Team 8's first C-Rank went off without a hitch.
As did their second.
And their third.
Before Hinata knew it, she'd been genin – again – for three months.
According to Kurenai, they were becoming the favoured genin team amongst the mission office shinobi because their clients never complained, often praising them, in fact, because Kiba and Shino could somehow put their little rivalry aside to act professional when they had to. Kurenai also made sure that their written reports were legible and delivered on time, which also endeared them to the admin shinobi when compared to Kakashi's team, for example.
That sense of confidence, and Hinata didn't want to call it a false sense of confidence, because she couldn't deny that they had earned it, was perhaps why their fourth mission ended the way it did.
Or why it came as such a shock to her.
They were sent on a run to one of the border outposts, tasked with delivering a scroll from the outpost to Konoha. They didn't encounter any trouble on the way to the outpost, picked up the scroll without any issue, and were ready to run back to Konoha and try to complete their mission in four days instead of the projected seven.
On their way back, Kiba requested a bathroom break for Akamaru, a request which Kurenai had readily granted seeing as they were a few kilometres away from the outpost, set to make good time, and safely within the borders of the Land of Fire.
Or so they thought.
As soon as Kiba's feet touched the ground when he landed, the earth rose up and snagged his leg all the way up to his knee, and then there was a sickening crunch as the bones broke under the pressure.
Kiba didn't even have the time to scream, a quiet, punched-out whine leaving his lips at the sudden pain, and then there was pandemonium.
Kurenai leapt to the ground, blocking the wakizashi heading for Kiba's jugular from one of the Iwa-nin and lashing out with a kick to derail the path of a kunai. Shino had dropped to a lower branch too, his kikaichu heading towards another Iwa-nin, but Hinata activated her Byakugan and sought out Akamaru instead.
The puppy ninken had leapt off Kiba's head and into the bushes as soon as Kiba had landed, and Hinata jumped down to the ground, fished Akamaru out from the shrubbery and leapt back into the trees, hiding behind one of the thicker trunks.
She rifled through her pack and pulled out the scroll they were charged with delivering, since she guessed that was the only reason a group of Iwa-nin would dare attack them within their borders, and pushed it between the dog's teeth.
"Hide." She mouthed, then concentrated and wove a simple notice-me-not genjutsu around Akamaru's tiny body, one Kurenai had taught her before her second Chunin Exams. It wouldn't fool skilled shinobi, but between Akamaru's size and the unexpectedness of a ninken, she reckoned he had the biggest chance out of the five of them of escaping unseen.
When Akamaru – with a quick, desperate glance at Kiba – obediently turned tail and disappeared, Hinata took a deep breath and steadied her nerves.
She never liked bloodshed. She hated violence. She abhorred killing unnecessarily.
But. She was a kunoichi.
And the macabre beauty of the Byakugan, she mused absently, feeling almost separate from her body, was that it never looked violent. But her opponents were just as dead from a simple chakra-charged palm-strike to the heart as they would be from Kiba and Akamaru levelling half the forest in their Fang-over-Fang.
Feeling the cool detachment of battle-calm settle over her, she jumped into the fray.
Most of the enemy-nin were intent on Kurenai where she stood defending Kiba as she was the only one out of them who stood to pose any real danger, and also because Kurenai's seeming unwillingness to abandon her trapped student made her an easy target.
Landing quietly, chakra cushioning her feet even as she gathered chakra to her hands and calmed her breath, she struck.
The first two shinobi Hinata killed didn't even see her.
The third one did, though, and she had a split-second to throw herself into a roll to avoid the earth spike that would've likely disembowelled her. She rolled to her feet and kept her knees bent, driving her palm forward in the Vacuum Palm as soon as she regained her balance and ignoring the burn in her coils at the wordless, sealless execution.
When the man staggered, dazed but not dead, because she wasn't capable of killing with that technique yet, how could she have forgotten-?! she abandoned all decorum, palmed a kunai and jumped on him, stabbing forward gracelessly instead, managing to cut his throat, but not enough.
Her momentum took them both down and her opponent's back hit the ground, though his knee came up and caught her side in a reflexive - and successful - attempt to throw her off. Hinata wheezed, the impact knocking the breath out of her and sending her tumbling a few metres away. She coughed, pushed off the ground and jumped, sticking her feet to the nearby tree a moment before the ground erupted with more earth spikes. When the spikes stabilised, she shifted her centre of balance, adjusted her grip on the kunai, and pushed off the trunk, launching herself at the man again.
He hadn't managed to stand up yet when she barrelled into him, pushing him down and locking his legs down with her knees, then stabbed down again, with more conviction this time, aiming for his eye. When the tip of her knife met its target, she pumped chakra into her arm and forced the blade down and through, and the man's scream died in his throat, though not before he managed to drive his own knife deep into her thigh with his free hand.
Hinata felt the pain, felt her vision white out for a moment, felt the nausea rise up her throat, then she was on her feet again as soon as she was sure he was dead and she wouldn't puke, Jyuuken lighting up her hands, because her Byakugan had caught the moment Shino got a sword shoved through his abdomen.
