Tag: hinata hyuga

Only like two people have read it…

deloscielos:

…But I’m working on an update for my story for “SLEEPLESS CLUB,” my Itachi and Hinata friendship series. More accurately, the sequel to the first long oneshot, also called “Sleepless Club.” 

Preview:

She sucked in a deep breath. “Where’s Kisame?”

Itachi shifted slightly and his hand tightened on hers. “He’s
probably at the rendezvous point. Waiting for me.”

A hot wave of anger crashed through Hinata’s veins. “He expected
you to kill me.”

“He expected me to take you out of commission. At least for a
couple of days.” Itachi amended.

With her indignation fueling her, she felt decent enough to open
both eyes and look at Itachi’s face. He returned her gaze, bloody tears
dripping down from an eye.

“You both think I’m weak,” she accused.

Itachi sighed and turned his head away from her so he could
cough. “Not me. Not anymore.” 

After a pause he looked forward and leaned his
head back against the wall before admitting: “You almost killed me.”
Itachi blinked slowly, his long lashes brushing his cheeks on the down stroke.

“But I didn’t.” Hinata whimpered. Her tears were slowly subsiding.

“Aa.”

Where the heck is the first part ? I would like it now.

Miserable Joy

When he found her he didn’t make his presence known although he had a feeling he didn’t have to. She was shinobi and so he doubted that she had not heard him, his steps had not been hushed on purpose. 

Instead of saying anything he stood with his hands folded tightly within the fabric of his black cloak and he tried to breathe as normally as possible. 

She was laying on the grass, her smooth pale calves and the backs of her knees glowing by the light of the evening sun. The dress she wore every time she visited was made of a combination of lace and something smooth and white and silky beneath it. It made her a piece of snow in the summer day, laying there on the grass with her head in her hands and her black hair a curtain to separate her from the world. 

In the stillness he could see the particles of dust and pollen and summer cotton floating in the air through the gold of the sun’s light. It sparkled and glimmered and he wondered that something as distasteful as dust could look so beautiful. 

And that was the truth of life, he knew it. Because even blood when shed in the snow had a startling jaw dropping quality and the eyes of the dying always took on a hue he could never find the words to describe and Hinata laying there with the angles of her shoulder blades elegant and breath taking and her hips smooth and pleasing was a thing of beauty even laying on top of the grave that housed her Sun. 

For her, there was no warmth on the anniversary of his falling. It was always winter, right in the middle of July. He knew it because like her he could not feel the sweltering touch of the summer day, only the ice in his bones and the ache of missing him, his longest and strongest bond. 

When finally her shoulders stopped shaking with tears and the shadow of his tombstone stretched to cover her bare feet Sasuke whispered, as he always did. 

“It’s late, Hyuuga.”

And like every year since the first year when she didn’t move he walked forward, pulling her first to a sitting position on the grass, leaving stains of green on the lace dress that Naruto had given her last. 

Her eyes were dull and unseeing. It was the only day of the year when a Hyuuga was blind to the world, fixed instead on memories within her mind that haunted. 

Wordless Sasuke slid her freezing arm over his shoulder and around his neck, tucking his arm beneath her knees and hoisting her up with ease. 

Head lolling tiredly she closed her eyes, red and painful from weeping through the day. 

“I’m sorry.” she always apologized, because it was unfair for him to see this. 

And he always shook his head, starting the walk back home from the cemetery in silence, his strides long and fluid. Letting her head rest on his shoulder she closed her eyes and focused on the feeling of him rocking her as he walked. 

“I know.” He said this time, and her eyes opened as he spoke. “I know you love him.” His pace didn’t change as he moved, and his grip didn’t shift on her body but with her lips near his jugular she could feel the pulse of his heart thumping blood at an increasingly quickening pace. 

Eyes half closed she watched the warmth of the sun through the rest of the tombstones of the fallen, among them her cousin, and now too her husband. 

“…past tense.” she whispered. And this made him pause, staring straight ahead towards the exit of the the cemetery where he would take a right turn to the village outskirts, to where the Uchiha Compound now grew. He would enter the house and lay her on the couch and she would let him kiss her, and kiss her until the heat began to flow back into her body and warm her skin. And her warmth would seep into his bones and fight away the chill that overtook him from missing his best friend. 

And they would moan and sigh and move together to forget, if only for a few moments their sadness. 

But she had never said this before. Never called it her past. It was always her present, even more so on the day of his passing, it was always fresh. 

Still without looking at him her lips pressed warm despite her tears to his neck, feeling the pulse of his heart on her mouth. Pulling back she whispered. 

“I loved him.”

Finally daring to look down at her in his arms he studied her face, not as pale as it usually was after so much weeping, so much feeling, so much misery. 

Breathing in softly and shakily as she often did after heavy tears she smiled and it struck him as the most painfully beautiful thing he had seen since the dying hue of blue that had come over Naruto’s eyes as he faded away. 

