ADROS Ch. 5
Hooray~ Finished the next chapter of A Darkened Ray of Sunshine (ADROS), so here it is.
Title: A Darkened Ray of Sunshine (ADROS)
Rating: PG for now, but will eventually be more M
Pairings: NejiHina, various eventual smatterings of others.
Fandom: Naruto
Status: Ongoing
Summary: Hinata, wrestling with both her feelings for Neji and the harsh treatment she continues to receive from her family, finally decides that she can no longer bear her life as it is. Leaving Konoha, she finds herself flung into a world that is far different from the sheltered life that she once knew. And when an offer of dreams fulfilled comes from a most unexpected source, she grabs onto the chance offered to her. But what will happen when the very thing that she’s been running from comes in search of her? Will she return to Konoha, and the life that she left behind, or will she stride forward on her own onto a new path?
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto, but I’d sell my soul to Kishimoto-sensei if it would get him to make NejiHina canon.
“Are you sure we should stop here, Neji? There’s still a few more hours until daylight, we could gain some ground.”
White porcelain raised, painted lines reflecting the moon’s pale gaze as the Hyuuga pushed the mask up onto the top of his head to regard his green-suited team-mate as he shook his head. Tenten dropped to the ground beside them, bunned hair a slightly amusing parody of the ears on her panda mask as she pulled it off of her face, hands planted firmly on her hips as she raised an eyebrow at the captain.
“Lee’s right, Neji. We should keep going.”
Blank eyes regarded the two of them, taking in the slight trembling of muscles, the heavier breathing, the way chakra was beginning to falter. Shaking his head again, Neji pulled out a kunai and simply began shredding the verge, cutting down small limbs and stripping them of leaves.
“You’re tired, and your chakra’s drained. We all are. We’ll get nowhere if we run ourselves to death pushing too hard. An hour or two, three at most, is all we need. Once we’ve rested, we’ll keep going.”
She won’t get far, afterall.
He might not have spoken the words that flashed through his mind, but he knew they understood. Hinata wasn’t like them. She may have had the advantage of distance and a head start, but they were stronger, faster, more skilled then the girl whose footprints led them. Neji had no illusions of the way this mission was going to end. Afterall, it was obvious to the stoic man. Hinata-sama was weak, much weaker then he or any of his teammates. What difference would a mere few hours make in regards to distance between them, after all? Tossing the stripped branches down in a pile in the center of the clearing, he nodded to Lee.
“Lee, go get some brush to use for kindling. Tenten, you and I secure the perimeter. We don’t know what might be lurking in this part of the country. Sai.”
From the nearby tree branch, the fourth member of the team simply nodded his head in acknowledgement, without saying a word. Neji fought back a frown at the other Jounin’s attitude. He didn’t particularly like Sai, not because there was anything wrong with the other man, but because the ex-Team 7 member had that disconcerting manner about him. As though everything about him was fake, a façade to hide the emotionless coldness that ran beneath. And even to Neji, one who was schooled in stoicism, in keeping his emotions under lock and key and presenting a calm and unruffled front to the world, it was disturbing to see someone who seemed less as though they merely hid those same emotions and more as though they simply didn’t possess them. Robotic, expressionless. Like the puppets that proliferated themselves through Sunagakure whenever his ANBU team was assigned a joint mission with their allies of the Wind country.
“I can track her, you know. It wouldn’t be that hard, White-eyes.”
Biting back irritation at the nickname, the ANBU in question shook his head. That was another reason why he didn’t like Sai. The annoying nicknames and attempts at jokes. Hyuuga Neji did not, as far as he was aware, possess anything that could have been termed a “sense of humor”, no matter how many times his comrades and teammates tried to find one within his countenance.
“No. That takes more chakra and could lead any enemy nin in the area to either us or to her. Just light the fire, if you want to draw so badly.”
Getting to his feet, he nodded to Tenten before the two of them leapt off into the trees to scout the perimeter. Without a word, Sai shrugged his shoulders and took a seat, back leaning against the rough bark of the tree. Pulling out his sketchbook, he put pencil to paper, the rough scratching of lead against off-white fiber soon becoming the only sound. Moments later, the relative silence was broken by the arrival of Lee, armful of brush tucked against the gray of his armour. Kneeling down beside the jumble of sticks that Neji had provided, the thick-browed man began artfully arranging them into a tent-like formation around the brush, lower lip caught between his teeth as though deep in thought. Sitting back on his heels, he beamed at his work with a nod, rummaging in his pockets.
“Wonderful! Now all that is needed is a source of flame!”
With a flourish of brush, Sai sent the inked creation scurrying down the trunk of the tree, the small dragonish creature pausing at Lee’s knee before it took a deep breath and reared back to blast a minute inferno onto the dried kindling. Twigs and leaves rustled, caught, and soon blazed up with a deep crimson glow as the construct evaporated into a puddle of ink that slipped along the ground and found it’s way back into the inkpot at Sai’s waist. He regarded Lee with a smile.