She blurred in a Shunshin that made her dizzy when she landed, leaving Kurenai on the ground to protect Kiba and take down the two Iwa-nin still-standing.
As soon as her feet touched the branch Shino was standing on, landing behind his opponent, she lashed out with a side-kick, intent on knocking the man off the branch rather than into Shino.
But he must've either sensed or heard her land because he turned just enough to catch her foot, wrenching it round until something in her ankle crunched, and Hinata hissed in pain, tears springing to her eyes.
But, a thought registered through the fog of pain, she was still in motion, her momentum not fully lost, and he was still holding her foot.
Not thinking much, Hinata dropped so her hands were supporting her weight on the branch, twisted her hips, and kicked out with her other leg, managing to strike the Iwa-nin hard in the jaw with her heel.
He released her ankle and the hilt of the sword he'd stabbed Shino with, and Hinata had a split-second to get her feet under her and realise that she now had the man's full attention on her.
Which was better than it being on Shino, but not great.
"Little bitch." The man snarled, spitting what she guessed was blood, and then he was striking out, forearms and fists enforced with a thick layer of chakra.
Hinata managed to dodge the first punch at her face but overestimated her flexibility in this body and didn't fully succeed in twisting out of the way of the follow-up strike to her ribs.
The thick layer of chakra must have been a layer of rock, because the fist hit her ribs - again - and it hit so hard her vision blacked out for a moment and she coughed, tasting metal on the back of her tongue. If not for her Byakugan, she wouldn't have been able to see at all through the tears in her eyes, but she could see the man's heart, the main concentration of his chakra, easily enough.
She stepped closer, using her smaller size to duck into his guard, barely twisted so reflexive the rock-leaden swipe at her head ended up clipping her left shoulder instead, sending a jolt of numbing pain down her arm, and took the final leap until she was firmly within the man's guard.
Then, she drew her working arm back, hand flexed and fingers straight, cursed her shorter reach and threw herself at him to cover the last few centimetres, driving her palm as well as what remained of her chakra at the man's heart.
He wheezed, headbutting her in the face before he staggered, and fell off the branch, impacting the ground beneath with a soft thud.
Hinata blinked, her Byakugan fading at the shock of pain in her nose, the forest around them regaining its greens-and-browns instead of the monochrome of her Byakugan vision, and she realised that she'd landed on her hands and knees, her shoulder and thigh screaming. She swayed, suddenly dizzy, but before she could fall off the branch too, there was a thigh against her side, warm and sticky, and a trembling hand on her shoulder.
"I've got you." Kurenai rasped, and when Hinata craned her neck to look up at her sensei, she blinked at the purpling, hand-shaped bruise around the woman's throat. Kiba was slung over her back, face pinched with pain but his eyes were staring at her with a look she couldn't quite read in her current state.
"Sensei-" Shino wheezed, and Hinata's head snapped to him so fast her vision swam and she felt nauseous, only just remembering Shino's state.
One of the lenses of his glasses had been cracked, and what she could see of his eye was wide and scared, and Hinata was once again reminded that her teammates were twelve-year-old boys.
Gods, this was their first real taste of battle, wasn't it?
"Hinata," Kurenai called her name, even as she moved around her to get to Shino, "can you stand?"
Hinata blinked back the black splotches from her vision, waiting until they were simply in her periphery, then focused on her body.
Her thigh was pulsing rather insistently and unpleasantly, her ankle throbbed, her ribs hurt with every wet, rattling breath, not helped by her suddenly numb nose, and her left arm was still unresponsive. Still, she stuck herself to the branch with chakra and pushed slowly to her feet-
-ow.
Pain shot through her leg, radiating from her thigh, to her hip, then back down again to the tips of her toes, but it eventually settled back into the cold-hot pulsing of before.
"…Yes." She confirmed belatedly, rather unnecessarily seeing as she was already standing, glancing up at Kurenai who was watching her intently even as she was pulling out strips of bandage and gauze and what looked like a small bottle of antiseptic from her kit.
"I need you to seal up the bodies." Kurenai told her evenly, her eyes on her face even as she passed the medical supplies to Kiba, who looked ashen-faced and pained, but still conscious, and started pulling out scrolls from her jounin vest. The scrolls were small and thin, no thicker than Hinata's thumb, and red-edged, and Hinata recognised them on sight, though not from this life.
"Can you do that?" Kurenai asked, holding the scrolls out to her, though it was clear it wasn't a question and Hinata found herself nodding before she fully registered it. "Good. I need to patch up Shino, then we're going back to the outpost."
That caught Hinata's attention and she glanced up at her sensei, feeling like she should be…something.
"What about the mission?" she asked quietly, her eyes flickering from Kiba's blood-covered sandal and pants-leg to Shino all-but slumped against the tree, the sword he'd been stabbed with still sticking out from his stomach, what she could see of his skin was pale and clammy and greenish and he was panting too quick to be just shock-
"I think Shino's been poisoned." She murmured, mostly to herself, and Kurenai shot her a sharp look before she turned briefly to Shino, then back to her.