“He told me… to be happy.” She whispered again, and her fingers, warmed as they touched his lips, sliding smooth over the curve of his mouth. “I love someone else now.”

And he continued walking then, unable to say anything. 

He had told her more than once the depth of what he felt for her, and so there could only be one person she meant. 

He was glad that with certainty he knew she could only mean him.

Easter Egg Hunt

He could not believe the stupidity of the Hokage. 

“You are an idiot.” He said it again, just to make sure that the blonde shadow clone standing next to him appearing increasingly sheepish understood how much he disliked him in that moment. 

The Naruto clone grinned, all embarrassment and humiliation in a package of gold and sunshine. “I don’t think this can be all my fault. If you and Hinata had bothered to help me-”

“We did help. If I do recall we were babysitting your spawn. If I had known you were hiding actual eggs all over the village I would have been less obliging.” Sasuke snapped sharply. 

Naruto sighed then. “Okay, okay… so the eggs not found may rot, that’s not a big deal though is it? Maybe some raccoons or something will get a nice treat out of it.”

“Or they could rot and stink worse than hell. You’re forgetting your wife is pregnant again. If she smells rotting eggs walking down the street-” Sasuke didn’t even have to finish that sentence, Naruto’s face pinched tightly as though he was sucking on a lime peel. “Okay. No. We have to find them for sure!” Images of Sakura green and sick followed by her fury at realizing it was his fault flashed through his mind and accelerated his heart beat into a frantic pulse.

To accent his worry a handful of Naruto’s popped up beside him in clouds of white and Sasuke rolled his eyes again as he pushed another patch of grass aside to check for brightly colored decorated eggs. 

“Where is your wife though?” One of the Naruto clones asked, and the other handful chorused in various tones “Yeah?” 

“I’m here!” 

She appeared through the trees at the outskirts of town in her Easter dress, white as snow, and covered in tiny pastel hand prints courtesy of their children. Sasuke had thought that she would think it was a ruined dress when their eldest had promptly painted his hand on his mother’s skirt but to his surprise Hinata had been delighted, proceeding to take all the babies with their candy colored palms to her skirt. 

In her arms were over a dozen eggs in various shades of pink, yellow, blue and green. 

“Oh wow!” Naruto was so thankful that all but one of his clones dissipated. “Oh thank god. Hinata, you’re a life saver.”

“She’s a Hyuuga.” Sasuke scoffed. “Those eyes can find anything.”

Raising her chin just a little Hinata shot him a look, it had the same effect as being glared at by a kitten. “I’m an Uchiha.” Her voice was firm. “Uchiha eyes see everything.”

Naruto smirked and glanced at his friend only to grin even more broadly at the red tint rising to Sasuke’s face. 

“Right.” He began, ignoring her satisfied grin as she wandered over and careful to not crush the eggs kissed his nose. “My mistake.” 

Chakra Control

(i dunno. written in fifteen minutes. just getting things out of my head that are taking up room. I have no idea what’s going on here.)

Returning to Konoha had been a mistake. He couldn’t compute what had made him think that he could waltz back into the village riddled with families of shinobi he had either hurt or murdered with impunity. 

What a fucking disaster. 

Covered in splatters of something- he had a feeling it was overly ripe vegetables from the market- he stormed through the town, letting the rolling rage of his energy carve a path through the crowds. People side stepped and stumbled to get out of the way of the incoming Uchiha, their eyes wide their mouths wider. 

Idly and with a lot more aggression than necessary he ripped a piece of something- tomato skin probably- from the side of his face where it had smashed to a stop. Courtesy of angry housewives with no husbands and children with no fathers. 

God-fucking-damn it. 

Above, the clouds were a blazing white against the azure blue of a summer day. The sun glimmered and sparkled with glory, unaware of spotlighting Sasuke’s humiliation as he ripped through town back towards the abandoned Uchiha district at the outskirts. 

Something wet and slimy was sliding down the back of his neck and sucking in a long breath he reached back and studied his hand for a second. Just long enough to ascertain that they had in fact thrown eggs at him as well. 

Cutting to the right, he headed towards the river, shooting a glare at a gaping pedestrian before shoving past through an alley and then pumping chakra into his legs jumped onto the roof top, smooth as a cat on a hunt. 

Although he felt more like a dog with it’s tail between his legs. 

What a fucking disaster he was. 

Standing on the surface of the water had a way of soothing nerves she couldn’t grapple with on land. The pulse and lick of the liquid beneath her feet was familiar and calming. Sometimes she wondered if perhaps it reminded her of being in the womb, tightly wrapped and swimming in an ever present hug. 

