[Naruto] Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son - 12
Title: Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son. (or: a cage is a cage is a curse, dammit.)
Author: runespoor7
Rating: R
Summary: series of unrelated drabbles/fics. So far, series include various flavours of implied Neji-Hina-Naru combinations, but it's really Hyuuga centered gen with occasional cameos of other characters.
Notes: follows this. Also, please tell me if you notice grammar errors and the like.
Previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
2C. ninja academy - continued 3
Hinata wibbled under the boy's peering gaze. Her heart was ramming into her chest and the palms of her hands were dampening. She wished he'd stop doing that. On the other hand, she was strangely reluctant at the idea he might look away.
Of course, he didn't give any hint that he might want to.
His eyes were every bit as blue as she remembered.
She quickly looked down when she realised he might think she was staring. She was just making a fool of herself. She mentally called herself rude. And a wimp.
Then his face broke into a smile. (She knew because she kept stealing glances up at him. It was like a magnet.)
"I'm glad you changed your mind! Hey, think we'll be in the same class?"
Hinata carefully smiled.
"I don't think so. I'm very late, I wouldn't be able to follow."
He shrugged. "Hey, you never know. You could catch up!"
Hinata didn't mention that she thought catching up almost two years of classes would be near impossible, at least not any time soon, and instead she hung on the boy's grin.
"Yes, I could catch up," she echoed.
He nodded. "Yup! Till then, see you around - my name's Naruto!"
"I-I'm Hinata."
He smiled again. Her heart missed a bit. (What she going to react like this every time she saw him? He was always smiling. She'd never breathe normally. Oddly, the prospect wasn't as unpleasant as it should logically have been.)
"Right! Gotta go, or Iruka-sensei'll have my head after yesterday's prank - bye, Hinata-chan!"
"Bye, Naruto-k-kun," she whispered as he was running toward the Academy door, leaping over a rolling ball and exchanging loud yells with a tattooed boy.
Then she blushed because she'd just tagged the 'kun' suffix without asking him if she could or anything.
2D. ninja academy - continued 4
When Hyuuga Hinata wound up in hospital, Iruka decided enough was enough.
They were a ninja Academy; a certain amount of injuries, exhaustion and various accidents was expected - and that was discounting the fact that students were more often than not subtly encouraged to cheat on written tests. Iruka himself drew the line when students were bullied into cheating for a stronger, less sneaky pupil. It was a very sharp line. It was known for having sliced through students' ego down as well as any blade wire.
But there were limits. When children had to stay in the hospital and couldn't merely be sent back home with a broken limb that'd have been healed by the school's medic, it was time to step in.
Strictly speaking, he was aware Hinata had brought it up upon herself. The logical reaction was to find the person responsible for it.
He didn't even need to think for two seconds before he sat in the chair in front of the door to Hinata's hospital room, crossed his arms, and glared the day away until he heard Hyuuga Hizashi's footsteps on the hospital's tiled floor.
He stood up stiffly.
"Hyuuga-san."
"Umino-sensei," Hizashi answered immediately. "Is she alright?"
Iruka felt a vein twinge in his temple.
Iruka was unused to being angry at Hyuuga Hizashi.
He'd had several Hyuuga children go through his classroom over the years, and when something happened that somehow got their clan head involved, he could generally see eye to eye with him. Maybe that was because practically every little incident occurring around a Hyuuga child meant their clan head was involved - in Iruka's opinion, the Hyuuga were even worse than the Inuzuka when it came to the respected clan head having to know about everything, which, incidentally, he disliked greatly.
A child was his or her parents' business; not the clan head. If a kid slipped and did something grave enough, then the parents should be the ones allowed to take care of it - they should be those who were contacted and left to get organised - not the clan head.
(Iruka wasn't a fan of great clans. He believed in equality of treatment, unlike a few other teachers he could have named, and thus he behaved exactly the same way with clan heirs as he did with first-generation shinobi, and the only person he'd ever called 'sama' in his life and meant it was the Hokage.)
In any case, as a result he knew Hyuuga Hizashi to be a reasonable man who let the Academy deal with its students without trying to intervene and make a scene every time one of the clan came back with a failing grade.
But then, all the Hyuuga children in the Academy so far had only been very distantly related to the clan head; children whose parents were members of their Branch House, all of them.
