Alas, the mission report. Ino was there, for technicalities.
"Shinranshin no jutsu," she explained. "A mind confusion technique. The shadow imitation technique could never have been so...efficient."
Efficient, she called it.
Sasuke agreed.
"And the sharingan couldn't see through this jutsu?" Tsunade said, frowning at Sasuke's disinterested expression. She spoke in a hushed voice, as they were in the hospital.
Sasuke glanced away. His arms and shirt were covered in blood, none of it belonging to him. "The sharingan can see chakra and it can copy techniques. The attacker was acting from a distance away. If Hinata had scouted with the byakugan-"
Hinata, can you scout a mile ahead?
"-this might have been avoided."
Naruto's order continued to echo in Hinata's mind. Why had she ignored it? She could have spared her teammates a terrible ordeal.
Naruto and Sakura had attempted to kill each other, and with their monstrous power individually, neither had gone down easily. They had fought until they were broken, then fought some more.
And Sasuke. He had stood back and watched.
There wasn't much that he could do, after all. He was a match for each of his teammates alone, but had he tried to intervene, he would have been killed. Inwardly, he admitted that on some degree he had enjoyed it immensely. He had taken pleasure in the display of violence and power. He had liked watching Naruto and Sakura tear each other to pieces. And in the end, he had enjoyed gathering them up.
Sakura had won, contrary to his predictions. This puzzled Sasuke. If Naruto had given his all...
"I think Naruto may die," said Tsunade.
Sasuke was pulled from his thoughts. As someone who had personally tried to murder Naruto on numerous occasions, he was skeptical of this allegation. Didn't she know that Naruto didn't die.
Of the four that stood in the hallway outside of Naruto and Sakura's shared hospital room, Hinata was the most hysterical. She was staring at the ground, tears running down her cheeks, and Sasuke realized, that she too was unaware of Naruto's strange aversion to death – the gaudy zombie, always sprouting up no matter how many times Sasuke stabbed him, no matter the concussions he accumulated on Sakura's behalf, no matter his abundance of zealous enemies who endeavored wars just to give him a scratch.
Hinata slowly looked up from the ground and her thoughts, meeting his eyes, as if to search for the means behind his indifference, searching him in confusion then suspicion, her lips parting-
Ino grabbed his hand. She gave him a comforting smile, but if she really cared, comforting him would have been the last thing on her mind. She didn't share Hinata's anguish, instead manipulating the situation to her advantage, like a true shinobi.
Hinata stiffened, then walked off.
Sasuke pulled off his shirt then slipped off his bloody armguards. Glancing into the bathroom mirror, he noticed the blood smearing his cheeks and forehead.
He had stopped wearing the Konoha forehead protector years ago. He hadn't readopted it since. There was something lacking in his commitment to Konoha, not that it was of any concern to him. To everyone else, it was. Why did everyone care? Sakura, Kakashi, Naruto...
Sasuke stepped into the shower to wash the blood off his skin. He bowed his head beneath the showerhead, allowing his hair to fall into his eyes. His head was throbbing, throat burning. He remained there for a while, his thoughts drifting between Naruto, Sakura, and Hinata, and how each had affected him so profoundly in only the past few hours.
When he was done, naked and drenched, he again approached the mirror. Lips parted, he observed his reflection, his pale skin and red-rimmed eyes. His canines were slightly distended from too many devil transformations. A few faint scars littered his shoulders and arms, a healing cut across his cheek left from a spar with Hinata. And his hair was getting too long.
Wrapping a towel around his waist, Sasuke headed for his bedroom. When he got there, he slipped a kunai out from the holster strew on the dresser, then took to messily cutting away the recent growth of his hair. He returned to the mirror only afterwards, and surveyed his handiwork. Well, it looked no more stupid than it had before, sticking up in the back, hanging down in the front. Now that he was clean, he decided he would visit the hospital. Though he felt as well as he looked. Maybe people would suspect he'd been crying. In truth-
He sneezed.
-It was just a cold.
Hinata was at the hospital when he got there, sitting in a chair at Naruto's bedside. Sasuke wondered if she had ever managed to bring herself to leave in the first place, but noticed that her clothes were clean, her hair, moist, like his. She was turned away from him, grasping one of Naruto's hands in two of hers.
"Is he alive?" said Sasuke wryly as he approached.
Maybe she didn't notice his mocking tone, because her head snapped up, her eyes filling with indignation. It was only as she looked back at him that Sasuke noticed that she was still crying.
"How c-could you say that?" said Hinata.