Eyes closed Hinata let the sunshine slide over her skin, the warmth almost a burn on her paleness. She had to be careful practicing her control in the water because without the cover of the trees she could end up blistered and in pain. More than once she had gone home mourning the loss of her smooth white shoulders, given way to freckles and aching red skin. 

It was a price she was willing to pay though, to calm the twisting knots of her stomach and the nerves that made her hands shake while speaking. 

Pulling her dark hair up into a ponytail she sighed, and keeping her eyes closed shifted her weight back and forth on her feet, feeling the slip and slide of the river lick the top of her foot and then sink back down below as she caused waves to dance along her ankles. 

Then with a flourish of her hand she pulled a ribbon from the river in an arc that followed her slender fingers. It sparkled in the light, casting rainbows where the sun shone through before spilling smoothly back into the water’s current on the other side of her body. 

Getting a feel for the stream’s mood Hinata smiled, amused by it’s playfulness and lifted another hand, arching it along her body. The water danced in a twirl above her head, sinking back into it’s mother river below with a splash.

Opening her eyes Hinata breathed in deep. Time to work. 

Setting her jaw seriously she spread her legs to anchor herself to the heartbeat of the water and extended her arms wide, letting her chakra roll out in a sphere of influence along the molecules of the current. 

One by one the dewy beads began to rise to her call, pearls of liquid that tightened and knit into each other in a solid orb of protection, tightening and tightening together to create a womb of safety. Brow furrowed Hinata stitched the water tighter determined that no kunai or jutsu should break through her shield. 

As her chakra intensified the river rushed around the glittering ball that shimmered like impure glass, sparkling in the daylight hiding the slim focused form within. 

He had never seen something like it before and so for a moment he forgot he was covered in the rotten tomatoes of disgruntled villagers and stared through the last of the trees before the river bed. 

The ball was crystal white and reflected the light of the sun in all directions, making it difficult to look at it directly. The river raged around it and tendrils of water snapped and hissed like snakes along it’s surface, hiding further what he thought might be a silhouette within it’s confines. 

Curiosity was an innate Uchiha trait and even in his state of dishevelment he found himself inching forward, hand sliding to his katana at his back, fingering the hilt absently. 

Black eyes focused he eyed the edge of the river bed where the water shuddered against the smooth rocks and glistened on the sparkling sand. Brow furrowed he slid out of his sandals and stepped into the water, watching with interest as the sphere at the center of the river shuddered and glistened in response. 

“What the…”

Idly he lifted a kunai in his hand, cocking his head slightly. 

Well fuck, curiosity killed the cat, right? 

And he tossed the blade true into the center of the glass orb. 

He may as well have picked a fight with a river god. 

Grunting he ducked as a solid mass of water shot from the liquid at his feet, aiming for his head, and another coming from his side. Startled now he moved to flip and sucked in a breath, looking down at the water wrapping tighter and tighter around his feet, where he had willingly placed himself at the river’s edge. 

Oh shit. 

Drawing the katana he narrowed his eyes slicing through the onslaught of prodding jabbing water, watching it disperse and tumble to the ground with every slash, soaking him to the bone rather quickly. 

Eyes flickering to the orb he slammed the katana between his feet and glad to feel the release of the chakra binding him to the river bed he snapped onto the water surface and shot forward towards the glittering sphere. 

Manipulating water was not his best skill, even walking on it caused him to flounder and concentrate but whatever the hell that thing was, it wasn’t friendly and he didn’t like leaving fights half finished. 

Raising his katana he dragged in a breath and launching himself from the rolling river surface lifting the blade in both hands, aiming to come down at the top of sphere with all the force he could muster. 

Hinata frowned within the warmth and security of her water shell, flinching as her chakra writhed violently outside of her defense. 

Calm down, Hinata. 

Her anxiety was getting the best of her. Fighting opponents that were not even visible with her chakra. The river was playful and responsive to her energy. Hopefully there was no one out there or she would be soaking them to the bone with her uncontrolled flailing. 

Grappling with the wriggling water she sighed, and shook her head, finally opening her eyes and releasing the sphere with a wave of her hand. No, why wouldn’t her chakra and the river relax? What was wrong with her?

The orb disintegrated like ice before a fireplace, falling apart at the top and with a gasp she looked up, a shot of electricity running through her as her shinobi senses screamed of threat. 

Byuakugan snapping to her face and with her feet sliding out to absorb the blow she cried out, not in fear but a battle cry, raising both hands. 

“Hn!”

Sasuke’s katana slammed hard into a blue sheen that looked like water but was solid as steel, the impact sent ripples of pain up his forearms and with a grunt of effort he flipped backwards, using the force of the impact and the incoming blow from the wielder below the shield to vault him back to his feet a few steps away on the river bed, panting. 

The shield melted away into the river again in sparkling tendrils of water, revealing the stunned and wide eyed shape of one Hinata Hyuuga, staring at him in shock and confusion, hands raised and at the ready. 