The notable exception was the man's son, but it was highly unlikely that Neji had ever brought home a less-than-perfect grade, and Iruka knew from his colleagues that they only wished every pupil behaved like him. The boy was supposedly calm, dignified, and maintained cordial relations with the other students (Iruka had never had him for a student, so he could only trust what he heard from others).
Hinata, on the other hand, was Hizashi's own niece.
He had learnt, in the years between the time she would have normally entered the Academy and today, that 'Hyuuga Hizashi-sama' had decided against making a shinobi out of the girl. Personally, Iruka thought it was depriving her of part of her history, but he supposed he could imagine that the man wouldn't want to risk her life when he'd already lost his brother. He disapproved, but did so in the privacy of his mind. It was, after all, none of his business.
Then Hizashi-sama changed his mind and enrolled her, more than two years after the usual age.
As far as Iruka was concerned, it was all good.
But what it concretely meant was that suddenly, Hinata became his business; Iruka had two classes, one in the mornings and the other in the afternoons, the first-years and the third-years.
(He'd probably ask for higher classes after that; he was starting to feel he'd reached the end of both his interest and his patience in the younger children, at least for now. He told himself it had nothing to do with Uzumaki Naruto - whom Iruka was more or less convinced wouldn't learn anything at all ever, and here he wasn't speaking of ninja rules and taijutsu, if he wasn't personally here to bellow in the boy's ears, as the only teacher so far who'd bothered to do it.)
He'd regarded the girl's drive and willingness with pleasure, all the more because she assimilated easily the basic notions, and in a couple of months he was planning on recommending her to pass into second-year. She was old enough that she wouldn't benefit from the civilian subjects that were continued in the Academy's first year, and it would be stupid to hold her back when she would have only marginally more difficulties in the year above.
If she continued the way she'd started, working steadily more than her classmates, she may even be able to leave the Academy at the normal age. And even if she spent one more year in the Academy, that would only make her the same age as the students who passed the Academy exam and failed the test to become genins, and who decided to try again.
He was all for it.
In general, Iruka was all for working until you fell flat on your stomach on your bed, and proceeded to sleep through a good nine hours until you woke up, cheery-eyed and well-rested.
(He'd been called a slave driver when he'd had responsibilities in chuunin exams, but he had a good enough grasp of how much work was healthy and how much wasn't, and seven-year-old students weren't fourteen-year-old genins who whined because they were obviously not ready for being chuunin if they couldn't even force themselves enough to be ready for the exam itself.)
His approval came to a stop when it started taking a toll from the student - and, despite the rumours, not because it defeated the purpose.
In Hinata's case, it would have been righter to say his approval had plummeted from an abrupt cliff.
Who had kept her out of the Academy for over two years?
Who was she now trying to prove had been right to put his trust and hopes into her?
Who was the only ninja in a more or less parental role around her?
So many wrongs, so few attempts to rectify them.
"She should awaken in the evening, the medic-nin told me the hospital will want to keep her for one or two days more so she can make a complete recovery."
And not head straight for a training ground the moment she goes out their door, he didn't add. He didn't, because, as much as it infuriated him to think about it, overdone training was the least of his issues about the situation.
"Oh." Hizashi blinked. "Good." He let out a small sigh.
Iruka frowned.
As if he was going to let him off the hook so easily.
"You were waiting for her to wake up?" Hizashi suddenly asked, as though he'd just realised Iruka probably had a reason for being here.
"Actually, Hizashi-san, I was waiting for you."
Hizashi straightened, looking intrigued.
"It concerns Hinata," Iruka managed not to blow a fuse at the other man's clueless air. If he truly didn't know what Iruka wanted to deafen him about, then Iruka'd be even harder pressed to keep his cool.
An incentive was that otherwise he would risk disrupting Hinata's rest, but this sort of consideration tended to fade away fast enough in front of the reasoning that it was far better to be tired and alive than up to scratch and dead.
Far better to ring some bells before the issue actually arose.
"What happened to her?" Hizashi curtly asked. "I came as soon as I received the news, but the Academy's message was very vague. I understand it was an incident with another student?" His face darkened. "I don't doubt that the boy's parents and I will have much to talk about." He sounded fairly menacing.
Iruka noted - like a scribbling in a margin - that Hizashi had immediately decided it would be a boy, and filed it away for later reproofs regarding his attitude toward Hinata.
