THIRTY THREE

Hinata woke to a brush of air against her temple.

And rolled efficiently off the bed. She landed with one knee on the ground, her breathing quiet as she processed the fist that pounded into the pillow, where her head had just been not ten seconds prior. The bed shook from the weight of the attack. Hinata, to her credit, was able to recover from her shock fast enough to dive for a weapon.

I swore I locked the window, she thought, swiping the knife from her luggage, where she left it on top of her clothes. Had they unlocked it in her sleep? She was being careless, of course. This entire Italian adventure had been careless. As she prepared her room that afternoon, she knew that there were places she was slacking––she felt her body becoming a soft animal; her hardened edges were disappearing.

Fuck! Her attacker rushed behind her as she twisted up from her crouch, the knife between her hands, and sharp. She went for the jugular and wasn't bothered when they grabbed her wrist before the knife could implant itself. Hinata didn't mind; it helped her gauge their speed. And my, how they were strong, forcibly twisting her wrist so that pain went through her, but she let this happen too, just so she could size them up. Her hand opened, the knife fell, and Hinata could see that her attacker was taller than her, stronger in the arms and torso, and likely a man.

He was distracted by the knife falling, so Hinata twisted under him easily, and he released her wrist in surprise. Behind him now––she was quick and slippery as a seal––she struck him in the back of his head with her elbow and watched him stagger.

She'd have to kill him, wouldn't she? Now a mess to clean up, Hinata squared her shoulders. She didn't have time to wonder who he was or wonder if she'd been made––she could only move forward; there would be time for all that later. Right now, she relished in the adrenaline pumping through her body––it had been a long time since she felt this way and she let it supercharge her muscles as she went for the knife again.

He elbowed her in the chin. Hinata's head was knocked back and she fought vertigo, her body hitting the bedside table. With her free arm, she grabbed the lamp sitting there––a thin, angular thing––and slammed it against the side of his face so hard she heard something click. He was masked, that was true, but there was something familiar about the set of his jaw––

He headbutted her. Head spinning, Hinata needed to get out of the corner. Grunting, she leveraged her body against the table and sent both legs kicking, hitting him straight between the legs and watching him drop. Thank God, she thought, grabbing his head of dark hair––familiar, once again; strange––so that he would not think to move while she moved around him to get to his hands. I'll have to bind him with bed sheets, she thought. Or the lamp cord, but that was too slippery.

She jerked his head when she felt him move too quickly, but quickly lost her grip when he began to stand and disrupted her balance, throwing himself into her torso. Her back hit the corner of the dresser and pain shot through her. She was just struggling to stand when his hands closed around her neck––tight, red, and withholding.

He was fully on top of her, his hands becoming tighter and tighter. What could she do? What would Prodigy do? Or Brave? Or Canine?

They'd probably have more weapons on their person, more security, more something. Here Hinata was, alone, triggered, and frazzled in a Hostel. In her haste to leave and get to her sister, she had barely protected herself.

She'd become too complicit. Maybe she even deserved this. As her she began to see spots, her breathing haggard and thin, he did something surprising:

He released her.

He released her, but not without rattling her head hard against the wall. She saw stars and fought through them, clawing her fingers into the ground––forcing herself to think through her next attack. What was near her? What could she use? When she looked up, she thought she was doomed––hallucinations were always the beginning of the end, right? Because when the man took off his mask, he revealed Sasuke's face.

Oh. Hinata blinked.

Oh fuck.

-:-

"I imagine I'd be in worse condition if you hadn't just woken up," Sasuke said, peeling off the mask, his lip red and broken. She'd managed to chip a tooth with her godforsaken lamp. How she had hid this apparent skill so well, he did not know. "You're exactly who they said you were."

She looked like a wild animal; her eyes wide and hurting, like a large cat who knew she was seconds away from being caged. Her hair was disheveled, half across her face, half undone from the long braid she slept in. Her clothing was torn––he'd done that in their scrape. He internally winced at the bruises forming around her neck––but the taste of iron on his tongue made up for it. The blood dripped.

Before he knew it, she was pushing her body back against the dresser. But he'd seen this move already, and pushed her back with both arms, her head rattling against the wood. He'd caught her off guard; apparently, it was necessary, because she was a difficult fight despite her small frame.

"Goddammit!

The words left his mouth before he even processed the slippery foot slamming against his jaw. Losing his balance, he braced his hands, letting the dizziness overtake him for only a moment. He watched his lover scramble to the door––she was quick and lithe, fully woken up now and dangerous. If she escaped now, Sasuke didn't doubt she'd be hard to find again.

