[Naruto] Oversights and Celebrations 1/2
Title: Oversights and Celebrations
Author: runespoor7
Rating: hard R as a whole, PG-13 here.
Summary: After The War Against Sound, the Rookie Nine (and additions) spend the evening celebratring. This apparently translates into 'prying into Hinata's sexual life'. NejiHina.
Notes: Breaks all rules relative to war and angst. Mostly angst-free, as I do not know what is this 'major character death' you are speaking of. Two posts, since otherwise too big for lj.
[I have done a dvd commentary of this fic here.]
Oversights and Celebrations
When talking about one's sexual prowess became common place, they were something like fifteen, and most of them at least knew someone who'd lost someone, a parent, a sibling - not a teammate yet - and they knew that if they wanted to avoid dying a virgin, they'd better not wait too long for the perfect first time, Hinata just blushed.
Sometimes Tenten and Ino would tease her about it, though they generally didn't, and Hinata would blush further and not speak a word. She was grateful when Sakura took a part in their conversation, because she made such a better teasing material, and she never failed to rise to the bait, reddening and glaring at Ino that it was none of her business. Once, after a mission that had lasted a little over two weeks, she reddened even more that usual and Hinata knew she wasn't a virgin anymore. When pushed, she reluctantly admitted that yeah, she wasn't, and the boy had been an apothecary's apprentice. It hadn't been too bad, she grudgingly said.
Hinata admired Sakura's fortitude under the giggling and boasting of the two other girls. Then Ino clapped her hands and said that now there was only Hinata to worry about, and she must have looked so stricken that Sakura took pity on her and proposed to go and have a drink to celebrate the occasion. It was one of those things that showed how much Sakura had matured.
She'd guessed she wouldn't be able to avoid the issue forever, but she'd hoped that the interest would die out before she was back against the wall.
The peace lasted two more years. The lack of investigations about her sex life was the only peaceful thing to happen during that time, though, as the war was raging on. Well, actually, there were inquiries, from all of her girl friends, but they were of the private, discreetly concerned variety, and Hinata had a lot of experience on how to evade questions you didn't want to answer and pressure you couldn't take. Besides, it wasn't as if she was faking the blush.
So she was left more or less alone until the end of the war.
It ended well.
Admittedly not for her father, and certainly not for Hanabi, and - Neji - Neji would be blind for the rest of his life, unable to see or fight anything, but the rest of the Rookie Nine Plus Three had gone through the war surprisingly unscathed, though Hinata knew better than to say it to her friends who had lost a limb, or had had a sibling or parent die literally before their eyes.
But they were alive, all of them, and there were good chances that Shikamaru might even go back to being a shinobi, what with Temari of the Sand snarling and grinning and pushing him. Hinata had heard the medics complain about her constant presence when Hinata was visiting her own people (teammates and more than a handful of Hyuugas), but Neji had confided in her that people who couldn't see Temari would be the one putting Shikamaru back on his feet were fools, and she tended to agree.
The war had in fact ended almost better than it had started, since a few days after the end, a trio everyone had suspended their hopes about stumbled into the village.
They were dirty and ragged to the edges and grinning, sharper than the shuriken that grazed Sakura's cheek as someone tired and foolish and probably not thinking too right didn't recognize her at first - sharper that the kunai that embedded itself in Sasuke's hand when he put it in front of Naruto who'd tried to take it in the shoulder rather than let it strike Sasuke in the chest - sharper than the relief when everyone noticed that it was Naruto the other two were helping walk, and that Sasuke obviously wasn't considering running away to a madman again.
That part might have been because Orochimaru was dead - yes, very dead, thank you for asking. It might also have helped Sasuke's case that he had ultimately fled Orochimaru before it was time for him to become the Sannin's new body, and that he'd been trying to destroy the Akatsuki for over two years now.
It was all thanks to Naruto and Sakura, and possibly Kakashi too, who'd kept his mouth shut just a little bit too long for a shinobi, and in any other circumstances it would have gone very badly indeed for all of them, but it was simply impossible to condemn four people who were national heroes. Hinata knew this as well as the Hokage, and she didn't doubt that Tsunade-sama knew that, should push ever come to shove, she'd have to face the stringent opposition of the entire Hyuuga clan inside the village itself, and a likely freezing of diplomatic relations with Suna - and if Konoha had ever needed the Sand's alliance, it was now.
All in all, not a feasible thing.
(It had gone a bit like this; Naruto and Sakura had gone on another Retrieve Sasuke Before It's Too Late mission, and before anyone understood what had happened, they'd gone missing. Kakashi's report said that he'd been busy fighting two of Orochimaru's overpowered lackeys and had no godly idea as to where they might possibly have slunk off, and he'd seemed reasonably unworried.
Then Orochimaru had declared war to Konoha. It had taken everyone a little while to understand that Uchiha Sasuke had bailed with his two former teammates, and that Orochimaru likely hoped to see them run back at his first move against Konoha - after all, the 'blond brat' had been loud enough in his ambition to become the Hokage.
Then they'd discovered that Konoha was apparently just not worth as much to Naruto as Sasuke and Sakura, or else that Sasuke and Sakura were the parts of Konoha that Naruto felt needed protection, and while it wasn't exactly a shock, it did send the Hokage in a blinding rage. Personally, Hinata took it as a good sign; it meant that her fury wouldn't freeze and settle on punishment.
Then Konoha received a message from the missing trio that they were sorry they couldn't be there, but they had to take care of the Akatsuki before they too decided to seize the opportunity, and so they had to lure them away from Konoha, and they trusted Konoha could defend itself from an assbow-wearing maniac, mmmkay?)
(Hinata wondered if they'd shown the message to Sasuke before sending it, and if they had, whether Sasuke hadn't noticed the undercurrents or whether he hadn't cared, and couldn't decide which sounded the most unlikely. There was no mistaking the implication that neither Sakura nor Naruto thought Sasuke could do it on his own - or so she thought until she realized that only a few select members of the Council, as well as Hokage-sama herself, had picked it up.
But it was clearly there, though Hinata wasn't sure if they meant physically, or mentally, or sentimentally, and she privately gambled on 'all of the above' when Tsunade-sama raged that there was no way, simply no way that Orochimaru could ever teach anything practical enough to take on two members of the Akatsuki, much less all of them, as a disturbing proportion of his most powerful jutsus were suicide techniques. Hinata indulgently let it go while inwardly noting that Tsunade-sama was very aware of her former teammate's antics, for someone who had been in no contact with him for decades.
It was the sort of things always worth knowing.)
In any case, the three of them were released soon enough, and formally thanked, and the Rookies had decided a great way to celebrate would be to have dinner together, the lot of them, with the various additions that made it worthwhile. Hinata would never stop marveling at the sheer amount of time Shikamaru and Temari could spend together without anyone noticing they were inseparable. It had been months since she'd caught a glimpse of one without the other; she supposed it was because neither of them was into romantic hand-holding and casual touches.
The senseis were having a party of their own, so here they were, the dozen of them. If Hinata had been a superstitious person, she'd have noticed that they were, in fact, thirteen, with Neji at the hospital and Temari and Sai the additions.
But the fact was that neither Lee nor Tenten remarked on it, and they were the superstitious ones - as was Neji, no matter how much he denied it, and who would probably have commented if he'd known about it, but he didn't; he'd spent the afternoon in a deep medication-induced sleep, and as such no-one had been able to inform him of the plans for the evening. Hinata had only left a message to one of the medics, asking him to let Neji know when he woke up. Not that he could have attended, but he'd most likely have felt a little less like all had been organized behind his back.
Everyone wished that he could be there, then - well, "moved on" would be unfair, because he came up in the conversation almost more than if he'd been there, not that it was particularly difficult, but nobody wanted to mope, nobody had the capacity to mope today, and nobody felt like ruining the mood by bringing up Neji's irremediable injury.
Hinata had secured that thought in a corner of her mind, and kept it to herself when Neji's shape, huddled on his hospital bed with his neck bowed and his hands immobile on the sheets, flashed black and white against the joyous colors of the evening. It was something she could do, because there were still the Hyuuga scrolls the clan council was clinging to, playing for time and arguing over trivialities - which was okay because Hinata had no intention of letting go that one last chance - and because Lee and Tenten occasionally jerked as though they were expecting to see him on their peripheral vision.
It was even worse than Shino's burns, because he couldn't replace the Byakugan the way Shino could take another hive as kikkai. Though that, too, was not something anyone wanted to contemplate. (Hinata had the Byakugan; she knew how horribly the scars covered Shino's body.)
So, anyway, the conversation found itself getting actually rather comfortable. It might have helped that everything everyone needed to make clear with Sasuke had already been gotten out of the way; Hinata thought Lee and she had been the only ones not to talk privately with the Uchiha since his return. She suspected Lee had trusted Tenten and Neji on what needed to be said, and she herself didn't see the use in straining relations between their clans when it was clear that he would not abandon, er, Konoha again.
The sooner Naruto became Hokage, the better, Hinata wished.
Preferably before people had time to realize what was going on with Team Seven, and they could deal with that when Naruto was holding the ultimate social position. Hinata guessed they had at least a few months if nothing too outrageous happened - everyone would be too busy with the rejoicing and the mourning and the reconstructing, and most of what Team Seven did was unfathomable to most people.
Then again, it was Team Seven, so she shouldn't count on "nothing too outrageous" happening for even half a year.
Hinata didn't follow the conversation closely for a while, too busy reviewing the situation, which she knew was a fault of hers as head of clan, but hadn't completely managed to weed out. If Neji had been able to help her, she'd certainly have been more successful, but she couldn't rely on his observational skills any longer.
Of all the people close enough to Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, only a few would be likely to correctly interpret their interaction.
Hinata left the two Sannins aside; even if they did notice, they'd treat it with all the political savvy and personal enthusiasm necessary; they could be trusted to keep it a secret. So long as Shizune restrained their drinking fits to the Hokage's office, no-one would be the wiser.
Kakashi wouldn't be a problem either; she didn't know him very well, but based her judgment on how long it had taken him before remembering that the Sharingan could indeed be used to influence memories - she also took it as a measure of the jounin's trust in his students, as she couldn't believe, even for a second, that he would have kept this ability a secret if he'd thought his former students planned something against the village.
Obviously Sakura, as a teenager, could lie to her parents, so Hinata discounted it without a second thought.
Among the group, there was her - the Hyuuga clan would support Uzumaki Naruto, which would be a plus as long as other clans didn't begin to imply things about the Hyuuga and the Uchiha's common ancestry, far-removed though it was; and here she knew she had to take the Aburame clan into account. Luckily Shino was her very private teammate and the Aburame clan was nothing if not honorable. He wouldn't say anything to his parents until it became common knowledge.
