The Highborn and the Waif
Characters: Konohamaru, Hanabi, random Hyuugas and Nobles who aren't important.
Setting: Alleyways near the Hyuuga Mansion.
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Violence and some language.
Summary: Konohamaru gets beat up in an alley. Hanabi walks by with her entourage and notices. Young love.
If the first punch hadn't caught him, he'd have been out of there without any problem, and none of the weird crap that followed would have ever happened. He'd never have seen HER, never have wanted to-- But no, no sense getting into that now. He'd have run instead, quick and nimble and quick until he lost them, or found a place to hide, or he could concentrate enough to conceal himself somewhere. But the bastard had got him, a good hardfisted clip on the shoulder which would leave a purple bruise visible the next day, and which left his body spinning with the force, careening him directly into Noble Tough Guy #2.
Why exactly had Konohamaru thought going through the better part of the city looking for trouble had been a good idea?
When it came down to it, it was because he'd gotten sick of looking at the hopeless, dead eyes of the people in the slums for days on end. He'd wanted to strike back somehow, even if it was just a filched wallet or a cut purse or two. He'd been a noble himself, a year ago, more or less. Was it only a year? It felt like an entire lifetime since he'd started living with Udon and Moegi in the orphanage. It was like he was a different person now. He knew what it was like to live in luxury, and so he knew how easy it would be for these upper-crusties to help and give to the people beneath them. But they didn't, not a one of them. All they did was keep accumulating wealth to themselves, leaving none for anybody else, getting richer and richer and leaving the commoners to get poorer and poorer, hungrier and sicker and-- Konohamaru was sick of nobility. He wanted to strike back.
So he'd gone looking for trouble. What would you expect? He looked up to Naruto of all people for a role model.
Konohamaru reeled from the blow. The punch HURT. He still wasn't used to taking hits like that, no matter how many times he'd found himself being pummeled in the streets since he'd left the palace. He tried to roll with it, do what his instructors used to tell him when they'd taught him as a royal bratling how to defend himself. But there was a big difference between elegant, refined sparring and the gritty brawling in the dirty alley like he found himself in now. Noble Thug #2 caught him in his arms (not as muscled as people in the poor district. They didn't do work, the nobility. But it was still more than enough to beat up on a thirteen year old street urchin like Konohamaru with) leered down at him, and struck him with a downward fist diagonally across the face. Konohamaru fell hard onto his side, already feeling his cheek begin to swell.
He tried to get up, struggle to his knees and his feet. But neither of his oppressors would allow that. He'd stolen from them, or tried to at any rate. They weren't letting him go anywhere. They exchanged a gloating look between them. A hungry, carnivorous sort of look that said, "We're going to teach this punk a lesson, aren't we? Oh yes. Yes we are." They were nobles. Konohamaru looked to them to be pure riffraff, out of his prescribed place on these streets. One of the few remaining clean and dainty streets of Konoha.
They began laying hard kicks into his stomach and sides and, despite his best efforts, Konohamaru let out a snarling pained cry.
Hanabi strode slowly, head high, back straight, hair bobbing with every step and white gown flowing against her curves. Two white-eyed guards walked in front of her. Two white-eyed guards walked behind. She was young, but she was every inch a Hyuuga - the cold, perceptive eyes, the brimming, barely-hidden strength, the contempt she held for idiots.
Like that boy, Hanabi thought, revisiting the three hours she’d spent confined in a velvet prison, making nice with other nobles plus one drunk adolescent who’d thought himself worthy of the Hyuuga heiress.
As if anyone like that existed.
If Father hears of his impudence, his parents will fall out of favor. How will -
Wait.
“What is that sound?” She asked the men in front of her. She could have used her eyes, but outside the house, that was her guards’ duty.
The smallest flicker of energy as the guard before her to the left triggered his Byakugan.
“Lady Hanabi, the faint cries you hear are coming from a brawl around the next corner, two blocks from the mansion. Two richly-dressed persons are kicking one curled-up street waif between them.”
“I see,” Hanabi replied. None of them slowed their pace.
The party turned the corner.
The scene was exactly as her protector described it, except the weak cries of the boy and the foul jeers and insults of the two laughing hyenas could be more clearly distinguished.
Hanabi held out a hand for her men to stop, one block away from the fighting.
