaru did all the butchering mostly to get a reaction out of him. It wasn't for science or anything like that, those little kids didn't know anything Orochimaru needed to torture out of them. The real target wasn't under the knife, he was standing outside the red circle of the dangling lightbulb, the splash range of the blood. Trying to keep from throwing up, showing any weakness. Trying to prove he was cold-hearted, trying to prove that this didn't matter to him, that nothing did, that he'd never had any compassion anyway so Orochimaru didn't have to rip it out of him and dismember it. It was all to get a rise out of him, so he drew that knifecut in his mind, that line of fire. The emotions would stay inside. His flesh and his face would stay cold, motionless. Two parts, divided, body and mind, only one would feel anything.

So he was confident that he certainly did not look scared at all.

And maybe he did still trust Kakashi. It was too much nostalgia, overpowering him. It was such a complete illusion. The team had closed their arms around him, and Kakashi's hand on his shoulder now connected to Kakashi's hand in the past, sealing the bite in his neck closed. Kakashi shaping his hand around the chidori. That compelling illusion, that Kakashi was still his teacher. That Kakashi would not hurt him.

And that it was hard to believe that anyone would, that these were enemy agents of a hostile village. That any harm would come to him, he'd just have to answer some annoying questions and not get too angry with them. And cooperate and spill his guts and...

...surely no danger. No chance of real torture.

There must have been another genjutsu like a thin layer of ricepaper under the first. The little garden was small but intricate. It's little stone path looped.. and looped, and looped around endless sides of a little pond with bullrushes and the orange murmur of koi flanks under the murky green water. The angle of the sun on the limestone face of the sundial tilting... tilting again, like it's angle was being reset, time run backwards and forwards like a pendulum on a very short string.

It was more meditative than disorienting. The endless sides of the pond were like the steady deep rhythm of a temple bell, the deep chord struck in his heart by Hinata's touch and her warmth, like his own heartbeat when he was trying to meditate- and having an easier time of it than usual. Maybe he really wasn't afraid, maybe he thought he'd have no problem doing this, that there was no danger...

But finally they took him out of the circles and they got where they were going.

One of those side buildings. Wooden face and cross-slats, raw cedar shakes down it's low slope of roof, ceramic sealing them from above. The ornamental dragon coiled up on the peak, watching over the door. Stupid superstition. Inside a storage area and heavy padlocks hanging like slow dull bells on the door. Medics were there. ANBU, though they wore normal medic clothing, peered down at him with scrubbed uncovered faces.

They sat him down on a crate so they could look him over. He wasn't amused by this, he did not like taking off his clothes for strangers. No, not even his shirt. The air was still chilly out of the sun, he was covered with goosebumps in seconds, and- well, it was probably necessary. He cooperated and sat down and put up with it. They had to make sure he was healthy enough to withstand questioning. If he was likely to drop dead of something they had to have medics on hand to revive him. That sort of crap. He sighed. Raised his arms when told. Lowered them. Clenched his fist so they could take his blood pressure. Endured the poking and bothered with one glare in Kakashi's direction, as if this were Kakashi's fault. Close enough, though. Two medic-nins, a collection of syringes and glass culturing plates and little mysterious bottles full of medical stuff and books of medical jutsu marks spread out on the crates they'd pulled over. They drew blood and started taking skin samples and swabs and-

-fine, they had to make sure he was who he said he was, you could henge your body but not your DNA and, anyway, he ignored them and their gibberish medical talk at one another. He wasn't a scientist and he didn't give a fuck about the Uchiha family genotype and it's marker on chromosome whatever. He ignored them successfully until they started to argue with one another. He was half-naked and cold and when their fussing around with tissues and blood samples suddenly didn't seem to be going anywhere, he pulled his attention back to the present and glared at them.

They didn't notice. They were busy yapping at one another.

"... no, run it again, it has to match."

"I've run it three times. This is the correct result. It's-"

"No, that's impossible. It has to match his blood. See for yourself."

They were both looking at the little glass slides with bits of blood and skin on them. Sasuke sighed, heavily, let them know that yes, he was annoyed and they should hurry up. But somehow the little bits were so fascinating that neither of the damn medics seemed to remember that he was there at all.

"It doesn't match his blood. It doesn't even match the skin from his arm. It doesn't match the culture we took from that mess on his shoulder-"

"Where was this from?"

"His chest."

"Then he's a chimera."

"No, that's not what we have on record."

"Well, given that he's practiced forbidden jutsu that-"

"That alter his genetic structure? No, that's impossible-"

"Well, you explain this. The tissue on his chest is completely genetically dissimilar to that of his blood and-"

"...wait." Sasuke whispered.

But that...

...that was a hallucination.

That was part of Orochimaru's grand illusion, the illusion of his death and of Itachi's death, of teammates that maybe never were, of everything.

"That didn't happen." he managed. It had to be an illusion. It had to have been. That whole mess with Hawk and the deepening weirdness and the sense of unreality as he...

"What didn't happen?" The medics both looked at him like they expected an answer. Like there was one.

He was too uneasy suddenly to be annoyed. He looked down at his hands, and the little puncture marks on his arm and the tiny scrape where they'd taken tissue samples, another stinging lightly on the side of his neck. Juugo's flesh melded to his, his own throat torn open, the ragged angle of his ribs visible even to him, the violent whiteness of the bone under a coat of fresh blood- no. It wasn't possible. It didn't happen.

It couldn't have happened.

It was a trick, that's what it was. It was all a trick. It was Orochimaru messing with him- again. Orochimaru finding new and more intricate ways to fuck with his head. Simple.

"I don't know." he muttered at the medic nins. He didn't have anything else to tell them. Finally some ANBU person came in and asked for the results. That got the medics out of the way. There was signing of release forms and crap like that. They agreed that he was healthy enough to withstand interrogation, blah blah blah. Sasuke ignored them. He was very good at using indifference like a blunt instrument, a way of forcibly shoving things aside and out of his thoughts. He was... certain, almost certain, as certain as you could be with someone who lived and breathed illusion and mind control and headgames like Orochimaru did...

..that that whole fiasco hadn't happened.

Or if it happened, it happened in a very reduced sense.

As a drug-induced lucid dream in Sasuke's head, maybe. A situation where he was run like a half-conscious puppet. Chance were that he'd dreamed the entire damn thing up.

And anyway, Itachi was not dead. That eight-tailed octopus demon thing wasn't dead either. Madara was possibly a bad dream or...

...or...

Well, Sasuke didn't know what the fuck had happened. Everything was a tangled mess.

"Please come with us, Uchiha-san." the masked ANBU person said. They always were polite, their voices as thin and impersonal as a bakufu secretary. Please and thank you. Please put your shirt back on. Please come with us.

"Don't worry about this part either," Kakashi said as they marched him off through the little garden and through another stand of bare trees. "We just need to ask you some questions."

Questions that didn't have answers.

"Don't worry, we'll help you remember."

No doubt.

More walking in circles.

A new place. This was a bigger building. It was paper and wood and tatami, probably unused guest quarters. There was a kitchen set away from the main hall and the paper walls and screens. Some of the ANBU were in there making coffee. Kakashi came down the hall, his bare feet on the dusty wood. He had two coffee cups steaming, one was chipped slightly, white ceramic like bone against shiny blue enamel. The disturbing hallucination-memory of his exposed ribs. Sasuke didn't decline the cup. He didn't touch it either. His stomach corkscrewed into tight doubled knots. They hadn't blindfolded him, and they weren't obviously trying to destroy his sense of direction just yet. But that strange endless walk in the garden made him suspicious. And the way he'd reacted to the sight of the first masked ANBU, the first empty porcelain face- no reaction. As if the sudden appearance of the grim reaper with a dark hood and a bone-white face was just part of the scenery...