As for her other teammate, it would be stupid to think anyone in the Inuzaka clan could fail to pick up the possible scents. Any Inuzuka who met them would smell if they'd had sex. And Kiba was a frightful bad liar, but that could always be discounted as something else - anything else, even picking up the Kyuubi's smell as being stronger than before. But that wouldn't keep the clan from knowing.
Hinata knew Kiba wouldn't do anything to hurt her; she only hoped that the head of the clan would listen to her little brother. And keep in mind the Hyuuga's weight in village affairs. So long as the knowledge stayed within the clan, they could work with it. (Maybe she should broach the subject with Kiba, or maybe with Hana-san, or with Tsunade-sama?... Perhaps the Hokage wouldn't appreciate if Hinata interfered without having been consulted before. She'd have a word with Kiba, just as a friend - which she really should have done before, but hopefully tonight the smell of alcohol would hide all other traces - and of course Kiba didn't have Akamaru next to him to keep him informed.)
He was sitting just on her right, and there were Shino, Tenten and Sai between him and Naruto, but she couldn't grab him or do anything to warn him not to slip; Shikamaru was in front of him, and the chances that he would catch her move were too high.
Of course, Hinata reflected, sipping her beer with as much delicacy as if it had been green tea, Shikamaru would know - if he didn't already. For a genius, Shikamaru was surprisingly well-adjusted. Admittedly, there was Temari.
Temari would be a wild card. She was insightful; she was uncaring; she was blunt.
Hinata liked Temari, though she wasn't sure if the other girl, or even anyone else, was aware of the fact. There were some things in Temari that reminded her of Naruto - and for a long time, Hinata had wished she could be like Temari. Stronger, brasher, fiercer, more capable.
Probably not any fitter to be the heir to the Hyuuga than Hinata herself, in the opposite way - a way that Hinata had admired since the first time she'd laid her eyes on a mirthful Naruto, the first time she'd been struck by the sheer fire in his eyes as he went back to his seat at the Academy, the first time she'd ever seen anyone fail and still keep their head high.
Hinata liked Temari a lot, even if they didn't talk often - but when they did, it was always fun - and once upon a time she'd have liked to be like Temari. (Without the Shikamaru, though.) It was a bit reminiscent of her admiring crush on Naruto.
She didn't think she'd ever grow out of the admiration, out of the fluster - and in her wildest dreams she thought that it would be quite awkward, when he'd be the Hokage, if the head of the Hyuuga went practically tongue-tied at every meeting. She wasn't sure about the crush, but when Naruto had left, again, then disappeared, gone missing, it hadn't really changed her life. Naruto might like her well enough, his teammates came first - or would come first, since she'd left her feelings unmentioned.
And if Hinata had been in love with anything, it was with Naruto's passion and intensity, so she didn't think she'd want to come second. It was selfish, but it was also a moot point. And actually, Hinata hadn't wanted to have Naruto as much as to be Naruto.
(Hinata wondered if, should she have to choose, Temari would prefer the Sand or Shikamaru, but that was unfair, because Temari had her brothers in the Sand, whereas all Naruto had - or thought he had, or wanted to believe he had - in Konoha was his team. If anything, it was Sakura's decision that was the most amazing; she at least had a normal, loving family. Maybe that was why she'd left; because she didn't fit in.)
She couldn't very well use the Byakugan here, but she could see Shikamaru and Temari exchange a significant glance. It was more impressive a feat than it sounded, as the two of them were sitting side by side, and their arms and hands showed no sign of ever brushing against the other's. From where she was sitting - between Ino, who was presiding over the long rectangular table, and Kiba - Hinata had a half-decent view on Sasuke, on the opposite side at the other end of the table, and could barely peek at Sakura, who'd seized the other high end the second she'd seen Ino sitting, much less see Naruto's antics, contrarily to Shikamaru and Temari.
After a few seconds went by, during which Temari didn't blurt out any crude comment, Hinata relaxed. She should've trusted them; they were both intelligent enough to assess the situation.
Hinata was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't even notice how Ino had turned towards her until the other girl was almost breathing in her ear - unworthy of a shinobi, true, but the circumstances were special.
"Hinataaaaaaa, 'm talking to you!"
Oh dear. The insistent leer - the too bright eye - Ino was well on her way to being drunk. Wasn't this exactly the sort of things Chouji was supposed to prevent? Hinata shot a look at Chouji, but he was talking with Temari; between them, Shikamaru interjected a word or two.
Oh well.
Deftly removing the sake from before the blond girl, Hinata faked a smile. She could only hope Ino wasn't a sad drunk.
There was a reason why Ino sat at an end of the table. It was just Hinata's luck that she was the closest to Ino's good eye, and for a moment Hinata thought with horror that she did not want to be Ino's shoulder to cry on, that it was Chouji's job or Sakura's or even Shikamaru's, but Hinata was born and raised a Hyuuga; she couldn't imagine how she'd feel in Ino's place, and she respected her a lot for the inner strength Ino had exhibited over the last couple of months.
Out of all of them (except Neji), Ino had paid the highest price. She was eighteen and she'd never be a kunoichi again - a dream that had literally cost her an arm and an eye.
Neji had it worse.
Hinata firmly clamped down the cynical part of her mind.
"So, Hinata-" Ino's clear voice was almost slurring "-now the war's done and all, we're gonna have the time to take care of you!"
In her defense, Hinata did not expect what was coming next. Which was a serious oversight on the part of the head of the most ancient, most powerful, and most respected clan of Konoha, but again, her circumstances were extenuating.
Beside, it was odd to always think of herself as head of the clan when she was with her friends; they'd never treated her any differently. Tonight, all of them were wearing their shinobi uniforms - even Ino who would only be a ninja in name only from tomorrow on, even Temari who was from Suna, even Sasuke who'd been a missing-nin rallied to the Sound. Even she.
The best part was that it wasn't even a concerted decision. (She didn't know how it had been for the others, but it hadn't even crossed her mind to dress any differently until the first relative she'd seen had done the guarded Hyuuga equivalent of a double-take. Yet another oversight. Well, at least she knew when her kin were confused or surprised.)
"My problem, Ino-san?"
Ino vigorously nodded.
"Yeah - your problem. When are you gonna get laid?"
Ino had, had always had, a loud voice, as loud as Naruto's on any day, and if Hinata had guessed what was coming she'd have probably managed to cover the situation or changed the topic or done something, anything, that would have convinced everyone else that they'd misheard, and no one would have given it a second thought.
However Hinata did not expect this and so she just gaped.
Thoughts were rushing through her head, from "she did not just say that" to "nobody else heard that please". Maybe they'd all carried on as if nothing happened; maybe they were all staring and she refused to imagine what they looked like. She couldn't know, thought, because of the blood rushing in her ears and the sudden blinkers that allowed her to look only at Ino's curiously innocent face, right in front of her, the narrowing of her field of sight unnerving for any Hyuuga.
Here a parenthesis on how Hyuuga Hinata's brain worked. It was a rather good brain, particularly suited to personal empathy and political power games, but it showed a deplorable tendency to retreat to an instinctive machine when in the middle of a fight. Hinata was a fine leader so long as she had time to plan; she was a dangerous combatant when close enough to her opponent.
In the first case she was subtle and patient; in the second she was straightforward and impulsive. Most days she was walking a tangent balance, trying over and over and over again to adjust as well as she could, always keeping an eye out toward perfection.
Anyway, she was stubborn - the desperate stubbornness that had forced her to stay alive and vaguely sane during the days she'd spent being interrogated by the Sound - the one thing that, coupled with the time to plan ahead and the split-second opportunity, had made her slam an elbow in Kabuto's balls, a move that had nothing to do with taijutsu and everything to do with stubbornness, and then she'd grabbed the nearest scalpel, because her chakra pathways had been the first thing they'd closed, straddled him as he was still trying to regain his breath, knowing smirk and friendly smile and sadistic grin all gone now, and she'd slit his throat.
A few drops of blood had specked his glasses, and that was only then that she'd realized what she'd done.
She'd taken the glasses and fled, and she'd made it back to Konoha. Then she'd learnt that her father had died.
She didn't remember the interrogations very well - she only remembered Kabuto - but she knew somehow that what interested them was part what she knew of the Hokage's plans, part the first-hand effects of Kabuto's experiments. Otherwise she wouldn't have been left able to speak.
Out-of-the-blue questions were the things that she was utterly unable to react to, when they were out of their context of diplomatic alliances and white lies and politics and torture chambers, all of which things Hinata could at least be prepared for. In a non-hostile environment, it was always somewhat mystifying.
This blew her away.
"That's - nice, Ino-san," and oh, did her voice sound stifled. "But it's really okay…"
It's really none of her fucking business, Neji's voice told her with an uncharacteristic display of language, and Hinata momentarily wanted to close her eyes, because Neji was very much the last person she wanted to think about right now.
Ino frowned.
It was like watching Naruto and Sasuke fight when they were still genin - though technically, they still were - you couldn't take your eyes away from the debacle.
"Well, I know the war's ended, but there are always accidents, you know. You don't want to die a virgin, do you?"
This time, the distress wasn't enough to shield Hinata from the table's reaction. She barely dared stealing a glance at Chouji, who was sitting in front of her after all, and was by far the less intimidating of the group, and his white horror was enough to make her look down again.
She could feel herself literally burning up. It had always been embarrassing, but now! - all the boys were there, and Temari, and Sai, all people Hinata wanted to stay as far from her personal life as possible. And people who were going to smirk, like Tenten or Sasuke. And - Hinata wondered how she could not be hyperventilating yet - Lee.
And Naruto too, but Hinata flat-out refused to consider this. Beside, unless she was completely wrong, Naruto couldn't care less about what she had or hadn't done. Also, she knew he'd been one of the first people of the group to have sex, and he was involved with his teammates. (Hinata had known Naruto wasn't a virgin anymore on the first time she'd seen him after the two years and a half he'd spent training with Jiraiya-sama. Something about the cheerfulness - the confidence.)
"Um," Hinata managed to say.
Surely someone would change the subject. She had complete faith in her teammates' camaraderie, and in Chouji's diversionary kindness, and in Sasuke's bristling.
So why did no one say anything?
"Um," Hinata repeated. She'd since long learned that in an argument, the first one breaking down in the middle of a heavy silence generally ends up losing, and so she kept her intervention to the bare minimum. It was a lesson that had steeled her nerves against her father's lectures.