I guess we're doing this the hard way, Sasuke grimaced. He sprung up and shut the door as she opened it, but the slam wasn't loud enough to obscure the thin click of a weapon.

Hinata stopped. Sasuke's gun was buried in her gut.

She looked at him.

It was a look that told him everything and nothing at the same time––tears, she had the nerve to summon tears as she looked at him. She didn't even do him the honor of looking fucking scared. Just sad. Heartbreak was written all over her pitiful face, her eyebrows creased, her mouth trembling.

Gone were the animal eyes. Gone was the calculated look. It was like when she stopped to think, she completely crumbled. She was pathetic.

Sasuke wavered only internally, but the gun was persistent, and she better not move. His mind was blissfully quiet. Problem solving was his best quality. He could do anything, as long as it was logical. Hinata was no longer logical. He had to take her out of the equation.

Hurt did not register for him. Betrayal––he knew of that in his own home, what was an additional heartbreak in his life? It didn't matter. This didn't matter. Her long eyelashes, her mourning stare, her long neck and wispy hairs––none of that mattered anymore.

Only the metal between them mattered, and the fact that she was a danger to his family and their empire. He could not think of her infiltration, all the lies likely shared by her. He could not think of the nights they spent wrapped together, her fingers curling through his hair. All of that had been a lie.

Sasuke had been a fool.

He thought about all the lies he'd told himself about her, she couldn't hurt a fly. That she was gentle. That she was kind. That she was diligent; hard-working. That she cared about his mother's sickness. That she cared about him at all.

He laughed.

Hinata had the nerve to tremble, her eyes brimming with a mournful sort of tears as they fell like rain across her rounded cheeks. She was pink with exertion, breathing heavily against the mouth of the weapons at her stomach. Her mouth was open. They were so close that Sasuke could feel her breath.

"Sasuke I––"

"Save it," Sasuke pushed the gun into her skin before, gesturing with it subtly, pointing towards the bed. After a beat, it occurred to him that Hinata had holed up in this small, smelly room, with putrid sheets and a smell of hard-boiled eggs. Internally he laughed with cruelty; this was quite a change from the luxuries he had permitted her. Once at the bed, he pushed her down and she sat, shoulders curling in on themselves as if protecting her chest. He took rope from the bag he'd left on her bed at his entrance and tied it tight across her wrists behind her back. He then tied the rope to the headboard of the bed. He tugged it a few times, watching her arms flex at the restraints and nodded, satisfied. "Do you want to know how I found you?"

Hinata said nothing. She didn't even have the dignity––or respect, or sense––to look at him. She only looked up when he opened her suitcase with a flippant hand, throwing her clothing across the room like garbage. Even then, she said nothing. Had she no self-respect?

How could she? When she was doomed to live a life of secrecy and stealth. A rat's life was laughable to him. No wonder her eyes widened every time he had cast a luxury across her shoulders––she'd never had anything. Even these clothes, the degrees, her style––were not her own. Almost everything about her had been a lie.

Sasuke wanted to laugh again to hide the hopelessness that welled inside his chest like a great wave. The violence that was a part of him, that lived in him, threatened to reemerge. And God, would he let it. No one knew what awaited them when they arrived back in Konoha.

Once he emptied her suitcase, he found it, wrapped gently in a pair of frilly socks. He held the tiny tracking device up to Hinata, between her eyes. When she didn't look at him––didn't even acknowledge him, he thought of shaking her. All the same, he thought the answer was cruel enough, so he tossed it in the bed behind her.

"Ino," he said, kicking the suitcase––now empty––back closed. "Your friend has been a double agent this entire time."

If this moved her, he couldn't tell. Her posture was bone straight and impenetrable. He wanted to shake her shoulders, to yell in her face––to ask her if any of this was real. But all that was disillusioned; it had more to do with his failures than it had to do with her. He could only deal in reality. His father had always told him: you can't reason with a terrorist. A spy was no different.

His father couldn't know about this. He sighed and took a knife from his pocket.

-:-

Hinata could have fought, but there was no point.

What was at home for her but more of the same? Her failure would be monumental. Being caught––the truth of B6 in the Uchiha's hands––could be catastrophic to the fragile government that maintained Konoha's peace.

Not to mention the stress in her heart. The affection she felt for Sasuke doubled by the betrayal she felt from the only woman she'd ever truly considered a friend. If that's how she felt about Ino––how did Sasuke feel about her?