"Yes. However, far more than that, the incident concerned another student. One who wasn't even there," Iruka all but bit.
Hizashi regarded him a moment with the type of look that was precisely expected from great clans' heads. "I beg your pardon."
Iruka reined his temper in, reminding himself forcibly that antagonising a student's parents or guardian was never a good idea if you wanted them to listen to what you were saying. It ought to become easier with years, but actually Iruka found that the more kids he taught the less patience he had for their parents.
"Hizashi-san, Hinata is here because, according to all accounts, she picked a fight with a student from an upper year over something that had been said about your son and her cousin, Neji, whom, I believe according to your traditions, she kept referring to as Neji-sama."
…he couldn't remember having actually planned for the last part, but he nevertheless glared a little as he spoke.
In front of him, Hizashi turned very pale. He visibly swallowed, licked his lips, and recovered his composure.
"You are telling me she was taking his defence."
Iruka gritted his teeth, but otherwise remained remarkably calm. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."
He'd have almost preferred to say that on the contrary, she was attacking him, but there were visual witnesses. In that case, it would have put her in a touchy position with the Hyuuga Main House; in this case, it meant she rated loyalty to her uncle and cousin over her own well-being.
Hizashi didn't say a word. His gaze was focused on the tiles, behind and to the left of Iruka.
Iruka looked at him. The clan head, the uncle, the father.
"You're pushing her," he said. Hizashi looked up at him again in surprise. "She may be able, over the years, to catch up to students her age, but it will be a long process. You can't expect her to cover two years and a half in three months. And you particularly can't ask this sort of loyalty from her until she's old enough and savvy enough to understand what she could get herself into.
"You're pushing her too far, too hard, too fast."
There was a silence. Then, slowly, Hizashi's lips stretched into a sad smile.
"I'm not pushing her," he admitted in a quiet voice.
His eyes met Iruka's.
"She is the one who decided to become a ninja."
Okay. So, who wanna place a bet on the identity of the student who landed Hinata in the hospital?
Winners get a one-sentence ficlet of the character/pairing + prompt format. Or a dvd commentary. Or a five-things thing. Or something.
Author: runespoor7
Rating: R
Summary: series of unrelated drabbles/fics. So far, series include various flavours of implied Neji-Hina-Naru combinations, but it's really Hyuuga centered gen with occasional cameos of other characters.
Notes: follows this. Also, please tell me if you notice grammar errors and the like.
Previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
2C. ninja academy - continued 3
Hinata wibbled under the boy's peering gaze. Her heart was ramming into her chest and the palms of her hands were dampening. She wished he'd stop doing that. On the other hand, she was strangely reluctant at the idea he might look away.
Of course, he didn't give any hint that he might want to.
His eyes were every bit as blue as she remembered.
She quickly looked down when she realised he might think she was staring. She was just making a fool of herself. She mentally called herself rude. And a wimp.
Then his face broke into a smile. (She knew because she kept stealing glances up at him. It was like a magnet.)
"I'm glad you changed your mind! Hey, think we'll be in the same class?"
Hinata carefully smiled.
"I don't think so. I'm very late, I wouldn't be able to follow."
He shrugged. "Hey, you never know. You could catch up!"
Hinata didn't mention that she thought catching up almost two years of classes would be near impossible, at least not any time soon, and instead she hung on the boy's grin.
"Yes, I could catch up," she echoed.
He nodded. "Yup! Till then, see you around - my name's Naruto!"
"I-I'm Hinata."
He smiled again. Her heart missed a bit. (What she going to react like this every time she saw him? He was always smiling. She'd never breathe normally. Oddly, the prospect wasn't as unpleasant as it should logically have been.)
"Right! Gotta go, or Iruka-sensei'll have my head after yesterday's prank - bye, Hinata-chan!"
"Bye, Naruto-k-kun," she whispered as he was running toward the Academy door, leaping over a rolling ball and exchanging loud yells with a tattooed boy.
Then she blushed because she'd just tagged the 'kun' suffix without asking him if she could or anything.
2D. ninja academy - continued 4
When Hyuuga Hinata wound up in hospital, Iruka decided enough was enough.