Ino was watching her with expectant though slitted eyes, and in that instant Hinata would have given anything to possess Neji's capacity at analyzing body language.
"Well, I think she's right," Tenten loudly said. All heads turned toward her. "I mean, now's the time to celebrate!" She twisted her neck to look at Hinata. "You have to - to…"
"-enjoy the springtime of your youth," Lee completed, flushing deeply.
Nobody laughed. Not even Temari. Tenten gratefully smiled at her teammate.
Hinata wasn't sure if it said more about their seriousness, their shock, or their agreement in the matter.
It would have been bad enough if there had been only girls. But no, there had to be boys too. Her friends. She'd have felt less humiliated if the question had come from Gai.
And they were all looking at her again.
"Hinata?" Tenten asked.
The faster she got off the hot seat the better. They'd never leave her alone otherwise.
"Th-thank you for your concern, but it's really not a problem anymore."
In the silence that surrounded her low words, Hinata measured that she'd succeeded in meshing the stutter of her early years and the nonsensical sarcasm of her days as a prisoner.
She faked a smile that gained in humor as she watched the astonishment on her friends' face, and thought that it was good, now they'd move on.
She hadn't been prepared for Shino's shifting in his chair.
"You - have?"
There was something in the alcohol. Or else everyone had drunk way too much of it, and no-one seemed the part, not even Ino, because the strain in Shino's tone would have been blatant even if she hadn't known him as well as she did. She inwardly cringed.
She threw a cautious glance his way. Between the two of them, Kiba was slowly blinking, his jaw dropped.
She nodded - and it seemed that everyone started speaking at once.
"You didn't tell us?" Kiba sounded about to cry.
"Yay! WAY TO GO HINATA!" Ino shouted, bouncing in her seat.
"Told you so, now pay up," Naruto smirked at a stunned Sakura and a poisonous-looking Sasuke.
"Good for you," Shikamaru commented with a half-smile.
"How come you never told us about it?" Tenten demanded.
"It was during the war, wasn't it?" Chouji guessed.
Hinata chewed on her lip - she'd have to watch out not to let it become a habit - but everyone registered Chouji's quiet question. The implications immediately dampened their good mood.
So much for being done with it, but she supposed she had no choice. And honestly, if her formerly-private life could keep the spotlights off Team Seven, well, she'd just endure it, even if her head exploded with all the blood rushing there.
"It wasn't - one of those missions, right?"
The anguish she could see in poor Lee's eyes threatened to spill over. The group stiffened, and the look Temari sent her was distinctly compassionate.
This, luckily, was a question she could answer.
"No, that's for the ANBU." That was what the ANBU and the Roots were for, but she kept her knowledge of the grimmest aspects of the inner workings of the village to herself. Beside, her evident bloodline limit - articulated to the fact that she absolutely and unapologetically sucked at genjutsu - ruled her out anyway.
They relaxed; Hinata's soft, coolly-spoken explanation has reassured them. She… should not have found their concern as touching as she did. What she should have done was divert the topic on an unsuspecting victim - like Lee, for instance, who blushed almost as much as she did and who'd have been the perfect decoy, but Hinata couldn't bring herself to do that.
"Sai?" she heard Sakura ask. "What's wrong?"
Oh. Hinata hoped she hadn't brought back painful memories - he'd been in Roots, and he was exactly the kind of porcelain doll that would be sent on those missions… Oh no, no, no. Sai had changed during the two years the war had lasted; she didn't want to think she'd recalled his days as a tool… But he was tucked between Tenten and Naruto; she could only watch the faces of Lee and Sasuke, who were facing him, to guess his reaction.
"Sai?"
Hinata's shoulders hunched, but she refused to let remorse claim her, and she bent forward to try and see Sai, matching Kiba's efforts, briefly wishing she could just use the Byakugan.
Then he looked at her. It was a painful smile.
"You've been a prisoner, haven't you?"
As if a switch had been turned, the group tensed; Sasuke's head jerked towards her, eyes piercing her from his far away seat. Kiba's face was pale with dismay.
Wha-
"You killed Kabuto," Sasuke's clipped voice said.
The undertones were obvious. There was a sharp intake of breath from her right - not Kiba whom she'd have seen, not Tenten - Shino, Sai or Naruto. There was a whimper from Sakura. Everyone else was frozen. Everyone knew Kabuto.
"No!" Hinata denied. She saw Temari flinch. Her protest sounded too loud and too fierce.
"Hinata…" Ino's hand went to her shoulder, probably in a soothing gesture, and Ino's voice was more subdued than before.
Hinata had never been so red in her life.
She shook Ino's hand off her shoulder without an apology.
"No, he didn't - he never - Kabuto never raped me!"
…And she probably shouldn't have sounded that defensive either, but this was striking a little too close home for comfort.
"I wasn't raped," she continued more calmly in the ringing silence. "I wasn't raped. Neither by Kabuto nor by Orochimaru or by anyone. There was nothing like that. The interrogations - everything was entirely platonic."
She gave Uchiha Sasuke a look that would have been labeled 'defiant death glare of doom' on anyone else, but Hinata didn't glare. Sasuke didn't look completely convinced, and he pursed his lips in a way that Hinata thought meant 'I'll let you off the hook right now but don't think this is the last of it' (it was mostly directed towards Naruto), not that she could blame him.
"Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked for a confirmation.
So nobody had missed their little exchange. Goody.
The resident expert of All Things Sound Except Mind shrugged.
"T's Kabuto we're talking about," Naruto intervened. "That guy was always a piece of work. …Er, not that I think it's normal to rape your prisoner, or that I think you need to be seriously fucked up not to want to do Hina - guys, aren't you supposed to shut me up when I do that? Sakura-chan? Bastard? Guuuuuyyyyyssssss…."
Naruto's whine couldn't cover Sasuke's snort or Sakura's giggles; the pink-haired girl had hidden her face behind her hands.
The tension had disappeared, but Hinata couldn't even be mortified by Naruto's comments. She was too busy getting herself under control.
Of course Sasuke wouldn't believe her - and unless Shikamaru and Temari were a lot more stupid than geniuses and very clever people were supposed to be, they wouldn't believe her either. Sasuke had lived for three years with Kabuto, he couldn't possibly ignore his penchants for mind games - after all, he'd fled, hadn't he? He couldn't have been as completely under Orochimaru's control as she'd heard at the time.
Everything was entirely platonic.
As platonic as it was to have someone torturing you for weeks, with carefully measured control in their every move, smile, look, and a soft, soft voice when things were cutting or growing through her, and the hands of a healer. Platonic.
Everything was about games with Kabuto, and thankfully, Hinata was a lot more used to them than Sasuke had been. She'd been four years older than he'd been when he'd left Konoha, and she hadn't been a puppet to a godlike older brother. She'd been aware that everything about Kabuto was lies and manipulations.
And sometimes his hand would brush against her skin, or he'd give her a sunny smile, or he'd frown when he saw that his experiment hadn't gone the way it was supposed to, and she knew that he was slowly but surely driving her to paranoia.
There were worse fates.
There had been days, she'd felt like her breath was suspended to Kabuto's lips; days when she whimpered and he held her in his arms, letting her blood drench his clothes; days when he stroked her shoulders almost like a massage, which Hinata hated; days when her thighs parted under his gaze; days when she would have hated herself for not kissing him back if he had tried.
So of course she'd been aware of how much of an unspoken point he made it that he'd never done anything sexual to her. It was always hanging above her head, part promise part threat.
(Not that he needed to; Hinata was all too aware of the fact that everything between them had been laced with chilling sensuality.)
And for that, she was pathetically grateful.
He tortured her and healed her and didn't come for - days? - and brought sweet warm food and let her take a bath and told her stories and smiled and gave her a cup of hot chocolate and said that he'd saved her life during the Sound's attack years before and announced that Kiba had been killed and didn't touch her and watched her from behind his silver glasses and broke her and was her only focus on reality and she'd killed him.
She'd brought the glasses back with her; when she'd been found by Nara Shikaku she'd been dazed and soaked in blood not her own. Even with her Byakugan activated, she hadn't been able to avoid all trouble on her journey back from Hidden Sound; she understood that she'd succeeded at all because the war against Konoha and Suna had decimated Orochimaru's ranks as well. The only chuunin who caught up with her wasn't someone important, and he had no idea that the Hyuuga existed; believing she was a genjutsu specialist, he chose to engage her in close combat.
(He was stronger and healthier than her, smiling at her like a predator - probably a snake - at a small weakened trembling mammal. Mongooses were small mammals, and Hinata had killed him.)
When she'd seen Nara Shikaku she'd thought for a moment she was seeing Shikamaru. Kabuto had said Shikamaru had been killed. He hadn't said that of either Naruto or Neji.
Hinata then did the only thing she could think of, and put all her might in shaking the genjutsu. It was a powerful genjutsu - it had to be, when she could feel Kabuto's glasses in her pocket - Kabuto was a master in genjutsu.
She couldn't remember Shikaku's reaction, or the darkness claiming her as she'd outdone her last reserves of energy, trying to break the restrictions that had been put on her chakra - nothing except the determination that next time she wouldn't let Kabuto pull her into an illusion, next time she'd break his glasses into his eyes and slash him a wide scarlet grin, next time she'd escape.
She'd woken up to realize it hadn't been genjutsu. The hospital room had been quiet and blank, with Tsunade-sama and Morino Ibiki looking down at her. Hinata's first question had been for the blood-stained spectacles. They were intact, on her bedside. Then Hinata let Tsunade-sama and Morino Ibiki do everything that was needed to make sure she was what she claimed to be. She liked Ibiki a lot more than she'd ever liked Kabuto, but of course it wasn't comparable.
These memories weren't welcome in this cheery restaurant, alive and well, with her friends and their embarrassing conversation, but they were an important part of her. Besides, the glasses hadn't left Hinata since. Maybe she'd show them to Sasuke later.
She could ask him what had been his stance towards Kabuto's - maybe in his case Orochimaru's - poisonous gifts. Given what she'd heard at the time and what she'd learned since, she doubted he'd turned them down.
It made sense, in a way; Sasuke was looking for power, so he took what was offered to him. Hinata had been nothing more than an experimental subject, and she never accepted Kabuto's gifts without the torturous knowledge that the more she did, the more she was relying on him, until one day would come when she'd be unable to survive without the blanket, and the bath, and the hot chocolate.