"Hey, hey.. don't be nervous." Kakashi was saying. He had that flat note in his voice so it made everything he said less threatening somehow. He was the only one Sasuke could stand to talk to sometimes- or had been able to stand, back before he'd torn off in his headlong dash to nowhere. Running away from Konoha had really been no more considered or planned than running back to it, had it? Just as mindless. Just as much a puppet on goddamned strings, getting yanked around by Orochimaru.

Or if not by Orochimaru...

That red eye in his memory. Red sharigan eye, cut strangely in the middle so the pupil looked edged and shattered. He'd thought it was Itachi, just another Itachi-memory, a tsukuyomi bruise on his psyche, but..

..why just one eye?

"...come on, don't get all angry either." Kakashi continued.

Sasuke sat opposite him. Outside it was late afternoon. The sun was slanting against the other side of the house, Sasuke had noted that carefully when they brought him in. Late afternoon. There was dust in this tatami room too, and it's mats were a bit worn. More chipped paint and varnish. It was out of repair, probably hadn't been used for the better part of a year. But the other ANBU, moving like black cat shadows through the building, had lit lanterns and jumpstarted a generator somewhere. The electric paper lantern dangling over Sasuke's head hummed thinly with it's current. Other ANBU were around, they were in the walls, or at least their listening devices and ears were. They were in other rooms, listening and planning and marking more endless documents, endless secret files. Most of them about Sasuke himself. All their information about him. There were no whispers, no sounds of discussion. That meant they either communicated silently, or there was more genjutsu, more illusions of silent inhuman watchers.

But Kakashi wore only his half-mask, his familiar mild grey one-eyed gaze, his calm voice. His bare toes wiggled now and then under the file he had open in his lap. He periodically raised it to his face, his coffee cup in his other hand. That same silly sleight of hand, that simple trick. Sasuke thought Kakashi could at least show his face this time. But then again, he found it suddenly hard to care. He felt a bit different, a bit slower to rage and worry. So they'd probably drugged him. Not in the coffee, probably by touch. Maybe Kakashi's hand on his shoulder had traces of sedative on it. Kakashi had worn a glove. His thumb had so casually ended up against the side of Sasuke's neck. Lots of blood vessels there. So, fine. They'd drugged him.

And now he was going to have a nice relaxed chat with Kakashi.

All this typical interrogation bullshit... the faux-friendliness and the way you got the subject talking about unimportant things so you could slide them easily into talking about the information you wanted. Sasuke knew all of this. He'd watched Orochimaru. He'd interrogated captured ninjas and even a few civilians. He'd tortured a few of them- easy stuff, just hang them up from the ceiling and whip the crap out of them until they passed out. Leave them there for a few days and wait for fatigue and thirst and their injuries to wear them down. Come back and they'd suddenly be just delighted to talk to you. So this was old and completely unmysterious to him, all of this.

And that tremor in the pit of his stomach was just him being a fucking little coward, obviously. There was nothing to be afraid of.

"Fine." he said to Kakashi. He meant- get on with it.

Kakashi got on with it. The invisible ANBU ears all around them must have perked up, because even the rustling in the kitchen stopped. Kakashi went over the procedures. Sasuke listened, impassive. Impassive inside too, he felt too disoriented to put a hand to his rage, or to even make much sense of the little faultline of worry. Kakashi ran it down for him anyway, as if he didn't even notice how quiet Sasuke had become. The ANBU had arrested him as a missing-nin and their job was to ascertain what damage he'd done to the village, and what threat he posed to them now. That was all they did, Kakashi told him. The matter of how the village would punish or pardon him would be a matter for the Hokage's office.

Which meant that it would be a matter of how much BS the Hokage would let Naruto get away with. And Naruto got to do anything he wanted. Sasuke was probably saved now. Saved. Safe.

Kakashi just needed his confession and his intentions. Simple things really. Just formalities. Just stuff to get out of the way, since of course Sasuke was impatient to get going and of course the ANBU understood that and here, just take this pen and write on this scroll here and sign here and here-

Sasuke fixed Kakashi in the black crosshairs of his sights. Did he trust this man? His sensei, yes. But right now? No, this was his interrogator.

The pen had been put into his hand. Or maybe he'd actually taken it of his free will. Time was sort of normal.. mostly normal... he just couldn't quite remember here and there where he'd done things. He looked down at the scroll in front of him. It was beside his half-empty coffee cup.

"...I can't just tell you?" It was a pain in the ass, writing.

"Written confession for the legal records." Kakashi said lightly. "Unless you want to talk more." That close-eyed sphinx smile. And no, Sasuke didn't want to talk.

So fine- he'd run away from the village. And he'd collaborated with their enemy. And he'd done a lot of other things, more than he could remember. He'd tried to kill Naruto twice. He'd- maybe- worked with Akatsuki. He'd gone charging after the phantom named Itachi, assuming this person even existed anymore. He'd killed people for Madara. He'd done all of this while completely out of his goddamn mind, too.

"..is this enough? I can't remember the rest of it." he muttered at Kakashi.

But no- that was just what they needed.

Porcelain white-face came to take the scroll. Appeared in the doorway like a strange disconnected shadow, something that had pulled itself off the wall, appearing in the wrong angle of light. Sasuke blinked at the figure. He suddenly had the feeling that it wasn't there at all. Wait, his coffee cup was empty now. The pen was no longer in his hand, where had he put it?

"Now just tell us your stated intent going into the interview process? It won't take a minute."

Sasuke blinked at Kakashi, Kakashi's half-face. His single grey eye. The shock of cloud-white hair over it. There were bandages on one of Kakashi's arms, why hadn't Sasuke noticed them before? Wait- there was only one coffee cup in the room, Kakashi wasn't drinking anything. Wait.

"Just tell us your intent. We can move on then."

His intent? His...

Sasuke was looking at his hands. The scrapes there. They were where they had been before, as were the puncture marks in his arms. Where he'd been injected and scraped and where they'd found the remains of Juugo's flesh and-

"...to find out what happened." he muttered. His voice felt strange. Drugs. He was already drugged. "...I need to find out what Orochimaru did... can't make decisions until I know... I can't know about staying in Konoha until I know if it's true."

And as Kakashi nodded and made some notes- wait, the pen was in Kakashi's hand now! What the hell? No, wait just a minute!

"You're using drugs." Sasuke told him. "You've drugged me to force a-"

"No drugs yet. Just genjutsu." Kakashi seemed completely unconcerned about this! Sasuke skewered his unconcerned face on the barbed end of a nice hard glare.

"...you're using genjutsu to force a confession and make me cooperate with you... I'd cooperate anyway." he growled.

"No, not exactly." Kakashi snapped his fingers and the world shattered-

-soundlessly. Jarring silence, jarring like something had exploded and then nothing fell or crashed or-

"That one just exposes your intentions." His same half-face smile. "Looks like you really do mean to cooperate."

Standard procedure, nothing more.

Trust was a strange issue now. An issue for the outside world. What went on here felt subtly different, as if this guest house was not quite real like the morning had been, like waking up in Hinata's bed and that half-conversation with Naruto and Sakura. It was a bit like the circuitous route through that half-dead stone garden had been the start of a dull, greyed out dream.

