CHAPTER TWELVE

Bloodlines

The last time she stalked around the backyard, she had not noticed the long patio or the open-air structure a short walk behind the kitchen. This was where she and Sasuke were currently sitting. It was a private, traditionally styled, Japanese teahouse in the midst of a Western style manor.

Connected sliding shoji panels circled the entire structure making it possible to be fully open to the natural views on opposing sides. One side opened to the stone pathway leading to the patio and back of the house. The other side opened to a manmade pond adorned with floating lotus blossoms waiting for warmer weather. Over the pond was the magnificent backdrop of the silently mysterious woods where Hinata attempted to escape.

The low table could easily accommodate six, but at the moment it was just the two of them. Warmed cups and a pot of green tea steamed between them, cooling quickly from the lack of attention.

Last night, had she thought that Sasuke's active dojutsu was sexy? Because right now, they were back to being a thing even nightmares feared. The two shinobi matched each other's stance, stare for stare, and it was all she could do not to crumble under the harsh gaze of his focused attention.

They had been sitting like this for the past ten minutes. Trying to figure out how to tap into each other's chakra without success.

Uncomfortable and impatient, she slumped forward and squeezed her eyes tightly. "I don't feel anything. This isn't working." She was dejected and beginning to feel like the mark was a failure. Her barely recovered chakra was adding to the early exhaustion tensing the muscles along her neck and shoulders.

Sasuke barely reacted to her emotional outburst. He blankly focused on her for a moment longer before he sat up straighter, breathing deeply through his nose and deactivating his bloodline limit. He agreed, "You're right. I think we need to change tactics."

Before this exercise began, they reaffirmed they would give themselves a day to train and strategize. One day. At dawn, they would mount an expedition to rescue everyone, with the hope that they remained at the same facility Hinata left them.

Since they did not have much time, they narrowed down their focus to the most useful and the easiest skills to learn. Figuring out how to feel the other's chakra seemed to be the most basic step in sharing power and exchanging jutsus, so that's where they started.

Only, there was no guide for this.

"Come here, Hinata," he instructed.

She was feeling rather rebellious and she didn't know if it was her short temper over her worries or if the mark was having an effect on her, but she almost gave in to the temptation to argue and demand more courtesy before realizing it was pointless. With a light sigh she stood from her kneeling position and walked around the table.

He gestured to the sitting cushion next to him and she complied. When he shifted his body to directly face her, she did the same.

"I'm going to try something," he informed, raising both his hands in the air in between them. "I need you to put your hands against mine."

Her pulse picked up speed at his request. She didn't know if her nerves were buzzing with excitement or warning, but she did as he asked. Sitting so close, facing each other, sharing the same air, Hinata felt the need to control her breathing. She was hyper aware of the perspiration beginning to leach from her palms. The moment their hands touched she felt a gentle hum roll from the point of contact through her body. She didn't know if it was a normal physiological reaction due to proximity with this powerful and virile man, or if it had to do with their matching seals. Whatever the cause, she could not calm the fluttering of her heart.

Slowly, Sasuke threaded his fingers through hers so their hands were locked in place. His sharingan flared to life once again.

Her breath caught at the unexpected action. Every time he did that, she didn't know if she should be afraid or mesmerized. It also made her wonder about the rinnegan he'd acquired in his left eye.

"You're biting your lip," Sasuke broke the silence.

"Am I?" She realized she was, and stopped.

"It's distracting."

Hinata blinked, warm blood rushed to her cheeks. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine, it's just-" he looked away, mulling over his next words. Then his focus was on her again. "You know, you do that when you're nervous or thinking really hard about something."

"Do I?" She already knew that.

The corner of his lips lifted and her eyes dropped in observation.

His smile widened. "So, which is it?"

"Hm?" she asked, still preoccupied by the curve of his mouth.

"Are you nervous or thinking about something?"

Her eyes snapped up to him, feeling like she was caught doing something wrong. She responded with flustered horror, thinking quickly, "Oh! I, um, I was thinking."

He gave her a look that told her to continue.

"I-I was just thinking about your rinnegan. I've never seen it and was wondering why." She breathed deeply, like she'd just passed a pop quiz.

"Would you like to?" The deep timbre of his voice was sincere, without mockery.