Every time Hinata had met Kabuto's amused/sorry look, she'd blushed because she knew he could read her about as well as Neji always had, and he'd been entertained - startled at first maybe - by her efforts to remain her own person. Sometimes she'd break and take the favor, partly appalled by the feeling that she was selling her soul for a honeysuckle-scented bath, partly relishing in the temporary return to human decorum more than the fleeting physical comfort, partly steeling her pride and sharpening her confidence.
"So, when was it?" Kiba asked in a detached tone that was as natural as Tsunade's youthful looks.
"Who was it?" Now, if even Shikamaru decided to have fun at her expense…
Hinata would have liked to lash out, but one doesn't lash out against one's teammates unless one is a member of Team Seven, and the last thing she needed was to have Temari tease her on Shikamaru's behalf as well.
Lee himself was starting to smile.
"It was when that envoy of Hidden Mist ended up at the hospital, wasn't it." Tenten sounded unbearably smug. "That red-haired one, two years ago - a year and a half."
"It wasn't." Hinata wanted to retort that not everyone lost their virginity to a nin from another village, but she wasn't half mad enough to imply things in front of Temari.
"Don't tell me you've been-" Naruto's eyebrows waggled "-celebrating?"
Even the double punch he received from his teammates - Naruto had leant so far over the table to be able to look at her that Sasuke barely needed to move - wasn't enough to soothe the burn of Hinata's humiliation. Mostly because said teammates were watching her. Also because Naruto's scenario wasn't entirely off the mark. He was just a few years late, and it had in fact been about relief and acknowledgment, but he wasn't all that wrong. Ideally, she'd even have celebrated before joining her friends, and -
Hinata squirmed in her seat. She hadn't done that for years.
"It was a long time ago."
It was apparently a wrong thing to say, because she could feel her friends' curiosity positively shot up. Hinata envisaged using a transmutation technique, then discarded the idea. It'd only encourage them, and Hinata did not fancy fending off their combined efforts. Shikamaru would be able to hold her still with her own shadow, and then - escaping the grasp of Sakura and Naruto was a risible thought.
"When?"
Ino had been the youngest of the girls to have sex; Tenten was the first, but Tenten was a year older than Ino, and a handful of months after Tenten's secret had been discovered (way too easily for a ninja, in itself a proof that Tenten rather liked the idea of showing off to the other girls), Ino and her then-boyfriend had "gone all the way". It had ended badly with the boyfriend, but Ino had still used it to lord over Sakura. It probably explained Ino's rapture.
"Two years, three?"
Chouji's conciliatory tone held a hint of fascination.
"More?" Shino coldly interjected.
Hinata didn't trust her voice to answer. In fact, she didn't want to answer at all. But Shino had a way to cling onto grudges that always made her feel rather guilty, and she was perfectly aware that soothing Shino's hurt out of guilt for Neji was not one of the healthiest things around, but she took it upon herself. Neji wouldn't let her do this (try and make him feel better) for him - to him - anyway. Probably he wouldn't even use it against her.
"How much?" Sakura called when Hinata's tiny nod went unseen by half the table.
She had no choice.
"Five years ago," Hinata muttered. (And she'd been getting some on a regular basis since then, but she banned the thought far far away.)
"Five years ago?" The disclosure startled Temari out of her amused silence.
"Five years? Five?" (Ino, choking.)
"You were twelve?" (A mildly hysterical Tenten.)
"You were twelve?" Sasuke's disbelief shone through.
"Five years ago when?" Naruto was enjoying himself way too much.
Shikamaru's eyebrow was downright inquisitive. If he decided he wanted to analyze the situation… This was bad. Better get it over with.
"After - you know." She made a significant glance at Sasuke, whose jaw clenched. "After you defeated the Sound Five."
Immediately, she saw Sakura's hand disappear under the table, and Sasuke tilted his head, his black eyes accepting. Hinata knew that Naruto's leg had found Sasuke's ankle at the same time Sakura had grabbed the ex-missing nin's thigh. At least everyone's attention was focused on her. She really needed to have a talk with the three of them. She knew what they were, but they had no way to know that, what with their non-observational skills, and to act so blatantly in front of someone who might take it the wrong way - she had to let them know she was their ally.
"Oh."
Slight dull in the general enthusiasm.
Lee looked confused, frowning, like he was trying to make sense of something but was missing pieces - all too true - and wasn't quite sure how to best word his question.
Hinata sighed. It was a small, soft sigh, but it was there. "Yes?"
"But - weren't you - didn't you - wasn't it Naruto that-" Lee fumbled for words as the head of the Hyuuga morosely watched the last remnants of her privacy be torn away. Five years ago. Five.
It was neither here nor there, she wanted to retort. She didn't, because Lee was by far the least responsible for the situation. And if she didn't say something, then everyone would assume things. Maybe that despair over Uchiha Sasuke going missing had driven her to such lengths. Hinata had no intention whatsoever of being taken for having been a Sasuke fangirl at any point of her existence - great for Sakura to have landed what she wanted, and greater for Ino to have got over it, but no. Just no. She drew the line there.
At the other end of the table, Team Seven was distinctly ill-at-ease. Sai looked thoughtful.
Hinata smiled at them.
"It had nothing to do with you," she assured the lot of them, directing her words as much to the Uchiha as to Naruto. Sakura replied in kind, with a thankful smile. Maybe she should revise her previous judgment of the team's obliviousness.
Leaning back into a normal sitting position, she caught Shikamaru's calculating expression. This was very, very bad, she acknowledged.
Hopefully they'd get the hint that she didn't want to say any more.
…Wait, what was she thinking? Surely the last fifteen minutes had proven that even if one of them did get the hint, they wouldn't let common decency get in the way of their nosiness - research - right?
"I'm not going to tell you who," she added.
She waited for the inevitable response to her affirmation, someone quizzically opening their mouth to push some more.
"Who-"
This time, it was Temari, whom Shikamaru interrupted with a hand on her arm.
It made sense; of all of them, she was probably one of those who knew Hinata the least.
"I'm not going to tell you," Hinata repeated with a smile. On Temari's left side, Lee fidgeted, and she saw Sasuke's eyebrows rising.
The Sand kunoichi sent a narrow-eyed look at Shikamaru, who only removed his hand in answer. Temari's countenance relaxed. He'd tell her about it later, Hinata translated.
The silence dragged on for a few seconds, until Kiba started again in a falsely innocuous tone. He could have taken lessons from Naruto. Once more, she wanted to cringe.
"So… Five years, huh?"
"That's a long time," Shino blankly concurred. Hinata wondered what was coming now.
"And here we were gettin' all worried about you!" There was a point of giddiness in Kiba's voice. "Planning to set you up on blind dates, an' all!"
Well, there was the bewilderment.
"You could have told us about it," Shino grumbled. Hinata's Shino-working-himself-into-a-miffed-huff alarm went off.
"Yeah, you could've," Kiba agreed. "That's what we're for! We're your friends!"
It would have gone over mightily. Hinata could just about picture the discussion. Even now, five years after the fact, Kiba was squealing in excitement.
"You needn't have kept it to yourself," Shino sulked on. "You don't have to hide from us."
She knew she'd been right not to worry about their feelings for her. She'd just have liked to have the evidence of their friendly-brotherly disposition at another time. One when she wouldn't have drowned in fully-deserved guilt.
"You know that, right?" Kiba checked.
The rest of the group had stepped down and let Hinata's teammates deal with the aftermath of the revelation. All thanks to Shino's quietness, which induced privacy and which even Kiba's relative buoyancy couldn't dispel. Not with Naruto starting again with the Team Seven comedy trio down the table, and Ino snarking back at Chouji and Shikamaru whenever she had the chance, exchanging conniving smirks with Temari during her commentary of the Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke scene, while Tenten did her best to keep Lee and Sai grounded in the discussion.
Hinata repressed the pang that Neji was missing.
"You know we value your trust, Hinata. You have no reason to be timid."
Here Kiba snorted and made to smack Shino on the head, but Shino dodged, and the hand only went sweeping past wiry hair (indoors meant no parka). "She's the head of the Hyuuga, you dork. She doesn't need any more of that 'asserting herself' crap."
Shino's dark glasses stared at Kiba. Hinata stifled her laughter.
"That 'asserting herself crap', as you say, is what allowed her to become the head of the Hyuuga in the first place."
"Oh? Like you're saying Hinata'd never have got confident without your help?" He was positively chortling.
"…No, I'm saying being encouraged into standing up for herself was the help."
"Sorry - isn't this just a liiiiittle contradictory here?" Kiba was playing - taunting. "My bug-sense is telling me that 'pressuring her into standing up' is very different from 'encouraging'."
"…Obviously." Shino's flat tone meant that he was taking Kiba's bait very seriously.
Hinata decided she'd let them get entangled in their own reasoning for long enough.
"Thank you, both of you," she said softly. As soon as she started talking the boys' gazes shot back to her, a similar air of attentiveness in Kiba's earnest features and Shino's composed body language. Once more, Hinata wondered what she'd done to deserve being treated like a leader. "I knew I could count on you to understand my reasons for keeping it private." Her lips twitched in a brief smile. "I'm sorry I never told you. But it was something I needed to do for myself."
Please understand. Hinata waited for their reaction. Please understand it had nothing to do with you.
Shino nodded once, gravely.
"We get it, Hinata," Kiba said. Then, hesitatingly, "You'll tell us, though? One day?"
Hinata looked away. Temari and Shikamaru were talking with Tenten without looking at each other, mannerisms easy and unconcerned; Sasuke was watching Sakura getting exasperated with Sai, his approving smirk getting more accentuated whenever Naruto's voice resonated in a snort.
There would be months before Konoha settled back into its peaceful routine again, Hinata knew; months at least before the Hokage was pressured again into finding a successor, months before the Sand could spare a visit from its Kazekage, before Team Seven would have to face the first rumors, before some of them healed or jounins were chosen, before the Hyuuga council died out completely after endeavoring to wrestle her for power or circumvent her authority, before she could carry out her alliance with the future Hokage, the last of the Uchiha, and the rising star of the medic-nins of Konoha, before Neji's position was viable in the Hyuuga according to Hinata.
Something rang through her, steely like a kunai molded out of stubbornness. This was why she'd grown strong - the match which she'd never seen ending, which had sent her life spiraling into her control. Neji had stopped being blind, Kabuto had saved her life, and Naruto had sworn that when he'd be Hokage, he'd change the Hyuuga. Shino had reported the promise back to her.
If the head of the Hyuuga and the Hokage both bullied the traditions into bending their way - if other powerful clans approved - if the general opinion was swayed - if the Soke and the Bunke were suppressed… (Neji…) Provided she was strong enough…
A few months at least.
"I will," Hinata promised with a last thought to what the future had in store.