"Focus, Hinata." She ordered, and Hinata jumped, immediately wincing when the movement jarred her shoulder and ribs. "Do you still have the mission scroll?"
"I gave it to Akamaru." Hinata replied, and Kurenai's frown grew more severe.
"And where's Akamaru?" She asked sharply, looking around, and even Kiba roused himself long enough to frown at her.
"I told him to hide." Hinata relayed, trying to assess whether she had enough chakra to try activating her Byakugan again.
"Kiba."
Kiba startled at the tone but seemed to guess what Kurenai wanted because he whistled sharply, a note Hinata hadn't heard him produce in this life yet and she closed her eyes against the onslaught of memories from before.
After what felt like a few seconds, though Hinata had no way of knowing how much time had actually elapsed, there was the sound of quiet shuffling and a muffled bark, and Kurenai glanced up at one of the branches on a tree next to them in surprise. She slanted Hinata with an odd look, then raised the hand not holding the scrolls to her chest, fingers curled in the Ram seal and flexed her chakra.
Akamaru appeared once the genjutsu was released, looking muddy and dishevelled, but uninjured, his jaws still clamped securely around the scroll Hinata had given him.
"Good job, Akamaru." Kurenai praised, then turned back to Hinata, holding out the body scrolls once again with an expectant look.
Hinata took them, blinking slowly, then waited until Kurenai turned around to focus on Shino before she allowed herself to drop to the ground and set to work.
Back at the outpost, in a room which was clearly a tiny mess hall rather than an infirmary, but which was the only one where tables and cloth could be spared to act as gurneys for three genin in varying states of injury, Kurenai waited for the closest thing to a medic the station could offer to leave and close the door before she allowed herself to slide down the wall and put her head between her knees.
She was aware that the only reason she was still keeping even a semblance of composure despite feeling like she was a step away from a full-blown episode was because two of her three kids still needed immediate medical attention, lest her stint as a genin sensei end with one of the shortest terms in Konoha's history.
Her shrink was going to have her hands full when they got back, she could feel it.
Iwa-nin. Iwa chunin within Konoha's borders. They'd clearly waited for them to pick up the missive before attacking, and that required knowledge of far more than just where their outpost was located.
The worst thing was, she thought chillingly, that their presence within the Land of Fire could be anything from an outright declaration of war to an internal security breach the levels of which the Konohagakure hadn't seen since Orochimaru, probably.
And her kids had been caught right in the middle of it.
She'd planned on getting them a simple mission after they got back, something to deal with bandits or one of the lowest-level hunter-nin missions to let them get some tracking practice as well as their first kills out of the way in a more controlled environment. In a way she could be there for them to support them in the immediate aftermath, the way no-one had been there for her.
Killing in theory was one thing, but killing in practice was another, and if they continued on the path of getting C-Rank after C-Rank when the rest of their peers were still painting fences, it was inevitable they'd eventually have to kill.
Doing it in a semi-controlled setting, with support readily available afterwards, would've been ideal.
In the end, even the best laid plans fall, and the option to choose the time and place for her students to take their next big step of their shinobi careers was taken out of her hands.
Once they'd fallen into what, in retrospect, was a very effective ambush, she'd been too busy protecting Kiba and trying not to get killed herself to pay too much attention to her surroundings, but she was still peripherally aware of her other students.
But even with only peripheral awareness, it hadn't escaped her notice that Shino had frozen when his kikaichu had actually succeeded in doing what they were bred to do and the Iwa-nin he'd sicced them on had dropped to the ground, little more than a bloodied pile of bones and fabric. It was because he'd taken too long to shake off that shock that he failed to notice the shinobi sneaking up the tree, and Shino, for all that he was solidly average for a genin, was not a taijutsu shinobi.
Kurenai resolved to talk to his father about mitigating that and swore to send all three of her students to Psych as soon as she made sure they wouldn't die before making it back to the Village.
Kiba too, for all that he'd been injured the quickest and trapped for the entirety of the battle, though he'd refused to be helpless, hadn't been able to move past the actual kill quick enough.
With Akamaru nowhere to be found, Kiba had taken to alternating between trying to dodge as much as he could with half his leg caught in the dirt and lobbing his kunai and shuriken at the shinobi surrounding them, with mixed results. Still, the small distraction had offered miniscule windows of opportunity for Kurenai to capitalise on in her quest to keep her kids alive, and outnumbered ten-to-three, those would have to do.
But, eventually, one of Kiba's kunai, thrown with more force than Kurenai had thought him capable of, though it could've also been a result of mounting helplessness in the face of unfavourable odds, had not just reached its target but proved lethal, burying itself hilt-deep in the eye-socket of one of the Iwa-nin Kurenai had managed to snag in her genjutsu.