Excited curiosity reared its head from its slumber within her soul. She immediately chirped, "Yes. I would very much like to see it."

"Alright." With a blink his eye colors had changed from a glowing crimson to one black obsidian and the other a ringed lilac. Without prompt, he added, "It takes a lot of chakra to keep activated, and it's unnecessary for me to use it all the time."

She stared in awed silence, taking in the details of both the rinnegan and the depthless gaze he was born with. She decided she liked both. When the realization smacked her in the face, she placed some distance between their bodies. In her curiosity, she had unconsciously encroached his personal space- more than she had already.

"You're biting your lip again," he observed.

"Stop watching me so closely!" she reproached, blushing and trying to shove his hands away so she could run and hide.

He laughed loudly at her antics, refusing to release his grip.

Her movements came to an abrupt stop when she felt a small ripple of cool energy flow from her palms and evaporate.

Sasuke's focus was also on their joined hands, quietly assessing. "Did you feel that?"

Hinata nodded vigorously.

"I want you to direct your chakra towards me, like you would if testing your element with chakra paper," he instructed with slow and careful words, as if the very concept would shatter if either of them moved hastily.

She nodded again, this time in a more controlled manner. Slowly, she felt for her chakra, allowed it to gather and pool before sending it towards Sasuke's hands. That same cooling effect washed over her as she felt the energy being siphoned off. Contrary to what she thought, being depleted of energy did not leave her feeling drained. The aftereffect of her cool energy leaving was a radiating warmth in her hand. Like placing your hands under warm water after playing in the snow.

There was only one explanation.

An exchange of energy had occurred.

A bright smile lit her face as the knowledge of their accomplishment set in. Meeting Sasuke's equally thunderstruck stare, she whispered, "We did it."

.

.

.

"Again!" Sasuke instructed; his usual inky black irises consumed by all-seeing white eyes as they studied Hinata's progress.

Hinata stared hard at Sasuke, her pearly eyes tinging pink and gray before fading back to pale.

A rocky but sure partnership was slowly beginning to form.

"Switch." Sasuke disengaged and waited for Hinata to activate her hereditary trait. "Are you ready?"

"Yes." Byakugan steady, she focused on Sasuke's chakra and the movement around his orbital sockets.

His eyes ignited crimson with the sharingan, black tomoes whirling. He held it and studied her in return. "Good?"

"I think so."

Their eyes reduced to their resting states.

Once Sasuke and Hinata were able to overcome the hurdle of tapping into each other's chakra, the rest flowed quickly. Their first approach to sharing chakra failed because they were both trying to take from the other. In their second attempt, they discovered that in order for power sharing to work, one partner had to be giving and the other receiving. Now that they understood, it seemed so obvious.

They moved on from there to trying to pass power between each other without touching. It took more effort, the more distance there was between them, but they were now able to share chakra from one end of the yard to the other.

Finding harmony was the key.

Then they sparred.

Learning each other's bodies. Finding weaknesses. Harnessing strengths. Synchronizing their movements until they could read the other's actions and reactions before they happened. The mark gave them a supernatural connection that wasn't fully understood.

Finally, they moved to the next step- bloodline limits.

Similar rules seemed to apply with the use of jutsus. They could not use the same jutsu, at the same time, if it was exclusive to one party. They learned how to give and take simultaneously- how to share.

Even with the sharingan, Hinata was surprised at how quickly Sasuke picked up on using the byakugan. Leveraging the byakugan to help Hinata understand the mechanics of the sharingan was their next goal.

By the time Hinata was readying herself for her 32nd attempt on the Uchiha inheritance, her body was feeling the traces of fatigue pull at the edges. She shook out her limbs to get the blood flow going. She ignored the odd looks Sasuke shot at her while she stretched and breathed.

"You're wasting time."

The muffled words were like a bucket of cold water being poured over her. She froze in her steps and dragged her surprised stare over to the Uchiha.

Sasuke was staring back lazily, head cocked and arms crossed. His tone was caustic, almost bitter, as he jabbed at her pride. "Did I stutter?"

Her eyes flew wide and her body went rigidly straight. His mercurial mood swings were enough to give her whiplash, and she wasn't able to make sense of his current dark turn.