Part Two
Author: runespoor7
Rating: hard R as a whole, PG-13 here.
Summary: After The War Against Sound, the Rookie Nine (and additions) spend the evening celebratring. This apparently translates into 'prying into Hinata's sexual life'. NejiHina.
Notes: Breaks all rules relative to war and angst. Mostly angst-free, as I do not know what is this 'major character death' you are speaking of. Two posts, since otherwise too big for lj.
[I have done a dvd commentary of this fic here.]
Oversights and Celebrations
When talking about one's sexual prowess became common place, they were something like fifteen, and most of them at least knew someone who'd lost someone, a parent, a sibling - not a teammate yet - and they knew that if they wanted to avoid dying a virgin, they'd better not wait too long for the perfect first time, Hinata just blushed.
Sometimes Tenten and Ino would tease her about it, though they generally didn't, and Hinata would blush further and not speak a word. She was grateful when Sakura took a part in their conversation, because she made such a better teasing material, and she never failed to rise to the bait, reddening and glaring at Ino that it was none of her business. Once, after a mission that had lasted a little over two weeks, she reddened even more that usual and Hinata knew she wasn't a virgin anymore. When pushed, she reluctantly admitted that yeah, she wasn't, and the boy had been an apothecary's apprentice. It hadn't been too bad, she grudgingly said.
Hinata admired Sakura's fortitude under the giggling and boasting of the two other girls. Then Ino clapped her hands and said that now there was only Hinata to worry about, and she must have looked so stricken that Sakura took pity on her and proposed to go and have a drink to celebrate the occasion. It was one of those things that showed how much Sakura had matured.
She'd guessed she wouldn't be able to avoid the issue forever, but she'd hoped that the interest would die out before she was back against the wall.
The peace lasted two more years. The lack of investigations about her sex life was the only peaceful thing to happen during that time, though, as the war was raging on. Well, actually, there were inquiries, from all of her girl friends, but they were of the private, discreetly concerned variety, and Hinata had a lot of experience on how to evade questions you didn't want to answer and pressure you couldn't take. Besides, it wasn't as if she was faking the blush.
So she was left more or less alone until the end of the war.
It ended well.
Admittedly not for her father, and certainly not for Hanabi, and - Neji - Neji would be blind for the rest of his life, unable to see or fight anything, but the rest of the Rookie Nine Plus Three had gone through the war surprisingly unscathed, though Hinata knew better than to say it to her friends who had lost a limb, or had had a sibling or parent die literally before their eyes.
But they were alive, all of them, and there were good chances that Shikamaru might even go back to being a shinobi, what with Temari of the Sand snarling and grinning and pushing him. Hinata had heard the medics complain about her constant presence when Hinata was visiting her own people (teammates and more than a handful of Hyuugas), but Neji had confided in her that people who couldn't see Temari would be the one putting Shikamaru back on his feet were fools, and she tended to agree.
The war had in fact ended almost better than it had started, since a few days after the end, a trio everyone had suspended their hopes about stumbled into the village.
They were dirty and ragged to the edges and grinning, sharper than the shuriken that grazed Sakura's cheek as someone tired and foolish and probably not thinking too right didn't recognize her at first - sharper that the kunai that embedded itself in Sasuke's hand when he put it in front of Naruto who'd tried to take it in the shoulder rather than let it strike Sasuke in the chest - sharper than the relief when everyone noticed that it was Naruto the other two were helping walk, and that Sasuke obviously wasn't considering running away to a madman again.
That part might have been because Orochimaru was dead - yes, very dead, thank you for asking. It might also have helped Sasuke's case that he had ultimately fled Orochimaru before it was time for him to become the Sannin's new body, and that he'd been trying to destroy the Akatsuki for over two years now.
It was all thanks to Naruto and Sakura, and possibly Kakashi too, who'd kept his mouth shut just a little bit too long for a shinobi, and in any other circumstances it would have gone very badly indeed for all of them, but it was simply impossible to condemn four people who were national heroes. Hinata knew this as well as the Hokage, and she didn't doubt that Tsunade-sama knew that, should push ever come to shove, she'd have to face the stringent opposition of the entire Hyuuga clan inside the village itself, and a likely freezing of diplomatic relations with Suna - and if Konoha had ever needed the Sand's alliance, it was now.
All in all, not a feasible thing.
(It had gone a bit like this; Naruto and Sakura had gone on another Retrieve Sasuke Before It's Too Late mission, and before anyone understood what had happened, they'd gone missing. Kakashi's report said that he'd been busy fighting two of Orochimaru's overpowered lackeys and had no godly idea as to where they might possibly have slunk off, and he'd seemed reasonably unworried.
Then Orochimaru had declared war to Konoha. It had taken everyone a little while to understand that Uchiha Sasuke had bailed with his two former teammates, and that Orochimaru likely hoped to see them run back at his first move against Konoha - after all, the 'blond brat' had been loud enough in his ambition to become the Hokage.
Then they'd discovered that Konoha was apparently just not worth as much to Naruto as Sasuke and Sakura, or else that Sasuke and Sakura were the parts of Konoha that Naruto felt needed protection, and while it wasn't exactly a shock, it did send the Hokage in a blinding rage. Personally, Hinata took it as a good sign; it meant that her fury wouldn't freeze and settle on punishment.
Then Konoha received a message from the missing trio that they were sorry they couldn't be there, but they had to take care of the Akatsuki before they too decided to seize the opportunity, and so they had to lure them away from Konoha, and they trusted Konoha could defend itself from an assbow-wearing maniac, mmmkay?)
(Hinata wondered if they'd shown the message to Sasuke before sending it, and if they had, whether Sasuke hadn't noticed the undercurrents or whether he hadn't cared, and couldn't decide which sounded the most unlikely. There was no mistaking the implication that neither Sakura nor Naruto thought Sasuke could do it on his own - or so she thought until she realized that only a few select members of the Council, as well as Hokage-sama herself, had picked it up.
But it was clearly there, though Hinata wasn't sure if they meant physically, or mentally, or sentimentally, and she privately gambled on 'all of the above' when Tsunade-sama raged that there was no way, simply no way that Orochimaru could ever teach anything practical enough to take on two members of the Akatsuki, much less all of them, as a disturbing proportion of his most powerful jutsus were suicide techniques. Hinata indulgently let it go while inwardly noting that Tsunade-sama was very aware of her former teammate's antics, for someone who had been in no contact with him for decades.
It was the sort of things always worth knowing.)
In any case, the three of them were released soon enough, and formally thanked, and the Rookies had decided a great way to celebrate would be to have dinner together, the lot of them, with the various additions that made it worthwhile. Hinata would never stop marveling at the sheer amount of time Shikamaru and Temari could spend together without anyone noticing they were inseparable. It had been months since she'd caught a glimpse of one without the other; she supposed it was because neither of them was into romantic hand-holding and casual touches.
The senseis were having a party of their own, so here they were, the dozen of them. If Hinata had been a superstitious person, she'd have noticed that they were, in fact, thirteen, with Neji at the hospital and Temari and Sai the additions.
But the fact was that neither Lee nor Tenten remarked on it, and they were the superstitious ones - as was Neji, no matter how much he denied it, and who would probably have commented if he'd known about it, but he didn't; he'd spent the afternoon in a deep medication-induced sleep, and as such no-one had been able to inform him of the plans for the evening. Hinata had only left a message to one of the medics, asking him to let Neji know when he woke up. Not that he could have attended, but he'd most likely have felt a little less like all had been organized behind his back.
Everyone wished that he could be there, then - well, "moved on" would be unfair, because he came up in the conversation almost more than if he'd been there, not that it was particularly difficult, but nobody wanted to mope, nobody had the capacity to mope today, and nobody felt like ruining the mood by bringing up Neji's irremediable injury.
Hinata had secured that thought in a corner of her mind, and kept it to herself when Neji's shape, huddled on his hospital bed with his neck bowed and his hands immobile on the sheets, flashed black and white against the joyous colors of the evening. It was something she could do, because there were still the Hyuuga scrolls the clan council was clinging to, playing for time and arguing over trivialities - which was okay because Hinata had no intention of letting go that one last chance - and because Lee and Tenten occasionally jerked as though they were expecting to see him on their peripheral vision.
It was even worse than Shino's burns, because he couldn't replace the Byakugan the way Shino could take another hive as kikkai. Though that, too, was not something anyone wanted to contemplate. (Hinata had the Byakugan; she knew how horribly the scars covered Shino's body.)
So, anyway, the conversation found itself getting actually rather comfortable. It might have helped that everything everyone needed to make clear with Sasuke had already been gotten out of the way; Hinata thought Lee and she had been the only ones not to talk privately with the Uchiha since his return. She suspected Lee had trusted Tenten and Neji on what needed to be said, and she herself didn't see the use in straining relations between their clans when it was clear that he would not abandon, er, Konoha again.
The sooner Naruto became Hokage, the better, Hinata wished.
Preferably before people had time to realize what was going on with Team Seven, and they could deal with that when Naruto was holding the ultimate social position. Hinata guessed they had at least a few months if nothing too outrageous happened - everyone would be too busy with the rejoicing and the mourning and the reconstructing, and most of what Team Seven did was unfathomable to most people.
Then again, it was Team Seven, so she shouldn't count on "nothing too outrageous" happening for even half a year.
Hinata didn't follow the conversation closely for a while, too busy reviewing the situation, which she knew was a fault of hers as head of clan, but hadn't completely managed to weed out. If Neji had been able to help her, she'd certainly have been more successful, but she couldn't rely on his observational skills any longer.
Of all the people close enough to Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, only a few would be likely to correctly interpret their interaction.
Hinata left the two Sannins aside; even if they did notice, they'd treat it with all the political savvy and personal enthusiasm necessary; they could be trusted to keep it a secret. So long as Shizune restrained their drinking fits to the Hokage's office, no-one would be the wiser.
Kakashi wouldn't be a problem either; she didn't know him very well, but based her judgment on how long it had taken him before remembering that the Sharingan could indeed be used to influence memories - she also took it as a measure of the jounin's trust in his students, as she couldn't believe, even for a second, that he would have kept this ability a secret if he'd thought his former students planned something against the village.
Obviously Sakura, as a teenager, could lie to her parents, so Hinata discounted it without a second thought.
Among the group, there was her - the Hyuuga clan would support Uzumaki Naruto, which would be a plus as long as other clans didn't begin to imply things about the Hyuuga and the Uchiha's common ancestry, far-removed though it was; and here she knew she had to take the Aburame clan into account. Luckily Shino was her very private teammate and the Aburame clan was nothing if not honorable. He wouldn't say anything to his parents until it became common knowledge.