Or like he was half-asleep.

That genjutsu that Kakashi had dispelled probably wasn't the only one. Or maybe all that talking about procedure had been meant to trigger a hypnotic state. Sasuke knew a bit about that- and for the same reason as usual, having been Orochimaru's star pupil...

Or his favorite toy. You could create a hypnotic suggestion, embed it in your subject- then trigger it. Sasuke had seen Orochimaru do all of this. He'd watched through tired eyes just like this, in fact. He'd been so worn out from the training, and when it wasn't the sheer physical battering of it, it was the lack of sleep, or it was the fact that he was surrounded with other desperate violent people and had to watch his back, or it was the sheer disgust for his surroundings. That constant stench of death and blood and terror. The creep of it like mildew under the harsh scent of ammonia and antiseptics. So he didn't think too much or too hard about what was going on. Thinking wasn't going to get him anywhere- so he'd shut off his thinking as much as he could. He'd watched...

...and now, in the present, in this weird twilight state he was in now, they actually were blindfolding him.

Baseline readings, they said.

They were asking him questions...

Stupid things. His name. His birthdate. The date today. The name of his first academy teacher. What he'd had for breakfast.

Scratchings of pen nibs on scroll paper.

When they took the bindings off his eyes, there was a needle taped into his arm. It was nothing, he was told by the porcelain-face. Water to keep him hydrated. He was given a handful of small pills. Red and white. What were they? He couldn't focus on the long-sounding name. Kakashi was not alone again, the shadow with the white face was back, this time he was really there. But their voices were so similar suddenly. Sasuke had a strange feeling that they actually were throwing their voices, that Kakashi's mask moved as if he was just mouthing the words while the masked ANBU figure spoke. Or if they both had the same voice and both were actually being spoken for by someone outside of the room. He still could swear that the ANBU figure was not actually there at all. And for a while, he wondered if Kakashi wasn't either, if nether of them were in the room. If he was in fact, talking to empty space, while invisible ANBU in the walls around him listened...

...it felt that way.

They asked him questions.

He was drowsy, but they said he wouldn't fall asleep and he didn't.

He blinked at the room. It seemed different. Had they moved him? The sun was different, slanted at another angle now. It lapped across the hall from windows over there, a white corner of it fell across Kakashi's bare toes.

Or the space where Kakashi seemed to be.

"Tell us what happened to the best of your ability." the voice that they shared said.

Sasuke stared at his hands. Puncture marks. Mismatched genetics. Proof out of place, it couldn't be true.

"Begin on the night you left."

It couldn't be true because it was just too unreal, killing Orochimaru and killing jinchuriki and killing Madara and killing Itachi, it was too much like an idealized fantasy. Even Sasuke knew that, even he was suspicious when people sucked up to him and everything went his way.

As fucking arrogant as he was. Arrogant, but not fucking stupid, thank you.

"Start at that night."

"I don't remember..." he muttered.

"Start with what you remember and we'll help you remember the rest."

"...can't remember..."

"Yes you can."

The night with the shimmering leaves.

The night of the Four in the shadows, weird lumpy black shapes of four arms and two heads and mushroom-pale skin mottled with that sickly familiar chain of bruises.

Now it was starting. Now he was blindfolded again. This was just the interview, the part where they asked him questions. But the questions were changing now. His name. His birthdate. Now, an account of what had happened...

...and though he said he didn't remember and he was sure he didn't, there were the leaves in front of his bound eyes.

The shimmering leaves, the way they caught the moonlight in early summer. That night, he'd been putting things away, tiding up the apartment as if he were just going off on any other mission...

The leaves had been outside the window and he'd paused, the pack heavy on his shoulders as he stood, contemplating the scatter of light over the trees. This familiar scene outside his fairly decent apartment, his fairly comfortable life.. at least in terms of physical comforts. He had a pretty good place to live, a good place to sleep and study and think.

Of course, all of that comfort had been only yet another reason why he should run as far away as he could.

He still had no idea what those pills had been. His memory was sharper, more vivid and colored and immediately visible to him. The leaves were there, the baleful yellow crescent eye of the waxing moon. The solid wooden shelf under the hand he braced against it, the photograph turned down so he didn't have to look at their faces. Or his own, his belief in this stupid idea that he could be happy and alive again, that he didn't have to kill himself symbolically to atone for not being killed directly. They must have blindfolded him to intensify this visual recollection.

"What do you see?"

Leaves. Moon. That night. The photograph turned over.

"What do you see next?"

Sakura. On the road, her eye wide and frightened, her frustration and then her desperation. The sound of air rattling out of her lungs as he struck the back of her neck.

"What happened after that?"

Down the road, past the sentries, out of the lazily defended wall and thorough the holes in it where he knew how to get out, how to get past. Some simple excuse at the ready just in case he got caught. Documents in his pocket where he'd forged permission to leave that night- off to train in the forests close by. Kakashi's signature was easy to fake with the sharingan.

Beyond the gate and the trees and the moon, out in the darkness... the misshapen forms of the Four, like they were broken puppets bent and splintered by a particularly cruel child.

And now a fifth with them, the empty place where he'd stand and be the brand new toy...

And where they'd take him to their master...

And that little grassy hill out of sight of the village walls where he'd met them and accepted their terms, sold himself out.

Pens scratching. That constant scratch of pen nibs on paper.

They did something to him. Some kind of jutsu. He couldn't remember. He couldn't remember.

"Go back to that moment, what do you see?"

They beat the crap out of him and rubbed his face in it and through that- manipulated him into thinking he wanted to leave-

No, he couldn't remember.

"Look again, what do you see?"

So he'd sat for the rest of the day up in the trees and finally dragged himself home to wash off his bruises and bandage up the worst of the cuts. He could see the blood washing down the sink, little traces of red and grime, nothing too bad, just little flesh wounds. After that, packing up. After that, the photograph. Sakura. After that, the darkness and the way the Four talked and the way their eyes were vacant, like they were just empty painted faces, just masks on hand puppets. Somewhere out in the darkness unfolding down from the mountains, the hand that moved them was reeling them back in, and Sasuke would go with them.

"You met them, and then what happened?"

He couldn't remember. No- he couldn't remember.

"Look again."

Fine, they told him he had to do it and he went along with it!

"Tell us what you see."

"...said I had to die..."

What he saw was the dark web of the trees over his head and all around him, and the village out of sight now and out of reach, the sickening sense of being in over his head now and then the four of them surrounding him, they always positioned themselves so they were all around him...

It was more drugs, little shiny black pills, but something about it felt so final. Like this rest was just trash talk and bullshit fighting and scrapping in the dust and bloodying his nose for the hell of it- but this now was serious. This was it.

The one with two heads and the eyes like broken blood vessels had it. Two heads but the normal amount of hands, though now Sasuke remembered vividly the sense that any of them might sprout new hands or heads at any moment, broken puppets cobbled together from pieces of others-

-and they handed him the little glass bottle, it was cold in his hands and he didn't want to look like a pussy in front of them so he tipped it down his throat and swallowed and-

"...said they had to induce the curse seal to the next level, it would kill me but they'd do a jutsu to contain it, so I'd be in a coma..."

Said a lot of crap, but what it was, what it was...

"...realized in retrospect a month later that it was the start of the drug-based mind control.. seal works that way anyway... figured they did that to get me used to taking pointless orders and obeying and accepting painful procedures and..."