Kiba hadn't noticed immediately, shifting his focus to the nin who'd come at him with a sword, but when Kurenai had twisted around to meet the man with more stable block than Kiba's sloppy kunai, he'd turned around, ready to resume his earlier task of real-life target practice.
And frozen.
And, despite Kurenai's breathless warning, he had been too slow to dodge the rock-plated kick to his side from one of the other nin, and he'd crumpled to the ground, wheezing and coughing blood. Kurenai's sword-wielding opponent slipped past her hasty guard, and she had a split-second to stick out her leg and catch the sword that would've beheaded Kiba in her thigh, her reinforced leggings slowing the blade's momentum enough that while it didn't sever her leg, it carved a good inch-deep gouge into the flesh and muscle of her thigh, sending searing pain through the limb.
Hinata's absence had been conspicuous, in those first few seconds, and Kurenai had a fleeting, bitter thought that the Academy profiles had actually been right and the girl had fled.
And then, just as suddenly as she'd disappeared, Hinata had reappeared, though Kurenai didn't notice her immediately.
She did, however, notice that the outer ring of the five still standing Iwa-nin of the eight who had initially surrounded her thinned out slightly in the few seconds it took her to shift her balance, palm a kunai, and stab down towards the groin of Kiba's would-be executioner.
The man had cursed, stumbled back, only succeeding in making Kurenai's kunai dig deeper into his femoral artery, and glanced momentarily at the back of the group, no doubt wary at suddenly being one of three left standing.
Kurenai had grit her teeth, put her full weight on the leg with a sword sticking out of it, and drove her other foot hard into the man's stomach.
Combined with the way he was rapidly bleeding out, she didn't think he'd be getting up soon.
"Kiba." She gritted out, bending down to yank him to his feet and out of the way of an earth spike that would've rendered her effort to prevent a beheading moot, and Kiba had whined when his leg and side were jostled, likely only aggravating the injuries further, but Kurenai was at the 'strategic sacrifices' stage of combat.
And then, Shino had screamed, and Kurenai's focus had shifted to his standoff up in the branches, her heart skipping a beat despite the adrenaline in her system at the sight of the sword sticking out of her student's abdomen.
But then, Hinata was there, a Shunshin Kurenai didn't recall the girl ever using before taking her to Shino's branch and his opponent.
"Sorry, Kiba." Kurenai murmured, more to herself than the boy, and then she flashed through the seals for the genjutsu that had won her the Jounin Spar against Tokuma.
When the remaining two Iwa-nin plus Kiba cried out at the mix of vertigo and tinnitus her genjutsu caused, Kurenai abandoned her post at Kiba's side long enough to rip the sword from her thigh, ignoring the alarming amount of blood that sprayed out for the moment, and clumsily reversed her grip on the weapon to flash between the staggering Iwa-nin and cut their throats.
A quick, desperate glance around the clearing showed only bodies, and Kurenai bent down to begin the process of freeing up Kiba's leg, adamantly not thinking about the damage that lay beneath the bloodied bandage and pants' leg.
And then, once she'd hefted most of Kiba's weight on her back, the boy whining under his breath the whole time, a soft, pained, continuous sound that threatened to make Kurenai cry on principle, a soft thud reached her ears, and her gaze jerked from the Iwa-nin who'd toppled off Shino's branch and hit the ground, unmoving, to her remaining students.
She was flashing to the branch and pressing her injured thigh against Hinata's side, steadying the girl, before she'd fully registered what she was doing.
The girl looked a mess, blood streaming from her nose and lips and her clothes dusty and bloodied, but she was the only one of her teammates still able to move, and Kurenai pushed the guilt of forcing a preteen genin to push through pain and go seal up enemy corpses to the back of her mind.
Hinata looked banged up, but she'd live. Shino, judging by the blood staining his jacket despite the sword still being in him and the greenish tint to the visible parts of his face, might not.
"What about the mission?" came Hinata's quiet voice, and Kurenai paused where she'd been fishing out bandages and antiseptic to shoot the girl a quelling look, though she seemed to miss it completely, her empty gaze trained on Shino's abdomen.
"I think Shino's been poisoned." She mumbled, and Kurenai adamantly refused to think about what sort of upbringing would lead a fresh genin to be able to recognise signs of acute poisoning on an Aburame.
Finding out that Hinata hadn't deserted, but had instead had the presence of mind to pass the scroll the Iwa-nin were likely after to Akamaru, ensuring that, even if they failed, the mission wouldn't, hadn't been a pleasant realisation.
Instead of feeling proud or reassured, Kurenai resolved herself to hunt down the girl's Academy teachers and shake them, and have a conversation with Hyuuga Hiashi, one she wasn't sure she would survive, but couldn't put off any longer.
Hinata was a child of peace time.
There were a few reasons that could explain her quick, violent reactions to sudden movements or her high pain tolerance, and none of them painted the Hyuuga Head in a particularly favourable light.