Standing before her, eyes dark and deliciously blank. There was no feeling. His jaw was set. His mouth a thin line. His laughter had been the only clue; cruel and sardonic and deeply unsatisfied. She could feel his lust for revenge, the violence ticking just under his skin like a bomb. She knew what a dangerous man was. She could smell it on him.

Still, Hinata could've fought. But she chose not to. His knots were faulty; untrained. He could have been out of practice––or just bad at it. In combat, he was stronger than her; so that would be a challenge. She couldn't exactly predict his next moves either, because he didn't seem to be classically trained, like her. That was all well and good––in a hand fight, perhaps she had a chance––but he had a weapon. And he wasn't hesitant about showing it to her.

Perhaps in other scenarios, she could still beat the odds––she was trained to do that, even, to race against time and metal––but she didn't feel like it. If she survived, then what? Her regular life paled in comparison to the last three months she'd spent pretending to be normal. She couldn't bear to think of her father's wrath.

So when he unsheathed a knife; beautiful, and silver, and sharp, Hinata didn't blink or feel scared or even tremble. She glimpsed upon the blade and saw the Uchiha crest engraved into its metal and almost smiled. Twisted as it might have been, it was almost an honor to be killed by such a thing. Slayed by her enemies.

But Sasuke had never really been her enemy, had he? Her boss? Sure. Her lover? But of course. Her enemy? She could laugh at herself.

Sasuke stepped forward, placing his cold hand under her jaw, and lifted her face to look at him. This was the only moment that had stopped her heart––her mouth dropping, her eyes brimming, once again, with tears, as she looked upon him. She felt her lips trembling.

Sasuke looked down at her, his eyes two dark moons, full of a passion she could not name. Love and hate, they say, right? The thin line between them? Both were passionate, sure. They were beasts that Hinata had been taught not to feel.

But alas, she felt them. Felt them snowball in her gut as Sasuke pressed the hilt of the weapon against the thin skin of her throat, saying nothing. No goodbye. No angry words or sorrowful remarks. Nothing. Outside, the sound of someone's radio came on. That was the only sound besides the silence between them.

Finally, he spoke. "You won't fight?"

Hinata swallowed against the knife. "There's nothing for me after this, Sasuke."

He scoffed, sliding his hand up her cheek, his thumb padding over her trembling mouth. His hand continued to move until he cradled her head, her neck fully exposed now, his fingers dancing delicately against her long hair. "Pathetic," he said.

"Are those your last words to me?" She dared to ask as Sasuke's eyes clouded, his eyebrow twitching, his hand gripping her hair, holding her in place.

"Why don't you beg for your life instead of wasting your breath on useless sentiments like that?"

"I don't think you understand, Sasuke," she said, eyes jeweling with water. She had no choice but to look at him and his emotionless mouth, his long eyelashes fluttering down at her, his tense jaw. "There is nothing. For me. Left."

"Fine." Sasuke said and grabbed her harder, holding her in place. Hinata felt her pulse jump at the finality of the word, echoing in a vacuum, making her skin crawl with adrenaline. When she saw the set fit of his mouth, she closed her eyes and let it happen. The cold of the knife dug deeper, and she felt the blood begin to pearl off the blade. If he made this long, she would understand. If––

She heard the air slice, the fast ruffle of his clothing, a lightness to her head. It took her a few seconds to process what had happened as she blinked her eyes open in confusion to see Sasuke standing before her, holding a handful of her hair. Reactively, she moved her neck from side to side, feeling the sudden absence. She coughed loudly––a choking sound, from her shock.

"Perhaps this is a worse fate than death then," Sasuke said as he sheathed the knife and took the hair into his hands like treasure. "I don't really give a fuck."

"But why––"

"I don't go back on my word. I have repaid my debts," Sasuke would not look at her anymore. "And Sakura's as well. If you stupidly choose to return to Konoha, I will kill you. If you return to Japan, some other Uchiha might kill you. It is up to you. Your fate is no longer my concern."

Hinata's heart felt like a buzzing planet inside of her. Speechless, she watched Sasuke reach once more into her suitcase, and pull out her identification information––her IDs and passports, tucked safely into his back pocket.

"Goodbye, Hyuga," Sasuke said in that flat voice. He walked quietly out of the door and even closed it politely, letting the lock click into place.

Hinata stared at the space he once occupied for several seconds before letting her chin hit her chest, her neck raw and red and bleeding, and sobbed.

Your fate is no longer my concern.

She was completely and utterly alone.

AN End of part 2!