“There you go, Fuzzy-brows.”
Mentally calculating that this might be the time to try and make “friends” with the green-suited taijutsu user, Sai nodded to himself. Certainly he had grown close to his own team-members, as well as some of the other shinobi he worked with, but that still didn’t mean he’d made a lot of progress. Especially with the group that he was currently traveling with. They were older, even by only a year, and with the exception of Lee, the three of them tended to keep somewhat to themselves. Especially Neji. The white-eyed captain was positively elusive when he wasn’t on missions, always training or meditating or doing whatever it was that tight-assed Hyuuga did when they weren’t on mission. Whatever that might be, Sai didn’t know, and as his initial attempts at making conversation with the long-haired captain had yielded less then favourable results, perhaps it was time to try a different approach.
Tenten was the same, only for different reasons. While she was certainly more friendly then her stoic teammate, she wasn’t like most of the other kunoichi. For one, she was fairly plain, brown hair and eyes doing nothing much to distinguish her, and having, in Sai’s personal point of view, no special ninja traits of much mention. But that being said, the girl with the buns in her hair was a formidable fighter, and made up for her lack of memorable jutsu with her very memorable arsenal of weapons and taijutsu techniques. An arsenal of which Sai did not wish to be on the receiving end of, especially since the brown-haired girl seemed to have some indication of leaning more towards the violent persuasion of his own pink-haired teammate.
Which left Lee. With a nod, Sai flashed a wide grin at the black-haired man, cocked his head to the side, and began his “friendship conversation” in what seemed to be his favourite way.
“So, since you’re engaged and all, I’d assume you’ve got a decent-sized one, right?”
The somewhat perplexed look on the taijutsu-user’s face was interrupted by the return of the other two members of their party. Neji glowered at Sai for a moment as he dropped a pair of dead rabbits in front of them.
“Cut that out, there isn’t time for it.”
As little patience as he normally had for Sai’s antics, that patience was already wearing thin with the length of time it was taking to track down his wayward cousin. By all rights they should have already overtaken her and drug her back home to where she belonged, surrounded by the posh walls of the Hyuuga compound, simply submitting to fate’s determination for her future. Not sitting in the wilderness, eating over a campfire and chasing her irritating person through the woods. But that was something to worry about later.
Schooling his features into their normal calm appearance, he reminded himself that regardless of what he may have felt, he was shinobi. A mission was a mission, whether he wanted it or not. Hyuuga Neji did not fail his missions. And at present, his mission was to recover his cousin, the same cousin that he was supposed to devote his life to serving. That being the case, recovering her was exactly what he would do. Pulling out his kunai and making quick work of cleaning the two carcasses, he soon had the two rabbits on a spit over the fire. They wouldn’t take long at all to cook, then they could nourish themselves and be on their way again.
X
Sandaled feet pounded against the ground as she ran, steps uneven and faltering. The soft grunt as a body impacted with the trunk of a tree gave way to more footsteps as she pushed herself away from the barked surface and continued onward. Further, she had to get further. It would be dawn soon, she had to get as far away from them as she could.
Can’t…stop. Have to…keep going. Just…just a little farther…
If anything about the current situation could have been considered “good”, it would have been the fact that the young Hyuuga’s chakra was so drained from constantly having to heal and bolster her muscles that she wouldn’t have been surprised if even Neji’s sharp senses weren’t able to pick her up. But that didn’t mean much of anything in the face of the ANBU training. Neji wouldn’t have needed her chakra signature to find her. Hinata stumbled, falling to one knee as she gritted her teeth. The muscles in her legs simply refused to go any farther. Straining, she pushed herself up, feeling injured flesh protesting mightily, biting her lip against the pain as she mentally begged her body not to fail her now.
Just…a little…more…
Sadly, however, a little more proved to be a little more then bruised self could take. She felt her head spin and her legs give out as the no-longer familiar trees and branches of her surroundings swirled together into a maelstrom of chaotic colours, blackness bleeding in from the edges of her field of vision. With a soft sigh, the exhausted kunoichi crumpled to the ground in a heap, chakra utterly spent, resources tapped dry. Un-noticed by the unconscious girl, a small pair of green eyes peered out of the foliage at her prone form, watching the rising sun’s light play across her features.
She wouldn’t have been able to say how much time had passed, seeing as she barely remembered passing out in the first place. Hinata felt the first vestiges of consciousness press softly against her mind with gentle fingertips. First sound, the quiet twittering of birds, the soft rustle of wind through tees as the morning’s breeze caressed the new leaves with a tender and loving touch. For a moment, she thought she heard the faint tinkling of windchimes, remniscent of the small globe of blown glass with it’s metal tails that had hung outside the window of her room in the Soke portion of the Hyuuga estate. Or perhaps it was the faintest tinge of homesickness that made her think she could hear a slight bubbling, the frothing of liquid over a crackling fire as though something were being cooked. Like how she could so nearly remember her mother when she was a child. How Hyuuga Hanako had insisted on cooking meals for her daughter herself, despite the fact that there were numerous servants who could have taken care of the duty instead.