Learning from the bemused acting med-nin that she'd asked Hinata to carry Shino back to the outpost while the girl had had a kunai stuck in her femur, bruised ribs, and was teetering dangerously close to chakra exhaustion had made the guilt she'd pushed back to the back of her mind in the heat of battle surge up again.
All three of her kids were sleeping, either exhausted or unconscious, the fact that their 'beds' were dining tables with sheets thrown over them not inhibiting them in the slightest.
Kurenai should probably be sleeping too, or she should at least let someone take a look at the gash in her thigh, but she wasn't sure she wouldn't break down the moment she let her students out of sight.
Shino had passed out from the fever, whether brought on by infection or whatever poison was in his system – the sword he'd been stabbed with was clean, Kurenai had checked, but the symptoms he was exhibiting were undeniably those of poisoning. Kiba had dropped off too, even before they'd arrived to the outpost, and Kurenai had had to help Hinata pull the boy off her back. And Hinata had remained conscious the longest, suffering through the process of getting the kunai pulled out of her leg with gritted teeth and screwed-shut eyes, but no tears.
The acting med-nin had washed her wound out with antiseptic and bound it tightly, nodded at the girl, then at Kurenai, and took his leave along with his two teammates.
"How long," Hinata had mumbled, staring up at the ceiling dazedly, lines of pain in her young face that made Kurenai regret, "until the reinforcements get here?"
"Kosuke-san said they're about three hours out, provided they don't get derailed." Kurenai relayed in an equally quiet, hoarse voice, adamantly not thinking of the rock-plated hand that had done its best to crush her trachea earlier today.
"You should try to get some sleep." She advised after a beat, because Hinata looked like she was fighting a losing battle with her eyelids. "I promise I'll wake you if anything changes."
Hinata hadn't replied to that, though she'd obligingly closed her eyes, and though even when her chakra evened out with sleep, the room wasn't quiet. Shino was gasping short, shallow breaths lifting his chest in a manner that was only coldly reassuring, because at least it meant he wasn't dead yet. Kiba was still whining, a low, constant sound, and Akamaru, curled up on the boy's chest despite the medic's exasperation was echoing the whine, and the combined sound was doing its best to rip out Kurenai's heart. Hinata, too, was sweating, and her breaths were raspy and wet, and Kurenai had been an active kunoichi long enough to know that that sound wasn't good.
So, with her head between her knees, Kurenai tried to take a deep breath and let the tears fall, because nobody had warned her about the helplessness.
The responsibility, yes, the babysitting, yes, the fact that no one ever stops being a jounin-sensei, yes – she'd been warned about all that. But the fact that her kids – by virtue of being kids – could die on her? Could get hit by something that she would be able to brush off, but for them would end in hospitalisation at best?
No-one had said anything about that.
She didn't know how long she sat there, tears falling freely and making her cheeks and neck sting where she'd been cut up, but eventually, there was a quiet knock on the door, and Kurenai looked up, tears long-dry but her red eyes doubtless still red-rimmed.
"Yuuhi-san?" a kunoichi asked, familiar red Clan markings on her face. "I heard you're in need of transport."
Clearing her throat, Kurenai pushed to her feet from the sitting position she'd fallen into, stumbling at the combination of headrush and the piercing pain that shot up her thigh. "Y-yes." She managed, using the wall she was leaning against to steady herself before she straightened. "Yes, thank you, Inuzuka-san."
"Ayumi. How do you wanna do it?" the woman – Ayumi – asked, sending Kiba's unconscious form a measured glance, and Kurenai absently wondered whether they were related. "Kaimaru could probably carry one of them, but they'd need to be conscious."
Kurenai blinked, not following, and Ayumi snorted and jerked her chin at-
-at the enormous black dog who must've slunk into the room after her, and was currently rumbling quietly at Akamaru.
"Ah." Kurenai murmured, inwardly shaking herself off whatever stupor she'd fallen into. "In that case, Hinata's probably safest."
Ayumi made a gesture as if to tell her to get to it, and Kurenai frowned absently at the woman and stepped towards Hinata, lightly shaking her shoulder.
She didn't expect to have to catch the girl's wrist a split-second later, stopping her fingers barely an inch short of gouging out her eyes.
"Good reflexes." Ayumi praised from the side, though whether it was directed at her or Hinata, Kurenai couldn't tell.
Instead, she focused on her student, waiting for the girl to focus and for the glint of recognition to pass through the somewhat unsettling lilac eyes.
"…Sorry, sensei." Hinata muttered quietly, and it was genuine but tired and dazed. She tried to sit up, breath wheezing in her chest then coming out in a rough, rattling cough, and when she removed her hand from her mouth, it came away splattered with blood.
Kurenai froze, but Hinata merely blinked and wiped her hand off on her pants, swinging her legs slowly over the edge of the table, gaze falling on Ayumi and her ninken.
"Inuzuka-san." She inclined her head, then glanced at Kurenai. "The reinforcements?"
"Transport." Ayumi replied, gesturing at her ninken. "Hop on, kiddo, you look like the only one conscious enough to hold on."