Both of Naruto's arms had been dislocated. The left was broken at the elbow, and the right was broken the same way, as well as in three additional locations. His legs were far worse. The greatest injuries included the hole through his abdomen as well as his cracked skull. Sakura's fists, even gloved, had left various marks and bruises all over his body. Her dangerous technique wasn't one to be trifled with.
Sasuke had watched the fight, wondering when he would get the chance to test his power against her strength.
In his tidy white bed, Naruto slept on his back, sheets drawn, his face unnaturally expressionless. His mind was far too submerged for him to feel any pain. His entire body was bandaged, including each of his fingers. The medical nin who had treated him hadn't been able to heal his broken bones as of yet, having barely narrowed the hole through his stomach.
And even after that blow... Sasuke mused. He held his own.
Sasuke glanced back at Hinata, who seemed to have lost interest in him, her gaze back on Naruto's hand she clasped, as if the brawl had changed everything, and Hinata was beginning to realize where her true priorities belonged. Priorities? Feelings? How did he distinguish them? But what did it matter. She was just – a girl.
He wasn't a love-sick imbecile. He didn't chase girls. And yet he couldn't help inquiring, "What are you doing here, Hinata?" As though he had any authority regarding her whereabouts. What was she doing to him?
For a long while, Hinata didn't respond, and just before Sasuke could stalk off, she mumbled, "Why do you care?"
He didn't understand the purpose behind the question, but it seemed he finally had her full attention. What did she want him to say? It wasn't as though he cared at all. But it was clear that she was asking him something very specific, the answer to which he couldn't articulate. Her eyes were on Naruto but her focus was on him.
Like he was at war with the half-dead zombie nin.
So he countered, "Why – are – you – here, Hinata?" He challenged her to admit that she had diverged from the three kisses, and everything that had been expressed in their actions and not words.
He watched her breathing thin, fingers clasping Naruto's bronzed hand more tightly around them. She didn't dare look back at him again. "Naruto-kun..." she mumbled. "He's...ano..."
She tried to communicative the things Sasuke had long suspected.
Done with listening, he turned to leave, but caught a glimpse of the curtained bed on the other side of the room.
Sakura had far more cuts and scratches than Naruto did. They littered her face, creating red patterns that he found vaguely interesting. Sakura's worst injuries included burns, broken ribs, and a collapsed lung. The move that had finally brought her down had created a spiral of bruises across her chest.
Her breathing had been stabilized, and she was likely to awake soon. Naruto had definitely gone easy on her. Sasuke still couldn't understand why.
"...he's a comrade..." Hinata finished. "...who I love."
The next day was warm and sunny.
Uchiha Sasuke was sprawled in his bed with the sheets pulled over his head. He was sick with fever. He heard his bedroom door open, then close, softly, as another person walked into the room. There was the sound of the basket – her basket – being lowered to the dresser.
Today, Hinata's presence was doing nothing for his headache.
He didn't...like...girls. He didn't get attached to things. That wasn't him, it was lesser men than him, incompetent men, like Naruto. Girls were annoying...worthless...evil...maddening... Girls were for sex, that was all. What did it matter who she favored?
"Sasuke-kun," she said weakly, her voice filled with an artificial cheeriness. As though nothing had happened between them, and she was just back to babysitting, "I made you some-"
"Hinata." He heard her halt, and pulled the sheets back, reluctantly sitting up. He crossed his legs as he faced her, but then drew up one of his knees; rubbed his messy head of hair, glancing down, clenching his jaw. "Come here."
Hinata hesitated, but abided this time, releasing the basket, and sitting beside him on the bed. He watched her blush and stare at her knees.
"How did you feel," he muttered, "the times that I kissed you?"
Her blush deepening, she looked up at him from beneath her dark bangs. She opened her mouth then pressed her lips, failing to say a word.
"Do you know what it means?" he asked, idly staring.
It seemed a silly question, but she could not definitively answer it. "I think," she said faintly. Maybe it meant that he felt for her, and she felt for him. He brushed back a lock of her hair, which seemed consistent with her theory.
"You'd prefer if I was Naruto." It wasn't a question.
"No – I-" She didn't know how to respond. She loved Naruto, but he- "He's – n-not you!" How could she make Sasuke understand if she didn't understand herself? She squeezed her eyes shut as she felt them fill with tears. "N-Naruto is h-hurt."
"So?"
She looked back up at him, eyes wet and vision blurry. "How can you say that? Naruto-kun's y-your friend!"
"He can die for all I care."
Her breath hitched in her throat.
"Fucking dobe."
What Hinata did next was something she had never done to anyone before, and yet it was as instinctive as blinking. She slapped him.
Sasuke held his hand to his reddened cheek, looking as surprised as she was. All Hinata could do next was brace for when Sasuke hit her back.