As for her other teammate, it would be stupid to think anyone in the Inuzaka clan could fail to pick up the possible scents. Any Inuzuka who met them would smell if they'd had sex. And Kiba was a frightful bad liar, but that could always be discounted as something else - anything else, even picking up the Kyuubi's smell as being stronger than before. But that wouldn't keep the clan from knowing.
Hinata knew Kiba wouldn't do anything to hurt her; she only hoped that the head of the clan would listen to her little brother. And keep in mind the Hyuuga's weight in village affairs. So long as the knowledge stayed within the clan, they could work with it. (Maybe she should broach the subject with Kiba, or maybe with Hana-san, or with Tsunade-sama?... Perhaps the Hokage wouldn't appreciate if Hinata interfered without having been consulted before. She'd have a word with Kiba, just as a friend - which she really should have done before, but hopefully tonight the smell of alcohol would hide all other traces - and of course Kiba didn't have Akamaru next to him to keep him informed.)
He was sitting just on her right, and there were Shino, Tenten and Sai between him and Naruto, but she couldn't grab him or do anything to warn him not to slip; Shikamaru was in front of him, and the chances that he would catch her move were too high.
Of course, Hinata reflected, sipping her beer with as much delicacy as if it had been green tea, Shikamaru would know - if he didn't already. For a genius, Shikamaru was surprisingly well-adjusted. Admittedly, there was Temari.
Temari would be a wild card. She was insightful; she was uncaring; she was blunt.
Hinata liked Temari, though she wasn't sure if the other girl, or even anyone else, was aware of the fact. There were some things in Temari that reminded her of Naruto - and for a long time, Hinata had wished she could be like Temari. Stronger, brasher, fiercer, more capable.
Probably not any fitter to be the heir to the Hyuuga than Hinata herself, in the opposite way - a way that Hinata had admired since the first time she'd laid her eyes on a mirthful Naruto, the first time she'd been struck by the sheer fire in his eyes as he went back to his seat at the Academy, the first time she'd ever seen anyone fail and still keep their head high.
Hinata liked Temari a lot, even if they didn't talk often - but when they did, it was always fun - and once upon a time she'd have liked to be like Temari. (Without the Shikamaru, though.) It was a bit reminiscent of her admiring crush on Naruto.
She didn't think she'd ever grow out of the admiration, out of the fluster - and in her wildest dreams she thought that it would be quite awkward, when he'd be the Hokage, if the head of the Hyuuga went practically tongue-tied at every meeting. She wasn't sure about the crush, but when Naruto had left, again, then disappeared, gone missing, it hadn't really changed her life. Naruto might like her well enough, his teammates came first - or would come first, since she'd left her feelings unmentioned.
And if Hinata had been in love with anything, it was with Naruto's passion and intensity, so she didn't think she'd want to come second. It was selfish, but it was also a moot point. And actually, Hinata hadn't wanted to have Naruto as much as to be Naruto.
(Hinata wondered if, should she have to choose, Temari would prefer the Sand or Shikamaru, but that was unfair, because Temari had her brothers in the Sand, whereas all Naruto had - or thought he had, or wanted to believe he had - in Konoha was his team. If anything, it was Sakura's decision that was the most amazing; she at least had a normal, loving family. Maybe that was why she'd left; because she didn't fit in.)
She couldn't very well use the Byakugan here, but she could see Shikamaru and Temari exchange a significant glance. It was more impressive a feat than it sounded, as the two of them were sitting side by side, and their arms and hands showed no sign of ever brushing against the other's. From where she was sitting - between Ino, who was presiding over the long rectangular table, and Kiba - Hinata had a half-decent view on Sasuke, on the opposite side at the other end of the table, and could barely peek at Sakura, who'd seized the other high end the second she'd seen Ino sitting, much less see Naruto's antics, contrarily to Shikamaru and Temari.
After a few seconds went by, during which Temari didn't blurt out any crude comment, Hinata relaxed. She should've trusted them; they were both intelligent enough to assess the situation.
Hinata was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn't even notice how Ino had turned towards her until the other girl was almost breathing in her ear - unworthy of a shinobi, true, but the circumstances were special.
"Hinataaaaaaa, 'm talking to you!"
Oh dear. The insistent leer - the too bright eye - Ino was well on her way to being drunk. Wasn't this exactly the sort of things Chouji was supposed to prevent? Hinata shot a look at Chouji, but he was talking with Temari; between them, Shikamaru interjected a word or two.
Oh well.
Deftly removing the sake from before the blond girl, Hinata faked a smile. She could only hope Ino wasn't a sad drunk.
There was a reason why Ino sat at an end of the table. It was just Hinata's luck that she was the closest to Ino's good eye, and for a moment Hinata thought with horror that she did not want to be Ino's shoulder to cry on, that it was Chouji's job or Sakura's or even Shikamaru's, but Hinata was born and raised a Hyuuga; she couldn't imagine how she'd feel in Ino's place, and she respected her a lot for the inner strength Ino had exhibited over the last couple of months.
Out of all of them (except Neji), Ino had paid the highest price. She was eighteen and she'd never be a kunoichi again - a dream that had literally cost her an arm and an eye.
Neji had it worse.
Hinata firmly clamped down the cynical part of her mind.
"So, Hinata-" Ino's clear voice was almost slurring "-now the war's done and all, we're gonna have the time to take care of you!"
In her defense, Hinata did not expect what was coming next. Which was a serious oversight on the part of the head of the most ancient, most powerful, and most respected clan of Konoha, but again, her circumstances were extenuating.
Beside, it was odd to always think of herself as head of the clan when she was with her friends; they'd never treated her any differently. Tonight, all of them were wearing their shinobi uniforms - even Ino who would only be a ninja in name only from tomorrow on, even Temari who was from Suna, even Sasuke who'd been a missing-nin rallied to the Sound. Even she.
The best part was that it wasn't even a concerted decision. (She didn't know how it had been for the others, but it hadn't even crossed her mind to dress any differently until the first relative she'd seen had done the guarded Hyuuga equivalent of a double-take. Yet another oversight. Well, at least she knew when her kin were confused or surprised.)
"My problem, Ino-san?"
Ino vigorously nodded.
"Yeah - your problem. When are you gonna get laid?"
Ino had, had always had, a loud voice, as loud as Naruto's on any day, and if Hinata had guessed what was coming she'd have probably managed to cover the situation or changed the topic or done something, anything, that would have convinced everyone else that they'd misheard, and no one would have given it a second thought.
However Hinata did not expect this and so she just gaped.
Thoughts were rushing through her head, from "she did not just say that" to "nobody else heard that please". Maybe they'd all carried on as if nothing happened; maybe they were all staring and she refused to imagine what they looked like. She couldn't know, thought, because of the blood rushing in her ears and the sudden blinkers that allowed her to look only at Ino's curiously innocent face, right in front of her, the narrowing of her field of sight unnerving for any Hyuuga.
Here a parenthesis on how Hyuuga Hinata's brain worked. It was a rather good brain, particularly suited to personal empathy and political power games, but it showed a deplorable tendency to retreat to an instinctive machine when in the middle of a fight. Hinata was a fine leader so long as she had time to plan; she was a dangerous combatant when close enough to her opponent.
In the first case she was subtle and patient; in the second she was straightforward and impulsive. Most days she was walking a tangent balance, trying over and over and over again to adjust as well as she could, always keeping an eye out toward perfection.
Anyway, she was stubborn - the desperate stubbornness that had forced her to stay alive and vaguely sane during the days she'd spent being interrogated by the Sound - the one thing that, coupled with the time to plan ahead and the split-second opportunity, had made her slam an elbow in Kabuto's balls, a move that had nothing to do with taijutsu and everything to do with stubbornness, and then she'd grabbed the nearest scalpel, because her chakra pathways had been the first thing they'd closed, straddled him as he was still trying to regain his breath, knowing smirk and friendly smile and sadistic grin all gone now, and she'd slit his throat.
A few drops of blood had specked his glasses, and that was only then that she'd realized what she'd done.
She'd taken the glasses and fled, and she'd made it back to Konoha. Then she'd learnt that her father had died.
She didn't remember the interrogations very well - she only remembered Kabuto - but she knew somehow that what interested them was part what she knew of the Hokage's plans, part the first-hand effects of Kabuto's experiments. Otherwise she wouldn't have been left able to speak.
Out-of-the-blue questions were the things that she was utterly unable to react to, when they were out of their context of diplomatic alliances and white lies and politics and torture chambers, all of which things Hinata could at least be prepared for. In a non-hostile environment, it was always somewhat mystifying.
This blew her away.
"That's - nice, Ino-san," and oh, did her voice sound stifled. "But it's really okay…"
It's really none of her fucking business, Neji's voice told her with an uncharacteristic display of language, and Hinata momentarily wanted to close her eyes, because Neji was very much the last person she wanted to think about right now.
Ino frowned.
It was like watching Naruto and Sasuke fight when they were still genin - though technically, they still were - you couldn't take your eyes away from the debacle.
"Well, I know the war's ended, but there are always accidents, you know. You don't want to die a virgin, do you?"
This time, the distress wasn't enough to shield Hinata from the table's reaction. She barely dared stealing a glance at Chouji, who was sitting in front of her after all, and was by far the less intimidating of the group, and his white horror was enough to make her look down again.
She could feel herself literally burning up. It had always been embarrassing, but now! - all the boys were there, and Temari, and Sai, all people Hinata wanted to stay as far from her personal life as possible. And people who were going to smirk, like Tenten or Sasuke. And - Hinata wondered how she could not be hyperventilating yet - Lee.
And Naruto too, but Hinata flat-out refused to consider this. Beside, unless she was completely wrong, Naruto couldn't care less about what she had or hadn't done. Also, she knew he'd been one of the first people of the group to have sex, and he was involved with his teammates. (Hinata had known Naruto wasn't a virgin anymore on the first time she'd seen him after the two years and a half he'd spent training with Jiraiya-sama. Something about the cheerfulness - the confidence.)
"Um," Hinata managed to say.
Surely someone would change the subject. She had complete faith in her teammates' camaraderie, and in Chouji's diversionary kindness, and in Sasuke's bristling.
So why did no one say anything?
"Um," Hinata repeated. She'd since long learned that in an argument, the first one breaking down in the middle of a heavy silence generally ends up losing, and so she kept her intervention to the bare minimum. It was a lesson that had steeled her nerves against her father's lectures.
Ino was watching her with expectant though slitted eyes, and in that instant Hinata would have given anything to possess Neji's capacity at analyzing body language.