...swallowed the pills and went down on his knees weak with nausea, the dark web of the trees swaying over his head.

"What do you see now?"

Darkness. He was unconscious.

"What do you see now?"

Naruto, trying to save him. Yelling a lot of shit, mind you, but trying to save him.

"What do you see now?"

Naruto beaten half to death, in shock and now finally out of chakra and energy and his body so ravaged by the Kyuubi that he couldn't keep himself awake, his body had just shut down.

And the raindrops falling over Naruto's still face, cutting his skin in little clear trails. Glittering on the metal, that mocking horrible reminder, the sense of being so over his head that he could never go back, that etched Konoha leaf.

"What do you see now?"

Orochimaru.

"Where are you now?"

With Orochimaru, being washed of blood and being bandaged up while Orochimaru watched, then walked through the ratholes, the stench of fear and desperation and agony belting him across the face, his eyes prickling and watering.

But he couldn't look like a pussy in front of Orochimaru, so his face was a stone mask.

Perfect and white. No feelings. No idea even what feelings were, alien and perfectly sealed away from them. Not a puppet, no, he was not a puppet because he chose this. He did this of his own will! He wasn't a puppet, he was a rational actor, plain and simple.

He was an actor...

...a kabuki actor, playing a role. No strings because he didn't need to be made to do something that he'd been convinced he had to do.

"Where are you now?"

With Orochimaru, Orochimaru's prisons in the basement of that reeking backwater. This had been back when Sasuke thought this level was the deepest floor of the buried headquarters. Watching Orochimaru kill someone violently right in front of him-

"Where are you now?"

In Orochimaru's harshly lit medical lab, watching him dissect some poor animal, it was so freshly killed that it's heart was still twitching when Orochimaru cut it open. Orochimaru exposed it's heart, shocked it back to life, warmed it back up and did something to it so it was dead but it opened it's eyes and howled and-

"Where are you now?"

In Orochimaru's bedroom, watching Orochimaru backhand, taunt- finally force himself on some poor kid, someone too terrorized and deluded to resist, watching and watching and realizing suddenly that he was looking into a mirrored wall-

"Where are you now?"

Here. Now. Tearing the blindfold off and failing because there was no blindfold- his fingernails scraped bluntly at his face, just genjutsu to suggest he was blindfolded and make him close his eyes and concentrate. Trying to rip the intravenous lines out of his arm, trying to make his limbs work when he was so sleepy and so disoriented and so fucking terrified because it was so real, it was like it was all really happening-

"...okay, he needs a break. Fifteen minutes? Okay, yeah, I got the sedatives-"

And then his own heartbeat slowing down... as he caught his breath.

Calmer when they began again.

"...he's got a real block over that part where they drugged him. Make note of that. Okay.. lets go again..."

Kakashi talking to the ANBU person who was not really there.

If indeed Kakashi was there.

Sasuke could see the room and the dusty walls, the incandescent bulb glowing in the half-torn paper globe lantern over his head. He could see the pen in Kakashi's hand and feel the ANBU around him and- none of that was interesting, it was like everything he wanted to see was behind his closed eyes.

Didn't want to see it much, but felt so compelled...

...telling them about Orochimaru. About what Orochimaru had done. Nothing special. Kill people, rape people, torture people. All of that- just controlling people. Using them. Sasuke figured that out pretty quick. Somewhere too he knew what was happening to him.

"...so why did he do that to you?"

Since Sasuke knew. He knew what it was about.

"...trauma-based mind control..." he muttered somewhere outside of his closed eyes.

And: "...some crap about the kundalini energy... have to draw on that to make the forbidden jutsus work... he said it works better if you do it to kids, so that's why he took me right before puberty...he wanted that energy so he could use me to get at more of it..."

Known it, not cared. Studiously not cared.

All of that was just bullshit about black magic and blood sacrifices and yeah, Sasuke knew how it worked, he'd listened to Orochimaru blither on about the fire snake coiled at the base of the spine, about how every occultic tradition in the world had always raped and tortured little boys, grabbed them while they were prepubescent to get at their sexual energy before it awoke- but it wasn't interesting.

It didn't fucking mean anything.

Not unless you wanted to control people and use them.

"... so it wasn't really rape, just more of his crap about power, just another beating, nothing special..."

It was all just crap and Sasuke was tired of it.

His body was just a limp half-asleep doll connected to his mouth which was wired up to his subconscious memory. So he was only half-present as they drained the full litany of Orochimaru's antics out and wrote all of it down.

Half-aware, dreamstate. Telling them that he was pissed off about the horrible things Orochimaru did to cats and he was pissed off about that poor little girl and he was pissed off about letting himself get so drawn into it and he was sure he was guilty and that he deserved it anyway. Telling him nothing he didn't know before.

And the training, the jutsus which were hidden and kind of interesting- but useless since using them was like wrapping a puppet string around your own neck.

Like signing your own death warrant.

Or your own free will away, bargaining it on some false promise of power that was never going to materialize. Consigning yourself over to someone who'd destroy you because you wanted to die and just didn't have the guts to do it yourself. Seeking out that exact person, that exact purpose, having to go that far just because you hated yourself so much.

Crap like that.

He was tired by the time they shot him up with more drugs. These ones made him even more drowsy, shut off the other ones. Someone put pillows under him and he slept.

Dreams a jumble of bright images. Like sharingan memories but all mismatched together and fragmented like a smashed mirror.

Like his reflection that one time he'd put his fist through that mirrored wall in Orochimaru's bedroom, multiple images of Orochimaru's kohl-lined eyes twinkling with mirth and his pale painted lips laughing silently, Orochimaru watching with lazy indulgence from the bed behind him.

Waking blearily, someone shaking his good shoulder and fresh bandages and the sharp scent of emollient wet under them. Watching the water flow down the intravenous line into his arm because he was too buzzed up to eat or drink, and starving him a bit made the drugs more effective.

Watching and thinking about the stories his mother had told him, the brave samurai and trickster monks, the beautiful princesses and the monstrous demons...

...the painted face he learned to show to Orochimaru, like it was second nature. Show nothing, just go along with it. Thinking about how he'd just watched and watched and accepted and participated and jumped whenever he was told to and let himself be so taken in and controlled and duped and-

-wondering whether he had just been a puppet. Whether he'd done any of it of his free will. Orochimaru said- you chose this of your free will. But Orochimaru also said- the curse mark has destroyed your free will. And he was so trained, it seemed, to just not notice the illogic of that.

So he wondered if he would have rather have done it all with a clear head and with total intent. Would he feel better if he'd been vicious and destructive on purpose- because anything was better than being controlled and passive and just endlessly used?

Used and lied to and lied to and used like a goddamn mindless stupid little kid by every single one of these fucking people.

Would it be better if he'd used them, if he'd wanted it and he'd really chosen it?

Would he feel better if that was true?

Did he want that to be true?

No answers to that question as they took the blocking drugs out and started the other ones up again. Sodium pentathol and then something else to help it work and a jutsu mark painted on him now, to help focus him on telling the truth. Something about how it wouldn't work unless he wanted to cooperate, unless he'd come here to tell them the truth and cooperate and-

-none of these jutsu marks worked unless you wanted it.

Unless he'd wanted that curse mark to overwhelm him.

So how innocent was he really?

--

It was just a matter of waiting now. Naruto and Sakura went out through the gate. They had things to do out in the village. They wanted to gather belongings for their stay. Sakura had to work something out with the hospital so she could be on call. She wanted to stay near Sasuke and near her husband. And probably near Hinata too, Hinata had a feeling like she was being watched over. Maybe Sakura was worried about her too. No matter how many times she said it was okay, it was okay...