“Uchiha-san!” her voice was high pitched and confused as her face. “W-what are you-?”

“Hyuuga.” He stared, as confused and panicked as she was but with a little more control on his face. “What the hell are you doing?” 

Hinata didn’t lower her battle stance, Byakugan staring through his skin and into the folds of his chakra. “I… I was training.” 

Frowning Sasuke slid his katana back along his back. “Hn.” 

At the sight of his weapon disappearing Hinata slowly straightened and breathing deep allowed her Byakugan to fade. “…I…I am so sorry, was my- was I-?” realizing suddenly why her chakra had been so aggressive and unwilling to comply with her demand for calm she closed her eyes, blushing hard. “Was I attacking you?”

Sasuke didn’t move, interested in the fact that she was a little embarrassed. 
“You’re not the first today.” He grunted, starting back towards the river bed. “Don’t worry about it.”

Something about his last sentence made her start and taking a handful of steps after him she paused, hands to her lips, suddenly noticing the stains along his shirt and pants, the residue of vegetable skins at his neck and arms. 

“Oh….oh no.” she stepped a few waves closer along the river, and he stopped at her voice, glancing over his shoulder at her with a frown. 

“What?”

Lips pressed tightly together Hinata searched his face, lifting a hand up with a long slender finger not pointing at him so much as gesturing. A tendril of water rose by his feet and he shifted against it, unconsciously reaching for his katana again. 

“N-no… I…” Hinata frowned and the water moved slowly along in a ribbon of pulsing liquid, smoothing along his cheek, washing away the remnants of something thrown at him in hate. 

Holding perfectly still Sasuke blinked, focusing on breathing and the feel of her chakra infused river sliding over his skin, wiping away at his shame. 

“Who did this?” He had never heard Hinata Hyuuga’s voice so hard, and he wondered that like the water she could be fluid, warm, and gentle, or solid as the shield she wielded against his sword. 

“A lot of people.” He managed after a moment. 

The water slid back into the river and Hinata walked slowly towards him. Her frown unshakable now on her face. “I’m so sorry.”

Keeping his face still he stared at her some more, curious not just about her expression but the way his heart was reacting, thumping around angrily in his chest. 

“Your apology is useless, you did nothing.”

“Well.” She admitted softly. “I… I wouldn’t have let them, if I had been there.”

He stared some more, unable to reply. 

“I’m good at…shielding things.” She added and smiled finally, enveloping him in that moment in the warmth of the summer day. 

When he didn’t reply she cocked her head, just a little. She couldn’t imagine herself in his shoes, covered in the hatred people had for him, wearing it on his clothing and skin as evidence. 

“I…if you stand still, I can wash it off.” She added, and her hands spread wide, the river replying to her call and lifting in ribbons that danced and twisted around her like dragonflies and butterflies and bees all swirling at the silent song of her chakra. 

This was usually the moment when Sasuke would scoff, or glare and step away, dismissing the offer with distaste, maybe even a scathing remark. 

But her eyes were wide and open, and her smile was warm where he had felt freezing. 

He was tired of being cold. 

“…okay…” Then hurriedly. “I hardly believe you have that kind of chakra control. You’ll have to prove it.” 

Her smile didn’t waver, perhaps because the way he said it was obviously to excuse himself allowing her touch. 

“I guess, we’ll see.” 

Katana

Major Hinata OOC. I cry mercy. 

Music listened to while writing: Linkin Park: Recharged 

Bringing her weight down moving with the spasm of energy through her chest and spine she tossed herself head over heels backwards, slamming into the dirt so the ground shattered in craters around her knees and feet on impact. Chakra and excitement rolling out of her in waves.

This was the kind of battle when the light never came.

With a burst her body shot forward, the impact of her fist to the enemy throat knocked his Adam’s apple into the back of his neck. A nauseating crunch echoed. His eyes widened and the darkness of death ate away the life in that face. A flickering candle in a windstorm of her making, and then he was gone.

Breathing deep she ducked as a sword came flying from behind her, Byakugan eyes pulsed with the blood and chakra pumping through her veins. Huffing hard she kicked backwards, extra pounds of energy sending the man flying back into an ally in a matching black mask.

Behind her own Anbu cover she smirked, watching as the two impaled each other in their struggle to gain their footing from the force of her attack.

Snapping her turned head out of the way of incoming kunai from behind she smiled bigger. Hands lit with the blue flames of her gentle fist she twisted, ripping into the chest cavity of the idiot behind her who had dared to throw the knives and get close.

Fingers wrapping around the pulsing thing that was his blood pump she grunted, ripping it out with a vicious snap of tendons, breaking ribs and sucking sounds.

This seemed to cause a pause in the frantic energy of the incoming shinobi. Their weapons raised as she watched the now heartless man before her stare with uncomprehending eyes as his organ gave two more feeble pumps before his knees gave out and he landed on the moss below.