"Well, I think she's right," Tenten loudly said. All heads turned toward her. "I mean, now's the time to celebrate!" She twisted her neck to look at Hinata. "You have to - to…"
"-enjoy the springtime of your youth," Lee completed, flushing deeply.
Nobody laughed. Not even Temari. Tenten gratefully smiled at her teammate.
Hinata wasn't sure if it said more about their seriousness, their shock, or their agreement in the matter.
It would have been bad enough if there had been only girls. But no, there had to be boys too. Her friends. She'd have felt less humiliated if the question had come from Gai.
And they were all looking at her again.
"Hinata?" Tenten asked.
The faster she got off the hot seat the better. They'd never leave her alone otherwise.
"Th-thank you for your concern, but it's really not a problem anymore."
In the silence that surrounded her low words, Hinata measured that she'd succeeded in meshing the stutter of her early years and the nonsensical sarcasm of her days as a prisoner.
She faked a smile that gained in humor as she watched the astonishment on her friends' face, and thought that it was good, now they'd move on.
She hadn't been prepared for Shino's shifting in his chair.
"You - have?"
There was something in the alcohol. Or else everyone had drunk way too much of it, and no-one seemed the part, not even Ino, because the strain in Shino's tone would have been blatant even if she hadn't known him as well as she did. She inwardly cringed.
She threw a cautious glance his way. Between the two of them, Kiba was slowly blinking, his jaw dropped.
She nodded - and it seemed that everyone started speaking at once.
"You didn't tell us?" Kiba sounded about to cry.
"Yay! WAY TO GO HINATA!" Ino shouted, bouncing in her seat.
"Told you so, now pay up," Naruto smirked at a stunned Sakura and a poisonous-looking Sasuke.
"Good for you," Shikamaru commented with a half-smile.
"How come you never told us about it?" Tenten demanded.
"It was during the war, wasn't it?" Chouji guessed.
Hinata chewed on her lip - she'd have to watch out not to let it become a habit - but everyone registered Chouji's quiet question. The implications immediately dampened their good mood.
So much for being done with it, but she supposed she had no choice. And honestly, if her formerly-private life could keep the spotlights off Team Seven, well, she'd just endure it, even if her head exploded with all the blood rushing there.
"It wasn't - one of those missions, right?"
The anguish she could see in poor Lee's eyes threatened to spill over. The group stiffened, and the look Temari sent her was distinctly compassionate.
This, luckily, was a question she could answer.
"No, that's for the ANBU." That was what the ANBU and the Roots were for, but she kept her knowledge of the grimmest aspects of the inner workings of the village to herself. Beside, her evident bloodline limit - articulated to the fact that she absolutely and unapologetically sucked at genjutsu - ruled her out anyway.
They relaxed; Hinata's soft, coolly-spoken explanation has reassured them. She… should not have found their concern as touching as she did. What she should have done was divert the topic on an unsuspecting victim - like Lee, for instance, who blushed almost as much as she did and who'd have been the perfect decoy, but Hinata couldn't bring herself to do that.
"Sai?" she heard Sakura ask. "What's wrong?"
Oh. Hinata hoped she hadn't brought back painful memories - he'd been in Roots, and he was exactly the kind of porcelain doll that would be sent on those missions… Oh no, no, no. Sai had changed during the two years the war had lasted; she didn't want to think she'd recalled his days as a tool… But he was tucked between Tenten and Naruto; she could only watch the faces of Lee and Sasuke, who were facing him, to guess his reaction.
"Sai?"
Hinata's shoulders hunched, but she refused to let remorse claim her, and she bent forward to try and see Sai, matching Kiba's efforts, briefly wishing she could just use the Byakugan.
Then he looked at her. It was a painful smile.
"You've been a prisoner, haven't you?"
As if a switch had been turned, the group tensed; Sasuke's head jerked towards her, eyes piercing her from his far away seat. Kiba's face was pale with dismay.
Wha-
"You killed Kabuto," Sasuke's clipped voice said.
The undertones were obvious. There was a sharp intake of breath from her right - not Kiba whom she'd have seen, not Tenten - Shino, Sai or Naruto. There was a whimper from Sakura. Everyone else was frozen. Everyone knew Kabuto.
"No!" Hinata denied. She saw Temari flinch. Her protest sounded too loud and too fierce.
"Hinata…" Ino's hand went to her shoulder, probably in a soothing gesture, and Ino's voice was more subdued than before.
Hinata had never been so red in her life.
She shook Ino's hand off her shoulder without an apology.
"No, he didn't - he never - Kabuto never raped me!"
…And she probably shouldn't have sounded that defensive either, but this was striking a little too close home for comfort.
"I wasn't raped," she continued more calmly in the ringing silence. "I wasn't raped. Neither by Kabuto nor by Orochimaru or by anyone. There was nothing like that. The interrogations - everything was entirely platonic."
She gave Uchiha Sasuke a look that would have been labeled 'defiant death glare of doom' on anyone else, but Hinata didn't glare. Sasuke didn't look completely convinced, and he pursed his lips in a way that Hinata thought meant 'I'll let you off the hook right now but don't think this is the last of it' (it was mostly directed towards Naruto), not that she could blame him.
"Sasuke-kun?" Sakura asked for a confirmation.
So nobody had missed their little exchange. Goody.
The resident expert of All Things Sound Except Mind shrugged.
"T's Kabuto we're talking about," Naruto intervened. "That guy was always a piece of work. …Er, not that I think it's normal to rape your prisoner, or that I think you need to be seriously fucked up not to want to do Hina - guys, aren't you supposed to shut me up when I do that? Sakura-chan? Bastard? Guuuuuyyyyyssssss…."
Naruto's whine couldn't cover Sasuke's snort or Sakura's giggles; the pink-haired girl had hidden her face behind her hands.
The tension had disappeared, but Hinata couldn't even be mortified by Naruto's comments. She was too busy getting herself under control.
Of course Sasuke wouldn't believe her - and unless Shikamaru and Temari were a lot more stupid than geniuses and very clever people were supposed to be, they wouldn't believe her either. Sasuke had lived for three years with Kabuto, he couldn't possibly ignore his penchants for mind games - after all, he'd fled, hadn't he? He couldn't have been as completely under Orochimaru's control as she'd heard at the time.
Everything was entirely platonic.
As platonic as it was to have someone torturing you for weeks, with carefully measured control in their every move, smile, look, and a soft, soft voice when things were cutting or growing through her, and the hands of a healer. Platonic.
Everything was about games with Kabuto, and thankfully, Hinata was a lot more used to them than Sasuke had been. She'd been four years older than he'd been when he'd left Konoha, and she hadn't been a puppet to a godlike older brother. She'd been aware that everything about Kabuto was lies and manipulations.
And sometimes his hand would brush against her skin, or he'd give her a sunny smile, or he'd frown when he saw that his experiment hadn't gone the way it was supposed to, and she knew that he was slowly but surely driving her to paranoia.
There were worse fates.
There had been days, she'd felt like her breath was suspended to Kabuto's lips; days when she whimpered and he held her in his arms, letting her blood drench his clothes; days when he stroked her shoulders almost like a massage, which Hinata hated; days when her thighs parted under his gaze; days when she would have hated herself for not kissing him back if he had tried.
So of course she'd been aware of how much of an unspoken point he made it that he'd never done anything sexual to her. It was always hanging above her head, part promise part threat.
(Not that he needed to; Hinata was all too aware of the fact that everything between them had been laced with chilling sensuality.)
And for that, she was pathetically grateful.
He tortured her and healed her and didn't come for - days? - and brought sweet warm food and let her take a bath and told her stories and smiled and gave her a cup of hot chocolate and said that he'd saved her life during the Sound's attack years before and announced that Kiba had been killed and didn't touch her and watched her from behind his silver glasses and broke her and was her only focus on reality and she'd killed him.
She'd brought the glasses back with her; when she'd been found by Nara Shikaku she'd been dazed and soaked in blood not her own. Even with her Byakugan activated, she hadn't been able to avoid all trouble on her journey back from Hidden Sound; she understood that she'd succeeded at all because the war against Konoha and Suna had decimated Orochimaru's ranks as well. The only chuunin who caught up with her wasn't someone important, and he had no idea that the Hyuuga existed; believing she was a genjutsu specialist, he chose to engage her in close combat.
(He was stronger and healthier than her, smiling at her like a predator - probably a snake - at a small weakened trembling mammal. Mongooses were small mammals, and Hinata had killed him.)
When she'd seen Nara Shikaku she'd thought for a moment she was seeing Shikamaru. Kabuto had said Shikamaru had been killed. He hadn't said that of either Naruto or Neji.
Hinata then did the only thing she could think of, and put all her might in shaking the genjutsu. It was a powerful genjutsu - it had to be, when she could feel Kabuto's glasses in her pocket - Kabuto was a master in genjutsu.
She couldn't remember Shikaku's reaction, or the darkness claiming her as she'd outdone her last reserves of energy, trying to break the restrictions that had been put on her chakra - nothing except the determination that next time she wouldn't let Kabuto pull her into an illusion, next time she'd break his glasses into his eyes and slash him a wide scarlet grin, next time she'd escape.
She'd woken up to realize it hadn't been genjutsu. The hospital room had been quiet and blank, with Tsunade-sama and Morino Ibiki looking down at her. Hinata's first question had been for the blood-stained spectacles. They were intact, on her bedside. Then Hinata let Tsunade-sama and Morino Ibiki do everything that was needed to make sure she was what she claimed to be. She liked Ibiki a lot more than she'd ever liked Kabuto, but of course it wasn't comparable.
These memories weren't welcome in this cheery restaurant, alive and well, with her friends and their embarrassing conversation, but they were an important part of her. Besides, the glasses hadn't left Hinata since. Maybe she'd show them to Sasuke later.
She could ask him what had been his stance towards Kabuto's - maybe in his case Orochimaru's - poisonous gifts. Given what she'd heard at the time and what she'd learned since, she doubted he'd turned them down.
It made sense, in a way; Sasuke was looking for power, so he took what was offered to him. Hinata had been nothing more than an experimental subject, and she never accepted Kabuto's gifts without the torturous knowledge that the more she did, the more she was relying on him, until one day would come when she'd be unable to survive without the blanket, and the bath, and the hot chocolate.
Every time Hinata had met Kabuto's amused/sorry look, she'd blushed because she knew he could read her about as well as Neji always had, and he'd been entertained - startled at first maybe - by her efforts to remain her own person. Sometimes she'd break and take the favor, partly appalled by the feeling that she was selling her soul for a honeysuckle-scented bath, partly relishing in the temporary return to human decorum more than the fleeting physical comfort, partly steeling her pride and sharpening her confidence.