"Would that be alright with you?" Hinata checked quietly, and Kurenai was about to tell the girl that now was not the moment to be shy, but when she turned to Hinata, the Hyuuga wasn't talking to Ayumi, but to her ninken.
Dog and owner looked a bit thrown, then Ayumi grinned and Kaimaru gave the dog-equivalent of a nod, fangs bared in what Kurenai hesitantly pegged as a grin.
"Yes." The dog rumbled in a surprisingly deep voice and walked closer to Hinata when the girl slowly pushed to her feet, making it easier for her to get on. "Askin's appreciated, though."
"What he said." Ayumi nodded, then turned to Kurenai. "You alright if I take Tsume's pup?"
Kurenai nodded, moving to gently pick up Shino, though not before pulling off the no-longer-cold strips of cloth from his chest, armpits, and lower stomach, a valiant attempt by the medic to bring down his temperature. She threw Shino's jacket around him and did up the first two clasps so it covered him, draped more like a poncho than a jacket, then hefted him in a bridal carry, waiting until Ayumi did the same to Kiba.
"Alright." She announced, pushing the pain in her leg and back to the dark recesses of her mind and throwing away the key. "Let's go."
Asuma sighed as he slipped into the hospital room three days after the team currently occupying it had arrived, taking in the four beds and assorted machines attached to three of the four occupants.
"'Just an easy C-Rank', she said." He murmured, mindful of the sleeping teens, heading over to Kurenai's bed and brandishing the paper bag with powdered rice cakes like an offering when the woman glanced at him briefly. "'We'll be back in a week', she said."
"Technically, we were back in a week." She rasped, wincing, and Asuma wordlessly handed her the glass of water from her bedside table. "Though it is officially a B-Rank now."
"So I heard." He sighed, pulling two scrolls from his pocket and holding them out to her. "Bounties. One's for you, one's for your Hyuuga."
At Kurenai's slow blink, he elaborated. "Two of the chunin that were credited to her had bounties. Your one was the jounin."
"S'why the bastard wouldn't just lie down an die, I guess." She sighed, absently gesturing for him to put them on the bedside table, and Asuma found himself feeling morbidly amused.
"Knife to the groin though? Ouch."
Kurenai huffed, though she looked reluctantly entertained, and Asuma felt quietly accomplished. "He deserved it."
"Better him than you, definitely." Asuma agreed idly, and Kurenai snorted. She then shuffled a little over to the edge of the bed, wincing as she settled again, at which point she sent him a quietly expectant look.
It was his turn to sigh, though he obligingly shrugged off his flak jacket, draping it on the uncomfortable hospital chair, and toed off his sandals. "You sure? I don't wanna accidentally make you worse."
"I'm fine." Kurenai dismissed with a huff, though when he paused before climbing onto the bed, shooting her a slightly incredulous look, she added a grudging, "Physically."
"Mm." Asuma hummed, managing to fold himself into the narrow hospital bed next to her, wrapping a careful arm around Kurenai's slight shoulders and gently pulling her into his side.
It was a tight squeeze with two full-grown adults on one small hospital bed, but Asuma could tell it was less about comfort and more about being comforted for Kurenai. "How you holding up?"
"Probably gonna get sent to Psych once I'm discharged." Kurenai mumbled into his shoulder, and it was only now, with his arm wrapped tightly around her, that Asuma could feel the fine tremors rippling through her. "Almost failed the mission and they nearly died."
"But you didn't, and they didn't." Asuma countered, just as quietly, squeezing her shoulder briefly. "You got them back home, they'll heal. Don't borrow trouble."
Kurenai scoffed, but even to his ears it sounded unsteady and a little wet.
They lapsed into silence, content to just listen to the quiet, steady beeping of the assorted machinery keeping Kurenai's students alive.
"I'm probably going to do something inadvisable when Psych's done with me." Kurenai sighed an undeterminable length of time later. At his quiet, inquiring hum, she explained. "'m gonna kick the hornet's nest and ask Hyuuga Hiashi why his daughter exhibits behaviour consistent with victims of child abuse."
Asuma stilled, his thumb briefly freezing in its absent stroking of Kurenai's shoulder.
"That bad?" he asked lightly, keeping his tone carefully neutral. When Kurenai just nodded, hair tickling his throat, he sighed. "Alright. I'll start planning your funeral."
Kurenai snorted, which meant she knew precisely what he was referring to: Clans don't like outsiders messing with their ways.
"Konoha teams are treated like family, and I'm his daughter's sensei. Not to mention who our sensei had been." Kurenai huffed, fishing out a rice cake and brandishing it like one would a knife. "Maybe I'm an outsider, but I have a right to know."
"Maybe don't put it like that when you talk to him." Asuma advised quietly, biting back an entertained snort. "I don't want to actually have to plan your funeral."
Silence fell between them once again, though it was comfortable, and Asuma felt no need to break it until an idle thought struck him a few minutes later.
"The other two a concern?"