With her hands covered in the sticky film of someone else’s life she turned, her mask surveying the stillness on everyone’s limbs, counting quickly.

There were thirty. Perhaps this would take five minutes.

Either they would want to avenge, and pose an actual challenge or they were wetting themselves and it would be a slaughter.

She squeezed the heart until the pump crumbled thickly, like ground meat squished between her fingers and she let the scraps of red drop from between her digits, making wet slopping sounds as they landed next to it’s original host.

“So?” She settled into battle stance again, and her voice was light as the blood dripped down her forearm.

“Who is next?”

The spell broke at the crack of a branch behind them followed by the moan of a fallen comrade and she smiled within the confines of her mask, watching the tension on their bodies switch from terrified to furious.

Yes.

Come at me.

They were a multi layered mountain and she relished it as they fell upon her. Moving with the grace of her clan, the grace of all the clans she twisted through their blows, feeling the touches of the air being broken around her although nothing landed on her skin.

There was a reason why she was who she was. Called what she was called, whispered about, the Pearl Eyed Nightmare.

Although, few had ever seen such a thing. Few that still could talk anyway. It might have been something she encouraged. Fear was a better weapon than any sword. That’s probably why she never bothered to be afraid. Why hand her enemy an atomic bomb? It seemed stupid.

With a breath that was speeding up more from excitement than strain she ducked, kicking the legs out from under one of the men and throwing him over her shoulder at the incoming one from behind. She swept the legs of the next one as she dodged the blow of his kunai to her ribcage, using his wrist in two seconds to shove the knife he still held into his comrade on her right.

With a jam of her elbow down into his forearm she broke the limb making him scream and let go of the knife which she grabbed as it jumped into the air, throwing it into the head of the incoming attack from the left. Then with a deep breath she ducked as a katana swept the air above her, making her play limbo with the deadly blade.

In the speckled light the men clad in black from head to toe were shadows unable to reach for her, all of them a crowd over a small lithe shape that moved as the twisting light coming down from the trees, uncatchable, fluid.

Kicking the katana from the badly trained arm that held it she snatched it from midair and threw it as spear into it’s wielder and the man behind him skewering them both. With mild amusement she twisted and blocked the snap of a left hook coming at her from someone she had not noticed.

Her surprise was short lived, another mask glared at her, that of a red tailed hawk, it’s angry nightmare inducing beak evil as it stared.

The men were falling all around her as they finally realized their wounds. Knees weakening with the growing terror of understanding. The fight had lasted a total of three minutes and forty two seconds. It appeared that they had indeed wet themselves.

Muscles and hearts and lives had been lost in the fray, moans could be heard though not everyone was dead yet. She had to finish this or there would be talk and you couldn’t have that in her profession.

But there was the hawk, with his hand now wrapped around her raised wrist, his grip an iron shackle.

“Enough.” The voice that came from behind the hawk mask was smooth and tempered like steel and she had for a moment the inexplicable desire to launch herself at him to see if she could draw blood.

It would not be the first time that this thought fluttered it’s wings within her head, it would also not be the first time she had had to tell herself no.

There were other times of course that she had not refused her desire. She still sported wounds from it that would scab and leave pleasant slashes of memory in the scars along her torso.

God, how she wanted to taste his blood off her finger tips.

“They aren’t dead yet.” She replied, and her peregrine falcon mask almost made her sound breathless, although he knew better.

If she was breathless it was because she had been excited. The blood lust had been woken with the force of a tsunami off a coast. It would sweep them all away if he didn’t stop it from gaining strength and force.

He could see within her the spring wound tight, threatening to set her loose and for a moment he had the fleeting furious thought that he was glad he had not been sent out with her on the mission alone.

Two handlers had seemed like an unusual request at first from the Hokage, but upon seeing her movements on the first mission, watching her panting with the desire for chaos he had suddenly understood.

Up above, watching from one of the trees his older brother let out a soft whistle.

“We need them to talk. I think the stunt with the heart did the trick in getting them to understand the seriousness of their situation.”

Breath coming in slowly, carefully the peregrine falcon mask straightened, although the chakra was still pulsing just beneath her skin making everything around her feel both hot and cold, including the quickly numbing hand the Hawk was using to hold her.

With a final warning squeeze he let go, surprised yet again that nerves and instinct refused to let him walk away from her without keeping his eyes firmly on her shape.

He didn’t need to see her mouth to know she was grinning at him, the predatory smile matching her mask with a precision that tightened the muscles of his stomach until he felt a little ill.

“Now, now.” His brother sighed deeply. “Let’s not do this thing again. You know that in the end, we hold the final key, Peregrine.”

Her code name made her turn her head slowly towards the man on the tree, her curtain of black hair moving softly with the wind.