They were a ninja Academy; a certain amount of injuries, exhaustion and various accidents was expected - and that was discounting the fact that students were more often than not subtly encouraged to cheat on written tests. Iruka himself drew the line when students were bullied into cheating for a stronger, less sneaky pupil. It was a very sharp line. It was known for having sliced through students' ego down as well as any blade wire.
But there were limits. When children had to stay in the hospital and couldn't merely be sent back home with a broken limb that'd have been healed by the school's medic, it was time to step in.
Strictly speaking, he was aware Hinata had brought it up upon herself. The logical reaction was to find the person responsible for it.
He didn't even need to think for two seconds before he sat in the chair in front of the door to Hinata's hospital room, crossed his arms, and glared the day away until he heard Hyuuga Hizashi's footsteps on the hospital's tiled floor.
He stood up stiffly.
"Hyuuga-san."
"Umino-sensei," Hizashi answered immediately. "Is she alright?"
Iruka felt a vein twinge in his temple.
Iruka was unused to being angry at Hyuuga Hizashi.
He'd had several Hyuuga children go through his classroom over the years, and when something happened that somehow got their clan head involved, he could generally see eye to eye with him. Maybe that was because practically every little incident occurring around a Hyuuga child meant their clan head was involved - in Iruka's opinion, the Hyuuga were even worse than the Inuzuka when it came to the respected clan head having to know about everything, which, incidentally, he disliked greatly.
A child was his or her parents' business; not the clan head. If a kid slipped and did something grave enough, then the parents should be the ones allowed to take care of it - they should be those who were contacted and left to get organised - not the clan head.
(Iruka wasn't a fan of great clans. He believed in equality of treatment, unlike a few other teachers he could have named, and thus he behaved exactly the same way with clan heirs as he did with first-generation shinobi, and the only person he'd ever called 'sama' in his life and meant it was the Hokage.)
In any case, as a result he knew Hyuuga Hizashi to be a reasonable man who let the Academy deal with its students without trying to intervene and make a scene every time one of the clan came back with a failing grade.
But then, all the Hyuuga children in the Academy so far had only been very distantly related to the clan head; children whose parents were members of their Branch House, all of them.
The notable exception was the man's son, but it was highly unlikely that Neji had ever brought home a less-than-perfect grade, and Iruka knew from his colleagues that they only wished every pupil behaved like him. The boy was supposedly calm, dignified, and maintained cordial relations with the other students (Iruka had never had him for a student, so he could only trust what he heard from others).
Hinata, on the other hand, was Hizashi's own niece.
He had learnt, in the years between the time she would have normally entered the Academy and today, that 'Hyuuga Hizashi-sama' had decided against making a shinobi out of the girl. Personally, Iruka thought it was depriving her of part of her history, but he supposed he could imagine that the man wouldn't want to risk her life when he'd already lost his brother. He disapproved, but did so in the privacy of his mind. It was, after all, none of his business.
Then Hizashi-sama changed his mind and enrolled her, more than two years after the usual age.
As far as Iruka was concerned, it was all good.
But what it concretely meant was that suddenly, Hinata became his business; Iruka had two classes, one in the mornings and the other in the afternoons, the first-years and the third-years.
(He'd probably ask for higher classes after that; he was starting to feel he'd reached the end of both his interest and his patience in the younger children, at least for now. He told himself it had nothing to do with Uzumaki Naruto - whom Iruka was more or less convinced wouldn't learn anything at all ever, and here he wasn't speaking of ninja rules and taijutsu, if he wasn't personally here to bellow in the boy's ears, as the only teacher so far who'd bothered to do it.)
He'd regarded the girl's drive and willingness with pleasure, all the more because she assimilated easily the basic notions, and in a couple of months he was planning on recommending her to pass into second-year. She was old enough that she wouldn't benefit from the civilian subjects that were continued in the Academy's first year, and it would be stupid to hold her back when she would have only marginally more difficulties in the year above.
If she continued the way she'd started, working steadily more than her classmates, she may even be able to leave the Academy at the normal age. And even if she spent one more year in the Academy, that would only make her the same age as the students who passed the Academy exam and failed the test to become genins, and who decided to try again.
He was all for it.
In general, Iruka was all for working until you fell flat on your stomach on your bed, and proceeded to sleep through a good nine hours until you woke up, cheery-eyed and well-rested.