"Once they heal? Only in that Shino needs to brush up on his close combat and Kiba needs to get better at actually using his nose." Kurenai sighed, sagging even further against his side, her voice a little more sluggish than before. "And I'll probably need to drill into them that even the Land of Fire isn't fully 'safe'."
Asuma winced.
"Haven't had that talk since we were genin."
"Mmh. Not really looking forward to it." Kurenai mumbled, and Asuma carefully shuffled so she was lying down more instead of sitting up. "That was during the War, too."
Asuma…didn't want to think about how his team would react to a similar talk, but it was probably a good idea to ask for a C-Rank for them, too.
"Worried 'bout Hinata too." Kurenai added, and Asuma reckoned she was fighting a losing battle with her eyelids. "Didn't seem phased by the killing. Was calm. Too high pain tolerance for a kid."
"People react differently." Asuma agreed, which Kurenai would probably know even better than him, given her brief stint in Psych when they were chunin. "And the Hyuuga aren't generally known for processing emotions in a healthy manner."
Kurenai snorted, though it was tired and humourless. "I need a drink."
"As soon as the medics and shrinks say it's okay." He promised her, though he wasn't even certain she was awake anymore. "I'd offer to treat, but you'd drink me out of house and home."
Silence answered him, and Asuma sighed, settling in more comfortably against the pillows and resigning himself to a night spent in a hospital bed.
Hinata…wasn't in a great state when she woke up.
Her head hurt, her leg was pulsing, though no longer burning like before, and she seemed to have regained feeling in her left arm but her ribs still felt tender, her chest aching any time she tried to take a deeper breath.
Alive, though.
A glance to her left showed that Kiba and Shino were in the beds next to her, hooked up to various machines and looking very…small against the stark white sheets.
Sighing, she tried to slowly push herself into a more sat-up position, pausing when every one of her muscles protested rather vehemently. She reached under her shirt and began peeling off the heart monitor leads, then carefully and pulling out the IV needle until she could turn and carefully drop her legs over the side of the bed.
"I don't think you should be moving yet." A quiet voice reached her, and she glanced over at- sensei? No, sensei's bed, and the male figure squished alongside sensei's sleeping form.
A familiar male figure.
"Asuma-se-san." She greeted quietly, her throat feeling scraped raw to the point she winced and reached for the jug of water at her bedside. "How have you been?"
"Better than you, it seems." Asuma replied, and he was sitting too far from the patch of moonlight that spilled into the hospital room from the window for her to be able to gauge his expression. "Want me to call a nurse?"
"No, thank you." Hinata denied, then took a steadying breath which rattled in her chest and failed to feel like enough, then slowly, carefully pushed to her feet, holding onto the side of the bed for support.
Her vision blacked out for a second, a mix of headrush and a fresh wave of pain from her thigh, but she rode it out and limped towards the clipboard at the foot of her bed instead, holding onto the railing all the while.
She scanned through the information on the sheet, frowning at the list of her injuries. Had she really gotten that badly beat up? The kunai in her thigh had managed to scratch her bone, and one of her ribs had apparently pierced a small hole in her lung, which was why she was having trouble breathing any deeper than small, shallow inhalations.
And that was ignoring the other scrapes and bruises and near chakra exhaustion, but she dropped the clipboard and set on her limping trajectory towards Kiba's bed to do the same.
"If you'd asked, I could've told you." Asuma informed her idly when she finally stopped by Kurenai's bed, studying her sensei's sheet with mounting concern. "Your Aburame teammate needs the most specialised treatment, and the Inuzuka will be in a cast for a few weeks. You're all hospital-bound for at least a month, too."
Hinata nodded, letting sensei's clipboard go, and looked up to find Asuma already studying her.
"Here." The man said after a beat, reaching for a small scroll on sensei's bedside table and holding it out to her. "Your bounty."
Hinata took the scroll numbly, not bothering to unroll it, knowing she'd likely find a small annotation informing her of the extra funds that would be transferred to her account once the appropriate paperwork was processed. She was far more preoccupied with the considering glint in Asuma's eyes, and the way Kurenai was all-but curled into him, not even appearing to stir despite the conversation around her.
She'd known they became lovers sometime before the Akatsuki fiasco, but she hadn't realised the depth of the friendship that apparently formed the foundation of that relationship.
"…Thank you." she murmured belatedly, far too late for the pause to not be awkward, and nodded at the man before she slowly started the trek back to her bed, feeling uncomfortably breathless and wrung out even after less than a hundred steps around the room.
"How are you feeling?" Asuma asked once she'd settled on the bed, and Hinata blinked, not having expected for their conversation to continue. Apparently taking her pause as confusion, he elaborated. "About your kills? It was your first, wasn't it?"
Hinata sighed quietly, staring up at the ceiling as she mulled the question over.
"It was scary." She said at last, because it was true. No matter that she'd survived a War, being in this body, small and frail and without the reserves or the control over her chakra she'd been used to, had made a group of chunin feel terrifying, and not least because she knew Kiba and Shino didn't have the same combat experience as the Team 8 of her memories.