It didn’t escape either of them that she was beautiful, that like a masterfully made blade she breathed for the touch of blood with the elegance and awe inspiring smoothness of a work of art.

The thing was, unlike a blade she wanted everyone’s blood and even though the brothers had been tasked with being the wielders of this weapon, it often felt more like she wielded them.

If they had not been as close as they were, able to use each other’s strengths and cover each other’s weaknesses there had been a couple close calls where she would have taken them- if not to death’s door, then to the hospital for an extended stay.

“Fine.” She said it like she had never intended to do anything other than listen. Turning her back to them- a thing that always made him grind his teeth with either irritation or envy- she surveyed her work.

The men, a cohort of nearly forty, were sprawled in various states of death or dying along the ground and her eyes scanned them until she found one, he supposed, with the strongest flickering light.

Walking with the silky and leisurely strut of a panther to a kill she waded through the corpses, stepping uncaringly on the chest of a wide eyed and empty shell of a man to reach the one leaning against a tree trunk, his eyes widening with panic as she neared.

His eyes stayed fixed on her hand, now crusting with drying blood from her flourishing touch. Taking hearts out of men’s bodies was her signature. If anyone ever doubted who she was before a fight, after witnessing that they always knew.

Pearl Eyed Nightmare.

“Wait.” Hawk snapped, and above him Falcon hissed a curse as he jumped down, though neither of them did anything as she reached down and took the man’s throat in her blood crusted hand.

She was too small to pick him up the way she did, but the chakra was pumping in her with the same hungry lust she had from the fight, and with it’s help she lifted the man high above her head, too short to really make his feet dangle.

It didn’t matter, the terror on his face was enough. Her grip, digging into his throat threatening to crack the trachea within it did the trick of making the action awful to watch.

“We will ask questions, and you will answer.” She began conversationally.

“Peregrine.” Falcon snapped tensely, although he and Hawk stayed where they were.

They knew better than to approach. Better to lose a possible information source than a comrade.

Or brother.

“You will answer and then those two over there will double check by going into your mind, making you nightmare until they find the truth.” Her smile was heard in her voice, her pleasure a smell in the air and a taste on the tongue.

A taste like copper.

Like blood.

“Peregrine.” Hawk hissed with impatience.

The tone registered, the brothers watched as her head seemed to cock, like she had just caught wind of their voices.

Falcon shifted sharply.

Shit.

“Damn it.” Hawk whispered, realizing his mistake.

They had just enough time to drag in a breath before she flickered out of sight, their Sharingan activating hard like a blow to each eye in their hurry to see her and by that saving grace they were able to block the incoming explosion of chakra and raw murder aimed at both.

With a shout Hawk ducked the flashing light of energy in her palms, aiming to take his heart out of his chest while Falcon slammed an elbow around towards the nape of her neck, although she was no longer there, twisting around him instead.

“Itachi!” In his panic Sasuke let the name slip and his brother gasped before throwing himself backwards. It was not what she had expected. She knew their fighting styles, the grace of their movements, the speed in their limbs, the way they dodged instead of closing the gap. His shoulder blades slammed into her, and her chakra lined hands cut at his skin although it didn’t stab.

She let out a hiss of air and when they hit the ground she knew she was done for. With a grin beneath her mask she felt first the one brother and then the other join as they pinned her to the ground.

She was fast, she was strong, she was however still a woman and on the ground two men had the upper hand and she knew it. Letting for the first time her body melt into the moss below her she sighed, staring through her mask up at the heavens where the light shifted against the green canopy.

They had been training, clearly. They had been discussing her fighting style so as to be sure how to disable her.

She needed to take that into consideration for next time or they would get boring.

“Fuck.” Sasuke breathed from behind his hawk mask.

It was too late, Itachi’s name had left his mouth. All of the men laying on the forest floor were going to have to die. Angrily he ripped his mask off, and Itachi beside him sighed, doing the same.

“Damnit, Sasuke.”

“Me?” His brother hissed, jerking his chin towards the sprawled and surprisingly quiet monster they had pinned to the ground. “What about her?”

“Yes, what about me?” Hinata’s smile was broad and all encompassing in it’s beauty and terror as Itachi removed her mask and tossed it aside.

On her forehead the only marring feature was the caged bird seal. He reached out one long finger, pressing it to the center of the mark, watching as the smile on her face evaporated and was replaced by the steely eyed dead core that he actually feared.

This bantering, fanged creature that smiled was just a facade. She was being agreeable, in her own agonizing way.

When her face smoothed to a placid stillness, and her brows calmed to straight dark lines along her forehead he knew they were on serious ground.

Dangerous ground.

“It costs a lot when we use this.” He whispered, glad that Sasuke’s sharingan was focused on her with an intensity that would have predicted the movement of the oxygen molecules in the air around her let alone her movements.