It never really seemed to stick or ring true. But Hinata had to pull herself back together. Behind the sunlight and the magnesium flash, the sudden heat of their argument, there was still that silent ticking. The timed explosion of Neji's vanished seal. It had been almost a full twenty four hours now.

She was on her way back upstairs to change clothes and try to sort out her thoughts, maybe sit in her little garden and watch the birds. She made it halfway down the main foyer before the council attendants found her. And called for her.

And she almost jumped a mile, she was acting so guilty. Neji would have been disgusted with her.

But Neji was nowhere to be found and only Hinata's great aunt was waiting for her. The attendants bowed, Hinata watched their ceremonial movements with tunnel vision, the thunderous hammer of her heart pressing her apart from within, like fear was scrawled messily all over her. She walked into the tatami room, she bowed and sat opposite her great aunt. She made the polite avoidance of direct eye contact.

And was glad of it, a single glance from her great aunt was like solar fire, it would strike her to a pillar of salt, turn her to stone, freeze her heart and stop her breathing...

But her great aunt did not seem angry and the room only pulsed with Hinata's own racing heartbeat, her own ragged breathing, her own messy, vulgar fear...

...her open emotions that she just couldn't keep to herself. She couldn't seem to become the perfect impassive Hyuga.

"We chose you as clan leader for a reason. And I'm harsh with you- with reason as well."

Her great aunt had a very formal, old fashioned way of speaking. Even her accent was subtly different.

"You're the granddaughter of my twin sister. By the laws of the house, and by my own heart-" This did not mean anything emotional, hearts were dry family connections like blood. Like bloodlines. Ties of power, clan loyalty, Hinata knew this, she didn't allow herself any uncouth hope. She just bowed her head. Submit with dignity, that was the Hyuga way she knew. "-by my own heart you are my blood and my granddaughter. Hiashi-chan is my son, you are my granddaughter. You are the one who watches over the clan now. We on the council are the ones who watch over you, the way the main and branch houses connect, and how we all connect to the house of the shogun, and the emperor. We all do our duty."

It was strange how the invocation of the clan went through her heart too, made it something more than a dry connection of blood. Hinata couldn't be cold and cynical about it like Neji was. She couldn't just decide that the clan was corrupt beyond hope and not worth saving. Maybe she was a bit like Naruto and Sakura after all, maybe even a bit like Sasuke. All of them had this kind of determination. She could be like that too.

"My duty is to help you become the clan leader you are meant to be. Everything I do is to help you grow stronger. Clan leaders are forged by the council behind them. Listen to me and obey, I'll make you into the leader you need to be."

"Yes, Obaa-sama." The words were second nature to her. She'd always been taught to do this. And if it wasn't right, why did it feel so good to just do what the family expected of her? They had never approved of her before.

"Don't be ridiculous, she must know already! The news has definitely been carried to the council by now!"

Neji didn't believe it, the way he just couldn't let himself believe in anything. The clan was just a bloody, dirty old relic to him. It was something barbaric that needed to be eradicated by justice, burnt to the ground because nothing in it was worth saving at all.

Maybe that was why she saw the funeral pyre when she closed her eyes. Not enough sleep for days now, and she was probably being very silly and very reckless... chasing traces of fire and ghosts of a chance. But it was right, it felt so right.

After her great aunt dismissed her, the sunlight flashed all over the house at her, like a fire sign from the heavens, like a signal she was on the right path. Neji didn't believe it, and Hinata knew he was older and smarter. But what did he know about never being wanted or approved of by anyone?

By anyone in his own family, his own blood, never having a place in his own family?

Not the way she did, she knew he suffered and they were bound up in that together. But this moment, was it so necessary for him to ruin it for her? Just a little bit of approval, it wasn't so much.

"Well, I have no idea what they're up to. But they'll know by nightfall if they don't already! We're in trouble now, and I certainly hope you have a plan, Hinata-sama. I hope that ghost of yours came up with something we can do to get out of this mess!"

Neji's familiar sarcasm, his worry and his impatience.

But inside her was stillness now. She was going to tell the truth. When she said it now, it was like a piece inside her had fallen into place. I am the leader of the Hyuga clan- her voice now. It fit her, like before she had been painted with cosmetics and dressed in silk kimonos, just a child playing dress up. But now something inside her was switched, snapped. Now she wasn't just an imposter, dressing up, pretending.

It upset Neji. She saw it happening. Her sudden silence and calm was different now, he could feel the change like it had altered the air temperature, the empty space between them. That distance.

It was like it brought him closer because he lost patience so quickly, and his forehead protector and bindings came off, he showed them to her in his hand, his forehead a bit swollen and bruised still. But clear.

Like empty white Hyuga eyes, something pale and horrible, the sight of his unbroken skin.

But somehow not as bad as she'd thought. She shivered, but either she'd made her fears wild and huge in her imagination. Or something inside her had fused together. Burst into a column of flame. In the centre of it, iron. That iron Hyuga cross, the solar manji. Neji scoffed at all of it, Hinata couldn't have argued with him and made him understand how this felt to believe. But she believed in it all the same.

She felt it. Her clan like a dagger in her heart, but her heart entwined with them forever because of it. Bound to them, for better or for worse, in sickness and in health. Your clan was bigger than you, you sacrificed your life to protect and sustain it.

"Why did you do it, Hinata-sama?"

Neji was asking this with that handful of cloth still pointed at her like a damning accusation. Like a crime she'd committed and now he was reading her sentence. She shivered and she tried to stammer out an answer, but she knew the question was rhetorical.

"I think I know why." Neji pressed on, as inexorable as the fire eating through the flesh and blood of her father's body. That roar of the fire shooting up in front of her, she dropped the torch and then-

"I saw your father do it to mine. Use it." That tap to his forehead. Neji's hard white eyes. His impervious perfect circle of logic. "The seal. It almost killed him. And the second time he used it, it was fatal, your father killed mine."

Your father killed mine.

You did not say it, ever.

"Because." he said, silencing her when she tried to speak and tell him.. what, she had no idea. To shut his mouth? To not say that? That it wasn't true? It was true, she knew it and everyone in the house knew it, her father had killed his. You just didn't talk about it. "I'm saying it because I'm a lot like my father, Hinata-sama. And you," He paused. His eyes seemed to hold hers for a minute, lock her in place. " I'm starting to wonder if you aren't a lot like yours. Don't bother to deny it. I've seen you, trying to talk like him and parrot him, trying to sound like him. I've always understood you."

And even if she could try to argue, if she could get the words out...

"I did it because I wanted to free you, Neji-niisan." The simple truth, the stillness inside her, but none of that seemed to matter to Neji, that tap to his forehead again.

"I believe you. But that's not the only reason. You're afraid you're too much like him. You'll use it the way he did." Tap. The bruised, harmless remains of the seal.

But... no, this couldn't be true. She turned away from Neji, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

A murmur in her chest, her damaged heartbeat.

But underneath it stillness and nothing but readiness to do what she had to.

And Sasuke said that Neji didn't understand her at all and none of her family did...

And Neji said that Sasuke was just playing with her feelings and using her...