The blows were crude, graceless. These boys were not fighters like she was. They were a little pudgy. Spoiled brats of noble birth. Hanabi wondered why so many aristocrats were so useless.
The heiress turned her disinterested gaze on the creature they were attacking. Bloody, whimpering, and all-around absolutely pathetic. Beneath her.
“Lady Hanabi?”
The weak are meant to be trod on.
The boy was crying out in pain. Her blank eyes told her that he was in danger of having his internal organs damaged from the continuous kicks and blows.
“We should get going. You have training scheduled in fifteen minutes.”
The weak are meant to be trod on.
His moans were growing fainter. Even without activating her eyes, she could see his breaking blood vessels spread their warm liquid underneath his skin in wide, purple-yellow blotches.
Hanabi made her decision.
“They are in my way,” she said softly, her face perfectly controlled.
Her guards nodded, their visages much the same. “Yes, milady.”
The one to the right of her walked up to the scuffle, and stood to the side. The boy’s two assailants paid him no mind, having not noticed whose House he was from. After observing for two seconds, the guard spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the din.
“If one drop of blood stains these stones, your parents will be the ones to clean it up, and I doubt they will be very happy with you for that. Leave immediately.”
Konohamaru looked up with bleary eyes at the... guy... guard... whoever, that had stopped them. He lay on his side on the alley floor, and there was blood in his eye. He couldn't see, everything was red or spotted or blurring or- Or maybe the blood was in his mouth. He could taste iron somewhere, in between the spittle and the swelling and the sharp jagged something that was biting into his tongue. He spat whatever it was out of his mouth weakly, and saw a tooth slip across the ground. His second tooth lost since he'd started living on the street.
Dimly, he could hear the two bastards above him making apologies, excuses, backing off. He wanted to talk, add insults and jeers so that they'd walk with damaged pride if nothing else. But he couldn't seem to work up the energy to work his lips and speak words. But the important thing was that they were backing off. Leaving. Going away. But really, he wasn't paying attention to that. He was trying to flex the fingers in his right hand. One of the bastards had laughingly stomped on it with his big expensive boot. Crushing it and grinding it down out of cruelty- there was no other reason, goddamnit. But his fingers moved, they weren't broken. That was good. That meant he could keep picking pockets with them, could keep Udon and Moegi half-fed and half-alive and half-happy. When he got back to them. When he just stood up. That would be in... just a minute.
There was a girl, over there, surrounded by men. A girl with white eyes. White eyes looking at him dispassionately, like he was absolutely nothing to her. How do you get eyes like that?
It should be easy to get back on his feet. But Konohamaru hurt all over. Why wasn't his body moving? Everything felt black. Everything... WAS black. All he could see was black... Black, and white eyes.
And Konohamaru lost consciousness on the alley floor.
Hanabi listened to the half-wits’ apologies as they bowed and made placating gestures. At least these pigs knew their place. Most likely their parents weren’t very high up the social ladder, for them to be so sycophantic. That, or they were much smarter than how they looked.
Probably the former.
“Enough. Leave,” her guard commanded. As one, the two kowtowed, turned, and walked off quickly. They didn’t start running until they were a block away, but Hanabi had already dismissed them from her mind.
She was observing the boy on the ground. He seemed to have lost consciousness.
Ordinarily, Hanabi’s guards would have carried him over to the side of a street and dropped him there so that she may pass unhindered. They started forward to do so now.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
The breath of the boy lying limp before her rattled and rasped. His light brown hair had spread, matted with sweat and dirt, like a fan across the ground. Some blood had seeped through his rags. He looked like he was in agony even while he was unconscious. A quick glance with her Byakugan told her exactly how severe his wounds were.
His upper torso would be very sore for at least a week, but his legs were mostly unharmed. He would be able to walk.
Silence reigned for thirty seconds. Hanabi thought over what she was going to do, and speculated on why she was even considering it. What did it matter if a piece of trash was left on the road? What did it matter if wandering gentry stepped on it upon encountering it?
“The alley in front of the gates, directly across the west wing of the mansion. Lie him down behind the boxes piled up in the middle. It would not do for something so unsightly to be seen so close to home.”
If her guards were perturbed because of her request, they didn’t show it. The two at her flank removed themselves from formation to do her bidding.
“Yes, milady.”