“It costs you bits of who you are, does it not? It fries your brain.” He breathed out softly, irritated that the wound on his back was causing him to feel dizzy.

“You don’t want to lose yourself. We know that. You know that. Don’t make me use this.”

In her stillness and with her face so calm she looked impossible. Her mouth was pink and small and plump, her cheeks smooth, there were no scars, there was no red lipstick, there were no fangs.

She was a girl. Just a girl with wide pale eyes, long lashes, a small nose.

Very softly, hardly audible she replied. “In another world, in a different place, it is you who suffer the stigma of being an abomination, an avenger for your clan. A madman. A monster.” She stared into his eyes, her pearly gaze unaffected by the usually intimidating sharingan.

Shifting her gaze from Itachi’s to Sasuke she stared into him as well, as if her unblinking bland focus could transmit the information. “I endure this because I know, somewhere else both of you suffer what I suffer. I know it.” Then with more conviction she murmured. “I’ve seen it.”

The shivers that slid down their spines were uncontrollable and Itachi felt himself scrunch his eyes with dislike at her, his hands were hot where they pinned her wrists to the ground.

It was not the first time she had stated she could see the alternate timelines. She had hinted before that she had seen the Uchihas. It was an effect of her Byakugan’s higher awakening, something written in ancient scrolls that they had considered myth but were now being realized as an actual possibility. Now that she, the last of the Hyuuga was exercising such abilities.

Although how much was true was hard to tell.

“Whatever.” Sasuke grunted. “Don’t move while we interrogate the leftovers, or we’ll have to leave you seizing on the ground.”

A small upturn of her lips graced her mouth then and he froze.

“They’re dead.”

Itachi closed his eyes for half a second.

Sasuke didn’t take his eyes off her, knowing better than to let her distract him into looking over his shoulder to check. If she said it, it was true and that meant they had lost the information they needed.

“I guess we’re going to have to hunt for another.” she continued conversationally as if two men weren’t pinning her to the ground with growing frustration.

“Fuck.” Itachi whispered, shoving himself to his feet.

And that’s what she had wanted.

She had wanted them all to die because then she had to go out again, to destroy more. To hunt, as she put it.

This was all a game to her.

After killing her murdering cousin, destroying the elders and founders of Konoha in charge of the massacre of her clan she had had no purpose. She had gone mad.

She disagreed with those statement vehemently and said simply. “I am a sharpened blade. I cut, or I go dull. Would you let yourself dull?”

And they wouldn’t. They were shinobi. Becoming dull was not an option. Death was. But not dullness.

“One day, you’ll regret all this.” Sasuke whispered to her softly as he stood, watching her continue to lay on the ground, staring past him at the shifting light in the tree canopy, the greens and golds, the warmth seeping into her bones.

She smiled then, a real smile that made her look young and soft and touchable.

“You’re wrong, you know.” And the tenderness in her voice made him pause, made Itachi turn to look at her, ripping his gaze from the desecrated bodies splayed over the ground to the bizarrely sweet image of her laying in the sun on the moss, relaxed.

“Do you know what regret means?” with her eyes closed her voice was getting more and more gentle, her breath coming slow and steady. “It means to be disappointed or saddened by something, a missed opportunity for instance.”

Itachi glanced at Sasuke at the same time his brother glanced at him.

“I didn’t have a chance to decide if I would regret or not. When my mother was cut from me by my cousin, it happened. I regretted. Every day. Always.” She opened her pearl eyes then and with the sun shining right into them, they were jewels, and the brothers wondered if perhaps she was not human.

Perhaps she was death.

Perhaps she was the angel sent to take men home.

“So, I won’t regret it one day. I have already done all my regretting. Now, there’s only this.” She lifted her hand up, and the crusted dry blood all over her pale limb was in stark contrast to her skin.

“I hope in the other universe you speak of so often, you are not this.” Itachi finally whispered, frowning at her with something along the lines of pity. But only just barely.

She laughed then and closed her eyes again as she let her limb drop to the ground.

“I think I will do my mission correctly next time. I wouldn’t want the Hokage considering another pair of handlers.” she admitted then, her amusement lighting her voice brightly. “You two are too deliciously ironic not to have around.”

Ironic.

Sasuke tried not to think too hard about it, as did his brother while they moved into the mess of corpses, breathing in deep for Katon to burn them to ashes.

Sometimes the katana they had been tasked with wielding, seemed to be wield them.

Bleeding Out

I should be writing one of the five on going fics I have but I’m not. I’m just not. No excuses. Just… that’s life.
*****

Ita-Hina
I have no plot. 
I make no excuses, there’s some serious OOC i think. Maybe? I dunno. 
May or may not continue this. Probably not. Not sure. I just needed space in my head. 
Inky

They sent her out for him alone as a test of her worthiness. Or at least that’s what she understood. She had been proving herself to the clan since she could walk and so it came as no surprise that a mission otherwise regarded as suicide would be given to her as though it were a thing wrapped in a silk bow. The smiles of her elders were coy, their eyes twinkling. It was practically Christmas at the Hyuuga Main House. 