"So, when was it?" Kiba asked in a detached tone that was as natural as Tsunade's youthful looks.
"Who was it?" Now, if even Shikamaru decided to have fun at her expense…
Hinata would have liked to lash out, but one doesn't lash out against one's teammates unless one is a member of Team Seven, and the last thing she needed was to have Temari tease her on Shikamaru's behalf as well.
Lee himself was starting to smile.
"It was when that envoy of Hidden Mist ended up at the hospital, wasn't it." Tenten sounded unbearably smug. "That red-haired one, two years ago - a year and a half."
"It wasn't." Hinata wanted to retort that not everyone lost their virginity to a nin from another village, but she wasn't half mad enough to imply things in front of Temari.
"Don't tell me you've been-" Naruto's eyebrows waggled "-celebrating?"
Even the double punch he received from his teammates - Naruto had leant so far over the table to be able to look at her that Sasuke barely needed to move - wasn't enough to soothe the burn of Hinata's humiliation. Mostly because said teammates were watching her. Also because Naruto's scenario wasn't entirely off the mark. He was just a few years late, and it had in fact been about relief and acknowledgment, but he wasn't all that wrong. Ideally, she'd even have celebrated before joining her friends, and -
Hinata squirmed in her seat. She hadn't done that for years.
"It was a long time ago."
It was apparently a wrong thing to say, because she could feel her friends' curiosity positively shot up. Hinata envisaged using a transmutation technique, then discarded the idea. It'd only encourage them, and Hinata did not fancy fending off their combined efforts. Shikamaru would be able to hold her still with her own shadow, and then - escaping the grasp of Sakura and Naruto was a risible thought.
"When?"
Ino had been the youngest of the girls to have sex; Tenten was the first, but Tenten was a year older than Ino, and a handful of months after Tenten's secret had been discovered (way too easily for a ninja, in itself a proof that Tenten rather liked the idea of showing off to the other girls), Ino and her then-boyfriend had "gone all the way". It had ended badly with the boyfriend, but Ino had still used it to lord over Sakura. It probably explained Ino's rapture.
"Two years, three?"
Chouji's conciliatory tone held a hint of fascination.
"More?" Shino coldly interjected.
Hinata didn't trust her voice to answer. In fact, she didn't want to answer at all. But Shino had a way to cling onto grudges that always made her feel rather guilty, and she was perfectly aware that soothing Shino's hurt out of guilt for Neji was not one of the healthiest things around, but she took it upon herself. Neji wouldn't let her do this (try and make him feel better) for him - to him - anyway. Probably he wouldn't even use it against her.
"How much?" Sakura called when Hinata's tiny nod went unseen by half the table.
She had no choice.
"Five years ago," Hinata muttered. (And she'd been getting some on a regular basis since then, but she banned the thought far far away.)
"Five years ago?" The disclosure startled Temari out of her amused silence.
"Five years? Five?" (Ino, choking.)
"You were twelve?" (A mildly hysterical Tenten.)
"You were twelve?" Sasuke's disbelief shone through.
"Five years ago when?" Naruto was enjoying himself way too much.
Shikamaru's eyebrow was downright inquisitive. If he decided he wanted to analyze the situation… This was bad. Better get it over with.
"After - you know." She made a significant glance at Sasuke, whose jaw clenched. "After you defeated the Sound Five."
Immediately, she saw Sakura's hand disappear under the table, and Sasuke tilted his head, his black eyes accepting. Hinata knew that Naruto's leg had found Sasuke's ankle at the same time Sakura had grabbed the ex-missing nin's thigh. At least everyone's attention was focused on her. She really needed to have a talk with the three of them. She knew what they were, but they had no way to know that, what with their non-observational skills, and to act so blatantly in front of someone who might take it the wrong way - she had to let them know she was their ally.
"Oh."
Slight dull in the general enthusiasm.
Lee looked confused, frowning, like he was trying to make sense of something but was missing pieces - all too true - and wasn't quite sure how to best word his question.
Hinata sighed. It was a small, soft sigh, but it was there. "Yes?"
"But - weren't you - didn't you - wasn't it Naruto that-" Lee fumbled for words as the head of the Hyuuga morosely watched the last remnants of her privacy be torn away. Five years ago. Five.
It was neither here nor there, she wanted to retort. She didn't, because Lee was by far the least responsible for the situation. And if she didn't say something, then everyone would assume things. Maybe that despair over Uchiha Sasuke going missing had driven her to such lengths. Hinata had no intention whatsoever of being taken for having been a Sasuke fangirl at any point of her existence - great for Sakura to have landed what she wanted, and greater for Ino to have got over it, but no. Just no. She drew the line there.
At the other end of the table, Team Seven was distinctly ill-at-ease. Sai looked thoughtful.
Hinata smiled at them.
"It had nothing to do with you," she assured the lot of them, directing her words as much to the Uchiha as to Naruto. Sakura replied in kind, with a thankful smile. Maybe she should revise her previous judgment of the team's obliviousness.
Leaning back into a normal sitting position, she caught Shikamaru's calculating expression. This was very, very bad, she acknowledged.
Hopefully they'd get the hint that she didn't want to say any more.
…Wait, what was she thinking? Surely the last fifteen minutes had proven that even if one of them did get the hint, they wouldn't let common decency get in the way of their nosiness - research - right?
"I'm not going to tell you who," she added.
She waited for the inevitable response to her affirmation, someone quizzically opening their mouth to push some more.
"Who-"
This time, it was Temari, whom Shikamaru interrupted with a hand on her arm.
It made sense; of all of them, she was probably one of those who knew Hinata the least.
"I'm not going to tell you," Hinata repeated with a smile. On Temari's left side, Lee fidgeted, and she saw Sasuke's eyebrows rising.
The Sand kunoichi sent a narrow-eyed look at Shikamaru, who only removed his hand in answer. Temari's countenance relaxed. He'd tell her about it later, Hinata translated.
The silence dragged on for a few seconds, until Kiba started again in a falsely innocuous tone. He could have taken lessons from Naruto. Once more, she wanted to cringe.
"So… Five years, huh?"
"That's a long time," Shino blankly concurred. Hinata wondered what was coming now.
"And here we were gettin' all worried about you!" There was a point of giddiness in Kiba's voice. "Planning to set you up on blind dates, an' all!"
Well, there was the bewilderment.
"You could have told us about it," Shino grumbled. Hinata's Shino-working-himself-into-a-miffed-huff alarm went off.
"Yeah, you could've," Kiba agreed. "That's what we're for! We're your friends!"
It would have gone over mightily. Hinata could just about picture the discussion. Even now, five years after the fact, Kiba was squealing in excitement.
"You needn't have kept it to yourself," Shino sulked on. "You don't have to hide from us."
She knew she'd been right not to worry about their feelings for her. She'd just have liked to have the evidence of their friendly-brotherly disposition at another time. One when she wouldn't have drowned in fully-deserved guilt.
"You know that, right?" Kiba checked.
The rest of the group had stepped down and let Hinata's teammates deal with the aftermath of the revelation. All thanks to Shino's quietness, which induced privacy and which even Kiba's relative buoyancy couldn't dispel. Not with Naruto starting again with the Team Seven comedy trio down the table, and Ino snarking back at Chouji and Shikamaru whenever she had the chance, exchanging conniving smirks with Temari during her commentary of the Naruto-Sakura-Sasuke scene, while Tenten did her best to keep Lee and Sai grounded in the discussion.
Hinata repressed the pang that Neji was missing.
"You know we value your trust, Hinata. You have no reason to be timid."
Here Kiba snorted and made to smack Shino on the head, but Shino dodged, and the hand only went sweeping past wiry hair (indoors meant no parka). "She's the head of the Hyuuga, you dork. She doesn't need any more of that 'asserting herself' crap."
Shino's dark glasses stared at Kiba. Hinata stifled her laughter.
"That 'asserting herself crap', as you say, is what allowed her to become the head of the Hyuuga in the first place."
"Oh? Like you're saying Hinata'd never have got confident without your help?" He was positively chortling.
"…No, I'm saying being encouraged into standing up for herself was the help."
"Sorry - isn't this just a liiiiittle contradictory here?" Kiba was playing - taunting. "My bug-sense is telling me that 'pressuring her into standing up' is very different from 'encouraging'."
"…Obviously." Shino's flat tone meant that he was taking Kiba's bait very seriously.
Hinata decided she'd let them get entangled in their own reasoning for long enough.
"Thank you, both of you," she said softly. As soon as she started talking the boys' gazes shot back to her, a similar air of attentiveness in Kiba's earnest features and Shino's composed body language. Once more, Hinata wondered what she'd done to deserve being treated like a leader. "I knew I could count on you to understand my reasons for keeping it private." Her lips twitched in a brief smile. "I'm sorry I never told you. But it was something I needed to do for myself."
Please understand. Hinata waited for their reaction. Please understand it had nothing to do with you.
Shino nodded once, gravely.
"We get it, Hinata," Kiba said. Then, hesitatingly, "You'll tell us, though? One day?"
Hinata looked away. Temari and Shikamaru were talking with Tenten without looking at each other, mannerisms easy and unconcerned; Sasuke was watching Sakura getting exasperated with Sai, his approving smirk getting more accentuated whenever Naruto's voice resonated in a snort.
There would be months before Konoha settled back into its peaceful routine again, Hinata knew; months at least before the Hokage was pressured again into finding a successor, months before the Sand could spare a visit from its Kazekage, before Team Seven would have to face the first rumors, before some of them healed or jounins were chosen, before the Hyuuga council died out completely after endeavoring to wrestle her for power or circumvent her authority, before she could carry out her alliance with the future Hokage, the last of the Uchiha, and the rising star of the medic-nins of Konoha, before Neji's position was viable in the Hyuuga according to Hinata.
Something rang through her, steely like a kunai molded out of stubbornness. This was why she'd grown strong - the match which she'd never seen ending, which had sent her life spiraling into her control. Neji had stopped being blind, Kabuto had saved her life, and Naruto had sworn that when he'd be Hokage, he'd change the Hyuuga. Shino had reported the promise back to her.
If the head of the Hyuuga and the Hokage both bullied the traditions into bending their way - if other powerful clans approved - if the general opinion was swayed - if the Soke and the Bunke were suppressed… (Neji…) Provided she was strong enough…
A few months at least.
"I will," Hinata promised with a last thought to what the future had in store.
Part Two