-------------------------------
And Konohamaru lay in the alley for a time, and there he dreamed of his dead grandfather again.
"Grandfather! Why did you go?" Konohamaru asked him, desperation and hurt in his voice. "If you were still here, everything would be okay!"
His grandfather was smoking a pipe in contemplation, but on hearing Konohamaru's voice he tilted his head down at the boy. He did not answer him, but only laid his hand down on Konohamaru's head, and smiled.
Konohamaru woke up with a start.
He still hurt- that was the first thing he realized. He tried to get up, tried to look around, see where he was. But he fell back onto the alley floor with a groan, clutching at his side where the kicks had been strongest. His jaw hurt, it felt like an entire half of his face was swollen. He felt around in his mouth with his tongue. Yep, tooth still missing. His ribs and his arms and his hand- all bruised.
He checked himself over. Everything hurt, but there was nothing serious. No bones broken that he could tell, the bleeding had all stopped. There was a good sized bump on his head, but he'd live.
As he took stock of his injuries, memories flooded back into his confused brain. Getting caught. Getting the shit kicked out of him. Getting... rescued? A girl, around his own age. Long dark hair. White eyes.
White eyes meant Hyuuga.
He wasn't in the same alley he'd been fighting in. He was out of the way of anything, sheltered by boxes and out of the way of foot traffic. Had he crawled here afterwards? No... no, he had the distinct impression he'd been carried. The Hyuugas had moved him? Why? Hyuugas don't help other people, they don't even help each other. Or so Konohamaru had been told by his uncle Asuma, once upon a time. Back in his other life.
What the hell, so they'd just shucked him aside and then gone on their merry way? They could've at least gotten him some actual medical care or something... geez! Now Iruka was gonna throw a fit when he saw him all bruised up and...
That girl. She'd been a Hyuuga. Her cold eyes on him as he lay bleeding-- it'd been eerie. He hadn't liked it. But she'd... she'd helped him. She'd gotten rid of the grinning noble bastards, and she'd had him moved to safety. Was she the one he had to thank? A slip of a girl like that, she couldn't be the one in charge. But she was. Konohamaru knew that.
But still- If he ever saw her again, Konohamaru wasn't sure whether he wanted to thank her or not.
Setting: Alleyways near the Hyuuga Mansion.
Rating: PG-13
Warning: Violence and some language.
Summary: Konohamaru gets beat up in an alley. Hanabi walks by with her entourage and notices. Young love.
If the first punch hadn't caught him, he'd have been out of there without any problem, and none of the weird crap that followed would have ever happened. He'd never have seen HER, never have wanted to-- But no, no sense getting into that now. He'd have run instead, quick and nimble and quick until he lost them, or found a place to hide, or he could concentrate enough to conceal himself somewhere. But the bastard had got him, a good hardfisted clip on the shoulder which would leave a purple bruise visible the next day, and which left his body spinning with the force, careening him directly into Noble Tough Guy #2.
Why exactly had Konohamaru thought going through the better part of the city looking for trouble had been a good idea?
When it came down to it, it was because he'd gotten sick of looking at the hopeless, dead eyes of the people in the slums for days on end. He'd wanted to strike back somehow, even if it was just a filched wallet or a cut purse or two. He'd been a noble himself, a year ago, more or less. Was it only a year? It felt like an entire lifetime since he'd started living with Udon and Moegi in the orphanage. It was like he was a different person now. He knew what it was like to live in luxury, and so he knew how easy it would be for these upper-crusties to help and give to the people beneath them. But they didn't, not a one of them. All they did was keep accumulating wealth to themselves, leaving none for anybody else, getting richer and richer and leaving the commoners to get poorer and poorer, hungrier and sicker and-- Konohamaru was sick of nobility. He wanted to strike back.
So he'd gone looking for trouble. What would you expect? He looked up to Naruto of all people for a role model.
Konohamaru reeled from the blow. The punch HURT. He still wasn't used to taking hits like that, no matter how many times he'd found himself being pummeled in the streets since he'd left the palace. He tried to roll with it, do what his instructors used to tell him when they'd taught him as a royal bratling how to defend himself. But there was a big difference between elegant, refined sparring and the gritty brawling in the dirty alley like he found himself in now. Noble Thug #2 caught him in his arms (not as muscled as people in the poor district. They didn't do work, the nobility. But it was still more than enough to beat up on a thirteen year old street urchin like Konohamaru with) leered down at him, and struck him with a downward fist diagonally across the face. Konohamaru fell hard onto his side, already feeling his cheek begin to swell.