And maybe it was that lick of flame, that fire-memory of her father, his voice like the torches at the funeral, that way the flames shot high with the kerosene ignited. His spirit that moved through her and made her wonder if she was just a weak passive little mouse, a cringing little spineless coward who needed Neji or Sasuke or Naruto or Sakura- always needed other people to protect her and decide for her and tell her what to do and think for her and-

"I did it. That was a decision I made, Neji-niisan." It was like the moment when she'd argued with her great aunt and grandfather, that this decision was hers, she'd accept the consequences of it.

But somehow there was always that look of dubiousness in Neji's eyes when she said these things.

Like he thought she was out of her mind, yes. But also that he wondered if even she was aware of what she was doing. That surely she wasn't capable of these things. Too weak. Too weak and too stupid and too useless and- no. Surely the fire, the legends, the stars and the chain of their light connecting her father's heart and the blood was true.

And she could trust herself and what her eyes told her. What the family's ancient gift revealed to her, in this world or the next. That byakugan vision. Her father and his approval.

But not his mistakes. Not again. Not another Hyuga clan leader fallen into that shadow world, that lure of greed and corruption. She knew it, she found it so horrible to look at and know and see, but she knew it. Everyone in the house knew what went on here.

"I won't use it, Neji-niisan." she whispered to him. Her hands were on his shoulders and she leaned close to his ear. He stiffened because it was something they never did, this closeness and touching and this affection most of all. It was like it was forbidden, not even to be mentioned.

And she didn't care. This house was hers now. Even that thought was big and terrible, too huge to hold in her head at once. Too much to look at directly, the searing brightness of the sun. But she knew it all the same.

"I won't use it, I'd never hurt you, I'd never do what he did. Don't worry, Neji-niisan. I'm not like him."

Not the way Neji meant it. And Hinata understood, she didn't have to force Neji to say the ugly words and call up the ugly memories.

Just their invocation was enough. Much of what went on in the clan was like that. The suggestion, the hint. You never said anything directly. You invoked the spectre but you never said it's name.

Never talked about it openly...

Never called it what it was, never exposed the ugly rot in the clan to daylight. You just let it hide, invisible as two hundred clan members with the brand, the mark. But there, right in front of you, in the house beside you every day. Right in front of your face, in plain sight and-

-you did not evertalk about it.

Even Hanabi didn't. She misbehaved, but with method and precision to what she dared to do. The instant that she stepped over that invisible line, their father slapped her to the ground, picked her up- threw her against the wall.

Hinata watched, numb and boneless. Voiceless. Just a pair of silent Hyuga eyes seeing everything, as her sister's body seemed so small, just ragdoll limbs quivering as her head struck the wall hard, as she fell to the floor heavily. And didn't move.

Unconscious for the rest of the day from the force of the blow. Hinata saw it all- did nothing, said nothing. You did not talk about it.

You accepted it as part of life and part of the clan. And because you were part of the clan, the clan was bigger and more important than you. Your job was to serve it and protect it, to hide it's dirty secrets and ensure that it went on as it always had. Into a new generation with new main house rulers and branch house slaves. Always the same, the bright chain of stars unbroken. Nothing but the dazzling white surface shown to the outside, the diamond purity of their chakra, the glory of their bloodline and it's dojutsu which was clean and pure- not like those filthy demonic Uchiha.

And you did not question that.

Her sister had woken up and for a while after that her head was bandaged and she whined about headaches and a lump under her hair. But she avoided their father. And her disobedience became strategic, and her anger became hidden and she never did that again.

Never, never that open disrespect until the moment she'd laughed and said that she was glad their father was dead.

And where was Hanabi now? Hinata had paced around her room all day and lost track of her sister. The rush to get Sasuke packed off with the ANBU, and the drama of Naruto and Sakura's arrival, their complicated team problems, even her argument with Neji... Had she talked to her sister at all yesterday? No- she'd been busy.

"Yeah, he didn't have any time for us. Like- ever. Remember?"

Hanabi was on the screened veranda on the north side of the house. Hinata heard the spring of the wooden planks under Hanabi's feet as she came around from the south side and it's open glassed-in hall. She'd wanted to walk in the sun and feel it against her cheek and the edge of her hand. Hanabi was doing some desultory taijutsu form practice. It wasn't really necessary, her sister's ninjutsu was swift, precise- excellent. Hanabi blew the stray lock of hair out of her face with a exasperated puff of air. "Dunno. Bored. There's all these creepy ANBU around the house. I saw one and it was weird."

Which meant that Hanabi was willing to come with Hinata, and she followed cheerfully enough, her active, bright chakra glistening all around them as she walked by Hinata's side. There was nothing misty and heavy and depressive in her. Not like Hinata, would was, as Hanabi had put it once, practically from another planet. She was damp and frightened and always worried. It was hard to imagine that they'd come from the same two people, they didn't even look alike.

Hanabi, in fact, looked more like Neji. Hinata was the oddball, the one with the blue hair, the water-ninjutsu, her Hyuga blood bent and diluted with ocean water. Or so it had always been said- until very recently.

"He could have like, been a better father. I'm just, like, saying.. okay oneesan?" Hanabi was uneasy, her voice pulled itself apart with likes and ums and hesitance and her effortless pose of cool when she was off-balance like this. Despite their enforced separation, Hinata did know her little sister.

It couldn't be like this under her rule. She couldn't make siblings live apart. Families shouldn't be cut apart this way, it really made no sense at all when she thought about it, when she really let herself look at the way they lived. But most of the time, it was easier not to think so much, to just go along with it. This was how she had been raised and it was her entire world.

She was trying to reinvent the entire world, an entire clan. The weight of it was already on her shoulders.

"Uh huh. I know. I saw him this morning and he was like, really crabby, worse than usual. I looked and I saw that his forehead thing was missing and I knew you did it. It was kinda cool because my sister is like, the clan leader now, it's really weird. Neji-niisan looks kinda mad about it though.." Hanabi trailed off, her enthusiasm dying with it.

"He's just not used to it yet." Hinata said comfortingly. These soft, soothing nothings came very easily to her, and she supposed she was actually good at it, comforting people. "... and are you... used to it? I know father..." That their father had designs on Hanabi- for a while, at least, not that Hinata was ever told any of this. She had just assumed, since she was thrown out and her father was so angry...

Hanabi wrinkled her nose. "He sucked. I mean as a dad. He sucked." she said this flatly, in that rude language that Hinata was always- gently, yes- but always asking her not to use. "Neji-niisan says that the old farts say that he killed mom, he was mean to us and he was just..."

This was the sort of thing to not react to, under any circumstances. Their mother had died in childbirth. With Hanabi, and part of Hinata still wondered, since of course her little sister would prefer to think that it had be something else that had ended their mother's life.

And it seemed so distant, the death of someone Hinata had never known, just the wish that she should have, that she wished she had. But she couldn't picture her mother's face. She didn't even have a name, a photograph. Sasuke whispered to her about how his family's faces were blurring in his memory and now he was struggling to remember what they looked like, he was starting to feel like he couldn't be sure that they'd existed at all. But at least he could picture them in the first place, they were more than an empty spot in his memory.

"...anyway, I think it's kind of cool. Is it fun being the clan leader? Don't you have to listen to the old farts all day and do boring paperwork? And you don't even have a bunch of guards to do spy stuff for you yet, I heard you and Neji-niisan yelling about it outside and then I heard the mean boy and Neji-niisan getting into another fight and then I had to go because our second aunt was having like ten cows because I left my kunai pouch in the hall and the cats got into it 'cause they smelled blood and anyway-"

The ease of her confidence was like the sunlight, fierce and warm and comforting. Hanabi didn't notice Hinata looking at her, Hinata had become very good at stealing affectionate peeks at her sister, so Hanabi wouldn't notice and get uncomfortable and standoffish because feelings might make her look uncool. But Hinata got so caught up in just watching her and the warm flicker of chestnut the sun picked out in Hanabi's hair, the quickness of her white eyes, she was a bit startled when Hanabi paused, gave her a firm look, and said-

"Don't lie to me the way father did. That sucked the worst. You have to promise that you won't use me like that."