"Maybe you're not really motivated to save anyone." Sasuke's cruel lambasting did not end there. "I heard you lost your clan heirship to your younger sister. They say she's better than you. Smarter. Faster. Stronger."

"Sasuke…" His words stung. Ripping open old wounds that never truly healed.

"Who are you kidding, Hinata? You hate her for it don't you."

"No, that's not true," she weakly denied.

"You're lying to yourself. How long are you going to continue to lie to yourself? You hate her and you wish she was dead! Admit it!"

A fissure was building in her. Breaking down her walls of feigned placidity. Forcing its way through a dam of buried trauma.

"No! I don't!"

"Well guess what, Hinata? You've wasted enough time and you got your wish! Your sister is dead!" he yelled. He was in her face now, his hot breath wafting over her skin from his proximity. Sasuke threw a bloodied hitai-ate to the ground at her feet. The plate was engraved with the Hyuga symbol, and the ends entwined with canary yellow ribbons.

Hanabi…

"The Kanedama sent me a message this morning that if I don't bring you to them, they will make an example of your friends as well."

After a brief interlude of disbelief, the full meaning of Sasuke's word hit her like a freight train. How could she deny the evidence? Hanabi was stubborn; Refusing to remove the brightly colored accessories from her forehead protector even if it was the opposite of camouflage. Insisting that she was a stealthy enough ninja and her ribbons would not give her away. The ribbons were a gift from Hinata when Hanabi was promoted to Hyuga genin status. In a rainbow of options, Hanabi chose the yellow ones as her favorite. She explained that they reminded her of the canaries that would dart around their yard in the spring. Like Neji, they both dreamed of a brighter future for the Hyuga. One where the caged birds would fly free.

From that moment, Hinata called Hanabi her canary. And now, her canary had flown off without her. Never to return.

Tears poured from Hinata's eyes like rivers. Her knees finally giving way, she hit the dirt. She sobbed loudly as she picked up the forehead protector as if it were a delicate treasure, cradling it to her chest.

"I may have killed my brother, but you're worse. I never lied. You pretended to be a loving sister when in reality you were jealous and wanted her to fail!"

A scream tore through the mourning female as she wailed her sorrow. "I hate you!" she cried.

"Good. Now take that anger and use it! Activate the sharingan, Hinata, and take your revenge!" he urgently instructed.

She gritted her teeth, a guttural sound emerging from her throat.

Her eyes burned painfully hot. It was fire in her ocular nerves and sandpaper on her eyes. She was heaving with the effort, her glare directed at the cold perfection standing before her. She wanted to tear him down.

A slow indulgent smile formed across his lips.

It felt mocking, while pure anger washed over her and her thoughts became lost in a desire for vengeance.

But the exertion was too much.

She collapsed into a pair of strong arms.

The last thing she heard, before darkness swept over her, were murmured words of comfort.

"Rest, Hinata. You did well…"

A/N: FFnet is almost all caught up to present chapters as loaded on Ao3! We should be all caught up by the end of the week.

Please remember to re-follow and re-favorite the "redacted version" of OLA for update notifications and to help the story gain more traction with other readers, since FFnet deleted my original stories for being too spicy (I guess).

Thank you everyone for your reviews, favorites and follows! It's really motivating to have your support.

The last flashback was in chapter 5, as a dream. As I mentioned earlier, this fic will have a lot of flashbacks. We have one more chapter in the present, totaling about seven chapters in the current timeline, and I think I'll have about four to six chapters in the past.

LB Cat: Thank you for your question! I will answer here as I believe others may also be wondering when Hinata and Sasuke will be going after Hanabi and Team 8.

I apologize if it feels like it's taking a long time to get to the rescue mission, however, these are much shorter chapters than a standard novel. If we're going by standards, we're only about three chapters in and two days have passed. I mentioned the two-day mark at the beginning of the last chapter to help ground everyone on the current timeline from Hinata's perspective. So, while it's been two months for readers, it hasn't been that long in the story and she really needed that full day to recover from chakra exhaustion. I promise, we will get to the action quickly after the flashback scenes are done.

Tell me what you think about the recent development? Are we back to hating Sasuke or do we still love him?

LEA