"I didn't enjoy killing them." She added, because it was what he was probably asking about, wasn't it? "But I don't regret it."
Asuma didn't comment further, and Hinata allowed herself to relax against the pillows, trying to ignore the tightness in her chest.
Was it her fault? She wondered absently, focusing on the steady beeping of the machines attached to her teammates. If she hadn't lost her temper with Shino in that spar, if she hadn't used her water needles and revealed she could walk on water, would they be here?
No, they wouldn't. And she knew that.
They didn't have this mission in her first life, didn't even have a C-Rank until after Team Seven had been sent on theirs and Kiba had demanded one for them, too. They hadn't gotten this seriously injured, especially not all three of them at once, until a few months after their Chunin Exams, after Orochimaru's invasion, after gelling a bit more as a team.
Gods, it was her fault, wasn't it? Her fault that Kiba's leg was broken, that Shino's kikaichu had nearly killed him after getting crushed when he'd gotten hit by a taijutsu-specialising Iwa-nin. She'd known Shino freshly post-Academy wasn't much of a taijutsu shinobi yet she hadn't mentioned anything, had allowed him to nearly die-!
"-id! Kid! Breathe!" her shoulder was grabbed, and it was the work of instinct to jab her fingers into the pressure point in the inner wrist, and the fingers on her spasmed and released with a curse.
"Are you an idiot?" came a voice, though Hinata didn't think it was directed at her but she couldn't be sure, was too busy wheezing and dry-sobbing at the stabbing pain in her chest.
"Rei, you shouldn't be moving-!"
"-Like hell-!"
And then, there were arms manoeuvring her into a sitting position and a chest pressed against her back, an arm wrapping around her shoulders, hand splaying protectively over her sternum, pushing her until she could feel the steady rise and fall of the chest behind her.
"Hinata. Match my breathing. Come on, in, out, good girl. Slower now. Again, you're doing great." The voice kept up the quiet stream of instructions until Hinata could take semi-even breaths and her head was less cloudy, though her eyes and throat still burned.
"I-I'm sorry." She sobbed, having calmed down from- from a panic attack only to burst into tears, turning her head so she could hide her face in the crook of Kurenai's elbow. "I-I'm-! My f-fault, I'm s-sorry-!"
"What's your fault?" Kurenai asked quietly, the hand that hadn't been pressed against her sternum moving to her hair, smoothing it back from her forehead in a soothing rhythm. "Why are you sorry?"
"My f-fault- I- water walking- if I hadn't-!" Hinata cut off on a sob, and she felt Kurenai sigh where the woman's chest was still pressed against her back, and then the hand in her hair disappeared, and Hinata barely had a chance to whine at the loss before she was being moved again, the arm around her shoulders repositioning while another slipped under her knees, and then she was being picked up off the bed and placed instead in Kurenai's lap when her sensei parked herself unceremoniously in the uncomfortable hospital chair.
"W-we wouldn't b-be here-!" she shuddered, twisting so she could bury her face more comfortably in Kurenai's neck and not even caring that she was an adult and should've long outgrown this childish need for comfort. "T-they'd- wouldn't be hurt!"
"I'm getting someone from Psych." Asuma's voice drifted over to her, barely audible over the sound of her tears. "For both of you."
Hinata felt the vibration of Kurenai's voice, but she was too out of it to register what was said until the woman called her name again, resuming the repetitive petting of her hair.
"Hinata," Kurenai called again, and her voice was colder than Hinata was used to, though the hands on her skin were gentle and warm.
"I will find whoever is responsible for your mindset, and I will hold them responsible, I promise." She crooned, and if Hinata had been more in control of herself, she might've shivered at the cold sensation that crept down her spine at Kurenai's tone. "In the meantime, I can tell you that it is absolutely not your fault. Being from an established Clan has clear advantages, but it also has drawbacks, and some of those drawbacks make themselves known quicker than others."
Hinata shuddered, because she wasn't sure whether 'hosting poisonous insects under one's skin' could be called a Clan drawback, but she wasn't about to disagree with Kurenai when the woman felt like she was one hair away from shattering herself.
"All I can tell you is that, from my perspective? You did everything you were supposed to. You fought the enemy, you carried Kiba to the outpost even when you were injured yourself, you made sure the mission wouldn't be compromised by sending Akamaru away. I know chunin twice your age who would've been less clear-headed in that situation, so don't you for even a second feel like you didn't do enough, do you understand?"
Hinata just nodded, the action somewhat restricted by the fact that her face was still hidden in Kurenai's throat.
"Hinata." Kurenai called, tone a little more authoritative. "Do you understand?"
"I-I understand, sensei." She promised, and Kurenai sighed, releasing the tension Hinata hadn't even realised she'd been holding.
"Good." Kurenai sighed, her hand returning to its gentle petting of Hinata's hair. "Now, sleep."
And Hinata, feeling the genjutsu creeping at the edges of her senses but too exhausted to fight it, allowed herself to succumb to its pull.
She slept.