Matter-of-factly, Hinata blinked.

"..use you? But he..." It was true she didn't know much of what their father did with Hanabi, but she'd assumed that he valued her and taught her and-

"Use me for dumb Hyuga clan stuff or whatever. He only did all that stuff because he couldn't use you. And then he decided he could and-" she fixed her eyes on Hinata. "-whatever. Don't do it, okay oneesan?"

At least this was a promise Hinata could make very easily. "...of course I won't. I'm... not very much like him. I won't."

"Good," Hanabi pronounced, having flicked her scrutiny away, satisfied with this. " 'cause he was a big mean."

Hanabi had been told by their father that calling people 'meanies' was something a small child would do, it was the diminutive 'ie' on the end that made it so immature. Undaunted, Hanabi had simply changed her terms. The council was a big mean, Sasuke was a big mean, Hinata herself- when Hanabi was upset with her- would sometimes be a big mean too. That's not proper language, their father had said irritably, Hinata could summon a clear memory of it. Hanabi yelling back, her arms crossed and her small feet planting. I don't care, you're just a big mean!

"I won't ever do anything like that." she whispered. "You know I'll never let anything happen to you, Hanabi. I won't..." She wouldn't do what their father had done to his sibling. The story of that was indelibly stamped into both of them, she didn't have to mention it to invoke the memory. The slight stiffening in Hanabi's expression told her it was understood.

"I know." she said confidently, recovering instantly, seamlessly, both of them were used to living with this and ignoring it. "Don't be sad, oneesan, 'kay? You're always so sad. Come on, Neji-niisan and I will protect you from those big means."

--

Needles in his arm. Tape curling off his skin because he was sweating so hard.

Back to the trance again, the strange vivid world behind his closed eyes. Kakashi's leading voice. The past organizing itself in a bright line, a clear path.

Back to that moment.

That moment it had changed. The new game had begun.

The moment when he ambushed Orochimaru, cut off his snakeheads, the blood all over his hands and soaking the front of his shirt and pants. A huge snake with human blood. Cut off the ugly white heads and it worked.

Something was wrong with that moment.

Something was wrong with that moment he'd taken the pills too. Something was being done to him, what he was seeing wasn't what really was happening.

Orochimaru's white snakebody and the glistening coils of muscle and bone and gristle in the wet insides that bled all over his bedroom floor.

A false picture... killing Orochimaru and gathering his Hawk team and changing their names through half-remembered crap from Orochimaru, the feathered serpent and the ancient power of that. Hawks and snakes, something. Gathering three others, setting Orochimaru's vast collection of victims free, just tearing open the doors of the prison and burning the place down. Beautiful. And this time the big hero wasn't Naruto, was it? No. This was his moment of glory. Killing Itachi-

-but then... something was wrong. Something was off because he was in a foul-smelling underground room again. He was in a candlelit room being told horrible things by another painted face. Another hypnotic voice. Another bunch of lies.

One red eye, a beesting swell in his memory.

About Itachi- who'd loved him. About Konoha- who hated him. About Madara who was his only hope, and the world was on it's head and black was white and he couldn't take it, he screamed and raged and finally Madara bound him to the wall so he couldn't run away.

And so he couldn't look away...

And suddenly Itachi and Orochimaru were gone and they weren't what Sasuke had thought they were at all, no, there was only Madara.

And the red sting of Madara's eye. Sasuke could barely see it in the shadowed hole of his mask. But he could feel it in there. That red was something you felt-

-in the pit of your stomach, like a kick in the gut. Like the feeling that you knew you were being lied to.

But just couldn't make yourself resist.

After that, spinning darkness. The vertigo trail spiraling out from the red pinprick. After that, the sinking feeling that the dreams, the nightmares of Konoha burning, of the Hokage's white throat under his foot as he stamped down and smashed her cervical vertebrate to pieces, the old one struggling as he pinned him to the wall and cut him apart slowly- those nightmares, those things that just could not be real-

-were not his memories, because the Hokage had long black hair and was a man, and-

-could not have happened, they were just too impossible, too unreal, too strange, too bloody, too unbearable!

Like Juugo's skin melting over him, where the eight tails had flayed him alive and where he was fighting for breath and starting to black out, somehow worse than ever before. There was a bottomless pit yawning under him, the daylight was fading away in front of his eyes.

-impossible. It couldn't be real.

It had to be one of Orochimaru's games. Like the blocks Orochimaru had put in his memory!

The parts he'd just remembered, the parts he'd told them about where Orochimaru did things to people and he just didn't remember and he...

...just didn't remember...

...and where Madara sat him down after he brought back the Eight Tails and stared and the red sting of his eyes went...

...right through Sasuke's head like a hatchet, and his vision blurred. The darkness spun. And where Itachi was taken by Madara and Madara tied him to the wall and told him that Konoha had done everything and Sasuke looked up and...

...all he could see was that red knifepoint, that speeding kunai flying right towards him, Orochimaru's genjutsu, the second before it buried itself in his skull and Madara's eye was that point wet with his blood, that instant of death and that moment before it...

...that moment where he woke up and Orochimaru said it was all just a big game, a fun little trick he'd pulled on Sasuke, who was after all his favorite and wasn't Sasuke surprised?

And the numb depression after that.

That sense of unreality.

That endless sense of unreality.

Konoha burning and it wasn't quite real and Juugo staunching his bleeding and melting their skin together and it wasn't quite real.

Itachi dying with his blood dripping down Sasuke's face in the rain and stinging his eyes because he was absolutely not crying and it wasn't quite real and...

...underneath it all just a red eye, a red sting, a red needle, Madara tying him to the wall and Madara telling him what to do and Madara killing the Eight Tails' jinchuriki and Madara telling him that his only enemy was Konoha and Madara, and Madara..

...and it wasn't quite real and he had to get away, he had to get away from Madara.

And somehow he knew it wasn't real so he was running away.

His mission behind him. The lies behind him. All of that crap behind him.

Running away...

...from Madara.

"... write that down- there, that's a hypnotic program right there."

"...mind controlled assassin..."

"...looks like he resisted enough to pull himself off course and exhaust himself before he could get here..."

"...Hyuga kid found him..."

"...looks like the assassin program never triggered, smart move actually, just making himself run half to death, collapse out there, must have screwed up the trigger..."

"...gutsy as hell..."

"...have to dismantle that hypnotic suggestion before he wakes up, could still get triggered..."

"... let him rest, he's had enough..."

"Okay, Sasuke... just relax, we're going to let you sleep again and it'll be okay.."

Sleep like he'd fallen into a black well, safe down there and nothing could get at him. All of the poison was drained out of his head, Madara's red eye was far away.

When he woke it was morning and he was in a bed. Fresh clean cotton. Sunlight. White blossoms peeking out of the black fingers of cherry trees outside the window. Unfamiliar and safe. His shoulder bandaged again.

Kakashi sitting across the room from him, patiently reading one of his little porn books.