(He'd been called a slave driver when he'd had responsibilities in chuunin exams, but he had a good enough grasp of how much work was healthy and how much wasn't, and seven-year-old students weren't fourteen-year-old genins who whined because they were obviously not ready for being chuunin if they couldn't even force themselves enough to be ready for the exam itself.)
His approval came to a stop when it started taking a toll from the student - and, despite the rumours, not because it defeated the purpose.
In Hinata's case, it would have been righter to say his approval had plummeted from an abrupt cliff.
Who had kept her out of the Academy for over two years?
Who was she now trying to prove had been right to put his trust and hopes into her?
Who was the only ninja in a more or less parental role around her?
So many wrongs, so few attempts to rectify them.
"She should awaken in the evening, the medic-nin told me the hospital will want to keep her for one or two days more so she can make a complete recovery."
And not head straight for a training ground the moment she goes out their door, he didn't add. He didn't, because, as much as it infuriated him to think about it, overdone training was the least of his issues about the situation.
"Oh." Hizashi blinked. "Good." He let out a small sigh.
Iruka frowned.
As if he was going to let him off the hook so easily.
"You were waiting for her to wake up?" Hizashi suddenly asked, as though he'd just realised Iruka probably had a reason for being here.
"Actually, Hizashi-san, I was waiting for you."
Hizashi straightened, looking intrigued.
"It concerns Hinata," Iruka managed not to blow a fuse at the other man's clueless air. If he truly didn't know what Iruka wanted to deafen him about, then Iruka'd be even harder pressed to keep his cool.
An incentive was that otherwise he would risk disrupting Hinata's rest, but this sort of consideration tended to fade away fast enough in front of the reasoning that it was far better to be tired and alive than up to scratch and dead.
Far better to ring some bells before the issue actually arose.
"What happened to her?" Hizashi curtly asked. "I came as soon as I received the news, but the Academy's message was very vague. I understand it was an incident with another student?" His face darkened. "I don't doubt that the boy's parents and I will have much to talk about." He sounded fairly menacing.
Iruka noted - like a scribbling in a margin - that Hizashi had immediately decided it would be a boy, and filed it away for later reproofs regarding his attitude toward Hinata.
"Yes. However, far more than that, the incident concerned another student. One who wasn't even there," Iruka all but bit.
Hizashi regarded him a moment with the type of look that was precisely expected from great clans' heads. "I beg your pardon."
Iruka reined his temper in, reminding himself forcibly that antagonising a student's parents or guardian was never a good idea if you wanted them to listen to what you were saying. It ought to become easier with years, but actually Iruka found that the more kids he taught the less patience he had for their parents.
"Hizashi-san, Hinata is here because, according to all accounts, she picked a fight with a student from an upper year over something that had been said about your son and her cousin, Neji, whom, I believe according to your traditions, she kept referring to as Neji-sama."
…he couldn't remember having actually planned for the last part, but he nevertheless glared a little as he spoke.
In front of him, Hizashi turned very pale. He visibly swallowed, licked his lips, and recovered his composure.
"You are telling me she was taking his defence."
Iruka gritted his teeth, but otherwise remained remarkably calm. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying."
He'd have almost preferred to say that on the contrary, she was attacking him, but there were visual witnesses. In that case, it would have put her in a touchy position with the Hyuuga Main House; in this case, it meant she rated loyalty to her uncle and cousin over her own well-being.
Hizashi didn't say a word. His gaze was focused on the tiles, behind and to the left of Iruka.
Iruka looked at him. The clan head, the uncle, the father.
"You're pushing her," he said. Hizashi looked up at him again in surprise. "She may be able, over the years, to catch up to students her age, but it will be a long process. You can't expect her to cover two years and a half in three months. And you particularly can't ask this sort of loyalty from her until she's old enough and savvy enough to understand what she could get herself into.
"You're pushing her too far, too hard, too fast."
There was a silence. Then, slowly, Hizashi's lips stretched into a sad smile.
"I'm not pushing her," he admitted in a quiet voice.
His eyes met Iruka's.
"She is the one who decided to become a ninja."
Okay. So, who wanna place a bet on the identity of the student who landed Hinata in the hospital?
Winners get a one-sentence ficlet of the character/pairing + prompt format. Or a dvd commentary. Or a five-things thing. Or something.