She wasn’t sure what was the cause of cheer, her imminent death or perhaps the capture of a notorious S-ranked Criminal no one had yet to bring to justice by the hands of the Hyuuga Heiress. 

To be perfectly frank, she was fairly certain the first of the options was what had the men in her family all sparkly eyed. She had realized long ago that her worth was almost doubled if she died out in the battlefield in some tragic way. After all, that would leave room for the true muscle of the family, Hanabi to take the reigns, it would in-debt the village to the clan, it would give the clan cause to do some rather unsavory things as retribution to those who felled their Hime. Their Princess. Their sacrifice. 

Regardless, with a grim set to her jaw she had taken her orders and prepared for her mission, feeling the dryness of her throat and tongue inside her head like a bad omen of things to come. 

Anbu had been unsuccessful in bringing back the nightmarish Itachi, a whole clan had fallen to his hands at the tender age of 13 and yet here she was, single solitary Hinata Hyuuga, out on a mission to bring him back. No team, no back up. Just the endless black of an abyss before her in the onyx eyes of the murdering Uchiha.

“This is madness.” Neji’s voice had been shaking, his lips pale, his eyes wide. The stoic facade could not hide his terror. “How could they possibly think you-”

“I will do as requested.” Hinata murmured. “Perhaps, if I am lucky he will not kill me.” She lowered her head busying herself with her gear, although all of it looked like play things when the task at hand was really in her mind’s eye. What good were kunai against a tidal wave of Mangekyou? What was the point of exploding tags against nightmares killing her inside?

“But Hinata-”

Raising her pearl eyes to his reflective gaze his Hime smiled sadly, donning her pack onto her shoulder with tired slow movements. “What choice do I have, Neji-nii? What choice?” 

With the blood coursing through their veins, he knew there was none. 

When she finally found him it came as a shock. Like looking for a needle fallen on a carpet she had spread herself thin, her palms tracing over the smooth fabric expecting the prick of pain and finding nothing for months. 

And then all of a sudden there he was, a sharp point of pain and the first drops of blood that were soon to be followed by a torrent. 

He was still, several kilometers away, and even from a distance she could see the beat of his heart had slowed down to nearly nothing. Chakra flowed in odd twists and turns within his limbs and torso. When the rain began to fall she moved. 

Tsunade had been apologetic as she exited the village, her eyes searching her face before she donned the porcelain mask to hide her face. “Anbu are chosen for their skills not their rank, but I know your heart is not in this mission, or likely any I could use you for. For that I am sorry.” 

Hinata had held the mask in her hands, the feral face of a panther stared back at her with cut out unseeing eyes and she sighed deeply. “I am here to serve my Hokage, to protect my village, to bring honor to my clan.” Raising the pale gaze so prized by many she whispered. “I am honored you think me worthy of this mission.” 

The blonde smiled then as Hinata placed the mask on her face, the bite of the tattoo that had branded her still stung on her arm. 

“I chose you because you can say things like that with a straight face I almost believed. You think you’ll die… I think you may actually complete this and come back to us.” 

Behind the mask it was even easier still to lie and so Hinata had done so. “I trust the judgement of my mentor and Hokage, Tsunade-sama. I will see you soon.”

Her skills were a strange set, the main of which were her eyes of course and their ability to see far ahead, so far ahead that any sense of surprise should be neutralized. She was also an expert at covert missions, her skills not prized in head on battles were essential in the real espionage that gathered intel. And the last but not least of her credentials for this task…she was angelic. 

That was the thing that had her where she was, in the thickest forest of the Rain, where there was never a day where she wasn’t soaked to the bone and where Itachi had last been sighted. 

That one thing she had no control over was what her Hokage was betting would save her life. Something about the put together of her wide eyes, her soft features, her soft voice.

She didn’t sneak up on him but rather began walking with purposefully clumsy steps that she knew he could hear even through the fall of the rain. 

Her hands reached up and removed the panther mask, dropping it on the way, fingers undoing the gray flak jacket and tossing it aside. Sniffing deeply and getting herself in touch with her growing panic she wrapped her arm, burying the tattoo that would give her away even as she tore at the fabric of her shirt, and finally she slid a kunai over her cheek, letting it shed blood. 

Breathing slowly and carefully she kept her eyes down, bursting into the clearing and with a practiced widening of the eyes froze staring at the Uchiha whose rotating red gaze fixed itself on her. 

He took one long look, and as she stared, mouth parting open in shock he cocked his head. 

“…Hyuuga. What is a little dove like you doing out here all alone?”

What indeed?