Thank you to bogusbabe and Saamon for the reviews!
oOo
Hinata tried to visit Tento first. But when she walked to the door, his manservant shook his head with a regretful grimace. Understanding the message, she thanked him and returned to her own rooms.
She took the suncatcher Itachi gave her and hung it in the window facing the barracks. The small crystal sunflower spun in an arc, briefly casting a rainbow over Hinata's room and the rafters above.
The glint would catch their attention. They usually joined her for dinner after Itachi's patrols and Sasuke's guard duty. She wanted them sooner and they might be able to join her for lunch.
Satisfied at her handiwork, Hinata grabbed her stationary, a blanket, and headed to the gardens.
She picked a nice, shady spot, arranged her items neatly on the blanket, crossed her legs, picked up her pen and wrote: Dear Father…
And all her words dried up as if she never used language or writing to communicate a day in her life. Her pen hovered over the paper for countless breaths until her hand trembled from the strain.
Carefully setting the writing utensil on the ground, she let out a deep breath.
Why did her father not warn her?
"Everything all right?" Sasuke asked, startling Hinata out of her blank stare.
"Oh. Hello, Sasuke."
Sasuke frowned and gestured to the other man coming up the path behind him. "Saw your message. You okay?"
She did not know how to answer that. Instead, she held out Yoshino's letter to him. He plopped himself on her blanket and offered the missive to Itachi when he joined them. Itachi raised an eyebrow, smoothly lowered onto the last corner of the blanket, and unfolded the paper.
Without prompting, he began to read aloud, but stopped abruptly when he realized the message.
"What"- Itachi said.
"What the shit?!" Sasuke said, snatching the letter away. "You're leaving us?"
Hinata's shoulders bunched up around her ears. "Well, we could visit. You could come see me."
Itachi's face turned into unreadable stone, betraying his struggle to hide the depth of emotions inside him.
"I have not been back to the village since the execution," he intoned gravely before standing and walking away.
Stricken, Hinata could not find the words to call him back. Sasuke only shook his head.
"Those were the terms. After the failed coup attempt by Fugaku, Mom and Itachi cannot go back."
Hinata curled even further into herself. She voiced a long-held assumption that suddenly felt naive. "But… Wouldn't Minato and Shisui's mom be willing to let him? It's been so long…"
Sasuke sighed and glared at Itachi's retreating form. "You know how he is. Once he makes up his mind, there's no changing it." He returned his attention to the letter.
The brief mention of Mikoto sparked an idea in Hinata's mind. There was a saying in the village: There were two intelligence gathering organizations inside Konoha. First, the Police Force, and second, the mothers.
Hinata never met Mikoto, since Hinata was not allowed to leave the palace grounds and Mikoto was not allowed to enter. But Mikoto had to have heard of Hinata through her sons. And if Mikoto kept communication with the people in Konoha, Yoshino could have heard of Hinata that way.
"How does she have the audacity to ask for someone who is betrothed to someone else?" Sasuke scoffed.
Hinata resisted the urge to press her thumbs together or chew at her nails. Her maids would see her abused fingers and admonish her for it.
"I think she's desperate," Hinata murmured around the fingers pressed to her lips.
oOo
Shikamaru listed to the side a little as he stumbled into his house. Weariness from his mission fogged both his eyesight and his brain. Not enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. But enough that he should not make any decisions at the moment.
His chakra pinged off another signature nearby like a parody of echolocation. There, standing at the end of the hallway.
"Welcome home," Yoshino said.
Shikamaru could only hold up his hand for a brief second in a parody of a wave. "I'm home."
"What would you think, if I had you marry Hinata?" she prompted without asking about him or any other social niceties.
Shikamaru blinked for a long, drugged second, then struggled to open his eyelids. "What?"
"Hinata."
He paused, thinking of his pre-genin class. Of a small, quiet girl who got good marks and never spoke unless Iruka carefully coaxed an answer from her. Of a genin who stood next to her teammates as Asuma and Kurenai flirted in the Mission Room. Of a slightly older girl, whose cousin stopped her heart at the Chunin exams and then disappeared from the village.
Shikamaru meant to say: "She was okay, I guess." But his words were so jumbled and slurred what he did say was: "Okay, I guess."
"Good. Go to bed, Shikamaru," Yoshino ordered.
He peeled himself off the wall he suddenly found himself leaning on, then stumbled to his room to obey.
In his defense, he should not be asked to agree to anything while exhausted from a mission. But Yoshino never played fair. Not when her genius son usually found ways to outsmart her. She could not afford to lose this battle.
oOo
Coming up: Hinata makes her decision.
Word count: 880