For a moment Sasuke struggled to sit up. His muscles were all tight again. Like he'd just fallen into bed after a fight and his opponent had whipped the crap out of him. His arms were asleep, pins and needles finally flowing down into his fingers and his shoulder hurt and-

"...ahhh, you're awake already."

-Kakashi being annoyingly calm about it, like Sasuke being pissed off was really normal and Kakashi was really used to it.

"...hey, hey... take it easy. You've had a tough few days."

"...how long..." Kakashi was coming over with a glass of water, Sasuke hadn't even noticed how dry his mouth was, how he could barely speak, how weird and cottony his head felt, how bright the sunlight was like he wasn't used to having his eyes open, like he'd spent a lifetime underground. In the dark. Far away from himself.

"You slept for thirty two hours.. And you should sleep more. The interrogation took four and a half days. We kept you awake for three of those after letting you sleep a bit on the first. How do you feel now?"

Sasuke couldn't managed to glare, to radiate irritation at Kakashi and his soft grey eye, his calm voice, the steady reliable rock-solid trustworthiness... nothing like Madara. Nothing like Madara's pinhole eye.

"Fine." he muttered. No venom in it. But he just couldn't find any words to say anything he felt to Kakashi. Gratitude wasn't something he could talk about anymore, the words were too unfamiliar.

"I don't remember what happened." he complained instead, watching Kakashi sit back down across from the bed. "I surrendered just so I could find out what really happened and I don't remember!"

"Don't worry. You remembered everything."

And a file in Kakashi's hand now, holding it up so Sasuke could see.

"It's all right here. Settle down and I'll tell you all of it."

--

The council caught up with her soon after.

And took Hanabi as well. It surprised her. Why not Neji? Neji wasn't there at all.

Somehow it wasn't what she expected. She had pictured a room full of angry family members. The council would be in full attendance, sitting in their line of stern judgment. The sun would be at their back, blinding her.

And the lesser ranks and strata of the clan would be seated around the room, just like it had been when they had done the rituals and transferred headship of the clan to her. She would be surrounded and stared at ,and she would be nervous. She'd do her best to explain herself. She was still not really comfortable with public speaking at all. It was only less scary now that she got up in front of a class of thirty every day to speak for hours. Her face no longer turned beet red- at least. And she knew what she had to do, there were different kinds of fear and this was a heavy sense of inevitability. It was not like the chuunin exam when her eyes had darted to every corner of the room, desperately seeking escape. This time, she knew it was coming.

And maybe the sense that she could stand before her family with pride made it easier. As a useless genetic failure, she had always felt it was proper for her to run and hide, to shrink into the wall and hope the tatami would swallow her up. It was what she was- a disgusting abomination in the eyes of the clan. And now, she was something else. Something that they valued.

At least pretended to value. Neji would have said that- they pretend to value you. Not because he hated her- because he hated the clan and couldn't imagine anything good coming from it.

Hanabi let Hinata take her hand. Hinata watched Hanabi's carefully neutral face, her eyes bright and too alert to be half as calm as she pretended to be. Even that Hinata was allowed to hold her hand was significant. You didn't talk about it, but the council owned you and your entire life. The Hyuga clan was paramount over any of it's individual members, and the council ultimately controlled the clan, didn't it? Hinata herself felt like a very small figurehead, a gilded dragon embossed onto the handle of a large bladed weapon, a decoration on it's killing edge. She was not it's head, it's mastermind. She may never control it fully and she certainly did not now. This was how Neji put it, and Hinata could hear his voice, the exact way he'd say it- you certainly don't control it now! The council could do away with any member at any time, you didn't talk about it. And you helped them cover up the body.

And make the death disappear in smoke and ritual and fire, lies we tell ourselves, that nonsense about stars- Neji knew this more sharply than anyone.

"Those big means aren't going to do anything to us, I'll make the oni come to the house and the hunter-nins and the crows will eat them all up." Hanabi vowed under her breath. Her hand was white-knuckle tight in Hinata's. This was something she was saying to make herself feel better. "So don't be scared, oneesan. Remember when we had to read the boring history books about the stupid clan?" Her disrespect meant so little at this moment, Hinata didn't even flinch. "When the new clan leader comes, it's like a forest fire and all the dead wood gets all burnt up, so don't worry, all those big means are just mad because they know they're next."

It wasn't normal, was it? Having your thirteen year old sister casually make death threats about members of your family?

But she was too focused, too full of stillness and adrenaline now to feel any anger or even any revulsion, no time to scold Hanabi for something as meaningless as her manners.

"It's okay." she began, the council attendant was walking far enough ahead of them, they would probably not be overheard. But they had come to their destination. And Neji would be through that door. Waiting for her with council.

But he wasn't there.

It was a much smaller room, just a normal tatami tea room on the shady eastern side of the house. This would open onto a pretty garden later in the year and it's circle window would be unshuttered to display a layered carpet of moss and riverbed stones outside.

But only the council was there, and only a handful of them, seven of the twelve that lived in the Hyuga property in Konoha. Minus of course the other six that lived in summer villas in other villages and civilian towns, or up in the mountains away from the relative bustle of an active ninja citadel.

But Hanabi tensed beside her, and Hinata felt it too. Some hint to the air. Something was brewing here. Such a small number. Neji nowhere to be seen.

No witnesses, she thought. No witnesses. No witnesses. She couldn't stop thinking it.

There was talking, she couldn't hear it. It went by her like a stiff breeze, right through her like she was a ghost, that sense of resurfacing up from depths in the ocean that squeezed her lungs shut from the pressure, intense cold that forced her metabolism to switch so quickly and violently that she came back up feeling like she didn't belong up there in the oxygen and dryness anymore.

And a bit like those times when her byakugan had spotted a sniper, saw the kunai flying at the back of Kiba's head, saw that he didn't see it, saw that he couldn't have avoided it, time slowed down and sound bottomed out and nothing was there except her arm and her aim, the shuriken she threw and the shriek of metal on metal at high speed.

Giving explanations would have taken her out of this, she would have stuttered and stumbled for the words. She would have stopped and worried about whether she looked like a useless fool for talking about a ghost, a vision. She would have felt uncertain if she could invoke the chain of fire to the elders, themselves so much older and wiser in the ways of the clan than herself. But there was no demand for explanation.

They took Hanabi to the other side of the room, Hinata had to stand and Hanabi had to sit in front of the council line. But Hinata only had to listen. They knew about what she'd done- and it was a grave offense. They knew, it seemed, that she would invoke the clan leader's right to act on their judgment and-

"-because of this, we need only to see that your judgment is in service to the immortal will of the clan." her great aunt said coldly. "You will show us a demonstration of your strength and your loyalty, now-" An elegant gesture of her great aunt's hand, the same intricate reflexes of fingers that had cast thousands of genjutsu as finely threaded as silk embroidery, the motion of her hand was the embroidered border of a silent cloud in the air, a line of silvery energy, Hinata could see the blue flame of chakra clinging to her great aunt's fingers-

-like flashes of phosphorous as that hand clamped around Hanabi's upper arm, Hanabi screamed as the chakra burnt her and-

-under the harsh high sound of that scream, her great aunt's voice as calm as before. "-you'll brand your little sister in your cousin's place. You'll activate the seal and convince me that you're serious. Now, Hinata-chan."

The shock of the hold must have paralyzed Hanabi's vocal cords, she was trembling and white and silent when she was thrown to Hinata's feet. There was only silence after her great aunt spoke.

"Now, Hinata-chan." her great aunt repeated sharply.