He tried to get up, struggle to his knees and his feet. But neither of his oppressors would allow that. He'd stolen from them, or tried to at any rate. They weren't letting him go anywhere. They exchanged a gloating look between them. A hungry, carnivorous sort of look that said, "We're going to teach this punk a lesson, aren't we? Oh yes. Yes we are." They were nobles. Konohamaru looked to them to be pure riffraff, out of his prescribed place on these streets. One of the few remaining clean and dainty streets of Konoha.
They began laying hard kicks into his stomach and sides and, despite his best efforts, Konohamaru let out a snarling pained cry.
Hanabi strode slowly, head high, back straight, hair bobbing with every step and white gown flowing against her curves. Two white-eyed guards walked in front of her. Two white-eyed guards walked behind. She was young, but she was every inch a Hyuuga - the cold, perceptive eyes, the brimming, barely-hidden strength, the contempt she held for idiots.
Like that boy, Hanabi thought, revisiting the three hours she’d spent confined in a velvet prison, making nice with other nobles plus one drunk adolescent who’d thought himself worthy of the Hyuuga heiress.
As if anyone like that existed.
If Father hears of his impudence, his parents will fall out of favor. How will -
Wait.
“What is that sound?” She asked the men in front of her. She could have used her eyes, but outside the house, that was her guards’ duty.
The smallest flicker of energy as the guard before her to the left triggered his Byakugan.
“Lady Hanabi, the faint cries you hear are coming from a brawl around the next corner, two blocks from the mansion. Two richly-dressed persons are kicking one curled-up street waif between them.”
“I see,” Hanabi replied. None of them slowed their pace.
The party turned the corner.
The scene was exactly as her protector described it, except the weak cries of the boy and the foul jeers and insults of the two laughing hyenas could be more clearly distinguished.
Hanabi held out a hand for her men to stop, one block away from the fighting.
The blows were crude, graceless. These boys were not fighters like she was. They were a little pudgy. Spoiled brats of noble birth. Hanabi wondered why so many aristocrats were so useless.
The heiress turned her disinterested gaze on the creature they were attacking. Bloody, whimpering, and all-around absolutely pathetic. Beneath her.
“Lady Hanabi?”
The weak are meant to be trod on.
The boy was crying out in pain. Her blank eyes told her that he was in danger of having his internal organs damaged from the continuous kicks and blows.
“We should get going. You have training scheduled in fifteen minutes.”
The weak are meant to be trod on.
His moans were growing fainter. Even without activating her eyes, she could see his breaking blood vessels spread their warm liquid underneath his skin in wide, purple-yellow blotches.
Hanabi made her decision.
“They are in my way,” she said softly, her face perfectly controlled.
Her guards nodded, their visages much the same. “Yes, milady.”
The one to the right of her walked up to the scuffle, and stood to the side. The boy’s two assailants paid him no mind, having not noticed whose House he was from. After observing for two seconds, the guard spoke just loudly enough to be heard over the din.
“If one drop of blood stains these stones, your parents will be the ones to clean it up, and I doubt they will be very happy with you for that. Leave immediately.”
Konohamaru looked up with bleary eyes at the... guy... guard... whoever, that had stopped them. He lay on his side on the alley floor, and there was blood in his eye. He couldn't see, everything was red or spotted or blurring or- Or maybe the blood was in his mouth. He could taste iron somewhere, in between the spittle and the swelling and the sharp jagged something that was biting into his tongue. He spat whatever it was out of his mouth weakly, and saw a tooth slip across the ground. His second tooth lost since he'd started living on the street.
Dimly, he could hear the two bastards above him making apologies, excuses, backing off. He wanted to talk, add insults and jeers so that they'd walk with damaged pride if nothing else. But he couldn't seem to work up the energy to work his lips and speak words. But the important thing was that they were backing off. Leaving. Going away. But really, he wasn't paying attention to that. He was trying to flex the fingers in his right hand. One of the bastards had laughingly stomped on it with his big expensive boot. Crushing it and grinding it down out of cruelty- there was no other reason, goddamnit. But his fingers moved, they weren't broken. That was good. That meant he could keep picking pockets with them, could keep Udon and Moegi half-fed and half-alive and half-happy. When he got back to them. When he just stood up. That would be in... just a minute.
