Dreamcatcher
By Airyo
The Guardian - 2
She was suffocating.
She couldn't remember what was happening.
Hands on her shoulders trapped her and panic trapped her lungs. She clawed at her throat, tiny squeaking noises squeezing through her windpipe and still not enough air notenoughairtrappedcan'tbreathohkamiohka-
"Hinata! Breathe!"
Gentle, worried hands framed her face and forced her to look. Dark eyes captured hers. Hinata blinked, gaze sliding to the rise and fall of his torso as he breathed. In and out. In and out. And she was obeying him, mimicking him, her breath matching his and mingling warmly in the air between their faces.
Hinata blinked again. She wasn't in the tunnels of her mind, but seated safely on the lush hills of the training grounds, with the coolness of the shade slipping between the heat of the waning sunset and the heat of him.
"Itachi?" she whispered, all her questions tangent his name. What happened? Why was he touching her face? When did he get so close?
"Yes," he affirmed. That he was there, that he was real and not a figment of her imagination. Not the genjutsu.
She reached up for one of his hands. His skin was warm, the muscles and bones of his wrists solid, pulse drumming her fingertips. She realized that it wasn't just her that was shaking.
He withdrew, gently removing his hand from hers and sitting back. Hinata found herself oddly bereft though she knew she generally disliked people getting so close. "It appears that you possess…" Itachi closed his eyes for a moment to recollect his thoughts before continuing. "...an affinity for genjutsu."
"Affinity?" She wondered if he was so shaken that he had unintentionally used the wrong word. 'Affinity' implied strength, a natural ability, and it was the last word Hinata would ever liken to her greatest weakness.
"I have a theory," he explained. "You've conditioned yourself to fight all genjutsu, to almost physically reject them, though your mindscape is uniquely suited to accept genjutsu. While I can't gather much about your ability to cast genjutsu, you have the ability to possibly commandeer another's jutsu."
"Commandeer a jutsu?" Hinata echoed, feeling very much like a parrot. She was finding it hard to think logically when the memory of Itachi's callused hand still ghosted over her skin.
He nodded, well aware of how ridiculous it seemed to her, and then came to a decision. "You almost turned my genjutsu on me," he admitted reluctantly. It was a difficult thing for the genius to say, about one of his most powerful techniques.
Hinata stared, torn between laughing at his joke and crying that he could be so cruel when he knew she was sensitive about her strength. He held her gaze. Hinata looked away first, heart sinking,
Weak little Hinata, the failure of the Hyuuga clan, had almost defeated the famous Uchiha Itachi. The Uchiha Itachi.
Worst of all, he wasn't even lying.