There was a girl, over there, surrounded by men. A girl with white eyes. White eyes looking at him dispassionately, like he was absolutely nothing to her. How do you get eyes like that?
It should be easy to get back on his feet. But Konohamaru hurt all over. Why wasn't his body moving? Everything felt black. Everything... WAS black. All he could see was black... Black, and white eyes.
And Konohamaru lost consciousness on the alley floor.
Hanabi listened to the half-wits’ apologies as they bowed and made placating gestures. At least these pigs knew their place. Most likely their parents weren’t very high up the social ladder, for them to be so sycophantic. That, or they were much smarter than how they looked.
Probably the former.
“Enough. Leave,” her guard commanded. As one, the two kowtowed, turned, and walked off quickly. They didn’t start running until they were a block away, but Hanabi had already dismissed them from her mind.
She was observing the boy on the ground. He seemed to have lost consciousness.
Ordinarily, Hanabi’s guards would have carried him over to the side of a street and dropped him there so that she may pass unhindered. They started forward to do so now.
“Not yet,” she whispered.
The breath of the boy lying limp before her rattled and rasped. His light brown hair had spread, matted with sweat and dirt, like a fan across the ground. Some blood had seeped through his rags. He looked like he was in agony even while he was unconscious. A quick glance with her Byakugan told her exactly how severe his wounds were.
His upper torso would be very sore for at least a week, but his legs were mostly unharmed. He would be able to walk.
Silence reigned for thirty seconds. Hanabi thought over what she was going to do, and speculated on why she was even considering it. What did it matter if a piece of trash was left on the road? What did it matter if wandering gentry stepped on it upon encountering it?
“The alley in front of the gates, directly across the west wing of the mansion. Lie him down behind the boxes piled up in the middle. It would not do for something so unsightly to be seen so close to home.”
If her guards were perturbed because of her request, they didn’t show it. The two at her flank removed themselves from formation to do her bidding.
“Yes, milady.”
-------------------------------
And Konohamaru lay in the alley for a time, and there he dreamed of his dead grandfather again.
"Grandfather! Why did you go?" Konohamaru asked him, desperation and hurt in his voice. "If you were still here, everything would be okay!"
His grandfather was smoking a pipe in contemplation, but on hearing Konohamaru's voice he tilted his head down at the boy. He did not answer him, but only laid his hand down on Konohamaru's head, and smiled.
Konohamaru woke up with a start.
He still hurt- that was the first thing he realized. He tried to get up, tried to look around, see where he was. But he fell back onto the alley floor with a groan, clutching at his side where the kicks had been strongest. His jaw hurt, it felt like an entire half of his face was swollen. He felt around in his mouth with his tongue. Yep, tooth still missing. His ribs and his arms and his hand- all bruised.
He checked himself over. Everything hurt, but there was nothing serious. No bones broken that he could tell, the bleeding had all stopped. There was a good sized bump on his head, but he'd live.
As he took stock of his injuries, memories flooded back into his confused brain. Getting caught. Getting the shit kicked out of him. Getting... rescued? A girl, around his own age. Long dark hair. White eyes.
White eyes meant Hyuuga.
He wasn't in the same alley he'd been fighting in. He was out of the way of anything, sheltered by boxes and out of the way of foot traffic. Had he crawled here afterwards? No... no, he had the distinct impression he'd been carried. The Hyuugas had moved him? Why? Hyuugas don't help other people, they don't even help each other. Or so Konohamaru had been told by his uncle Asuma, once upon a time. Back in his other life.
What the hell, so they'd just shucked him aside and then gone on their merry way? They could've at least gotten him some actual medical care or something... geez! Now Iruka was gonna throw a fit when he saw him all bruised up and...
That girl. She'd been a Hyuuga. Her cold eyes on him as he lay bleeding-- it'd been eerie. He hadn't liked it. But she'd... she'd helped him. She'd gotten rid of the grinning noble bastards, and she'd had him moved to safety. Was she the one he had to thank? A slip of a girl like that, she couldn't be the one in charge. But she was. Konohamaru knew that.
But still- If he ever saw her again, Konohamaru wasn't sure whether he wanted to thank her or not.