Which brought her hazy mind to the next sense, smell. It had to be unconscious memories surfacing, because interlaced with the familiar scents of spring flowers and fresh water and clean wind was the scent of kindling being consumed by flame, the enticing aroma of rice and spices, the sharp tang of medicinal herbs and the earthy scent that she usually associated with the huts and cottages of small villages she had visited while on mission. Touch was also a sense that seemed confused, as rather then the cool softness of grass beneath her limbs, or the soft kiss of the spring breeze against her hair, exposed skin rested against something that seemed far different in it’s softness. Something that suggested fibers, linen or simple cotton, worn and fuzzed to a comforting level of soft smoothness. There was also the feel of a covering draped across her, and semiconscious though she may have been, Hinata knew she certainly hadn’t had the forsight to cover herself before she had fainted to the forest floor.
“Are you still not awake?”
The sudden sprinkle of vocal tones that lanced their way into her ears brought her stumbling back to consciousness, senses melding together into a muddled cacophony of sound and light and sensation that threatened to send her reeling back into the blackness. Lurching up, she clawed for the thin tremulous beam of light that signified a returning to reality, grasping it with slippery fingers and refusing to let go. With a sputtering cough of surprise, Hinata exploded into consciousness, arms flailing wildly in momentary shock and disorientation. Blinking the last vestiges of unconsciousness from her eyes, she allowed honed reflexes to take over, sending her hand reaching for a kunai, feet pushing against the thin mattress and driving her back against the unyielding surface of the wall that thwarted her efforts at fleeing.
“Hey, don’t freak out, I’m not gonna hurt you!”
The voice again, though haze-matted eyes hadn’t yet managed to make out the source. Taking a precious moment for retrospection, she turned the tones over in her head. A soft-toned, young-sounding voice, and one that didn’t seem to possess any notes of malice or harm. Closing her eyes carefully, she opened them, the bleariness that seemed to come when she’d overused the doujutsu clearing enough that she could make out her surroundings. Her initial senses had been right, though she’d dismissed them as mere mirages brought on by her subconscious. A small cottage, from the looks of things, dirt floor partially covered by a worn tatami mat, aging fireplace of cracked stone bricks set against one corner. Over the fire hung a simple iron pot from whence the delicious smells as well as the sound of bubbling liquid seemed to issue forth from. Hinata herself was laying on a small cot, a thin coverlet drawn up over her, patchworked markings on it’s surface playing blatant evidence to the many repairs the homely blanket had seen. At the end of the bed, her kunai pouch and shuriken holster sat, undisturbed, beside a small bowl of water and a jar of what looked to be some sort of ointment. A simple table and chairs was made from what looked to be a battered table with a wooden crate on either side, sitting against the far wall beneath a window.
“Hey! You done freaking out yet?”
With a startled gasp, she spun around, searching for the source of the voice that had drawn her from unconsciousness. White eyes widened, then narrowed, settling on the form of a…child? Perched at the end of her cot was what appeared to be a child of roughly 7 or 8 years of age, sitting on her haunches, skinny elbows resting on equally bony knees, chin cradled in small hands. Brownish black bangs hung askance around green eyes, the small face held in an almost smirk of amusement at this adult creature who seemed so afraid of a mere child. Cocking head to the side, the child repeated her question.
“Can’t you talk? You done freaking out yet?”
Shaking herself out of the sudden shock, Hinata took a deep breath, running fingers through cropped indigo hair before nodding. The girl, at least she assumed it was a girl, didn’t appear threatening, but looks could be deceiving after all. Best to stay on her guard. The child had a certain androgynous quality about her, not as though it was a natural trait, but more of the sort that one saw in children living on the streets or in a ghetto, who simply had no means of caring for themselves beyond the basest necessities of life, and who often had to make do with what they could find. Skinny, scrawny figures, longish, often unkempt hair either straggling across dirty faces or pulled into a simple style that could have sufficed for either gender. No ornamentation or anything else to suggest gender or status, as those children had no status, and had no need or means to draw attention to themselves.
A child living by herself, perhaps? Or just an illusion, designed to make me drop my guard?
Clearing her throat, she moved to say something, but was interrupted by the sudden shoving of a bowl of some sort of soup into her hands. The child waited patiently for Hinata’s fingers to grasp the chipped and dented ceramic before turning and ladling a second portion into a worn wooden bowl and setting it on the table at the end of the cot. Dragging over one of the battered crates from the other table, she sat down, legs crossed and pulled up on the crate, and rummaged in her pocket. Pulling out a slightly dirty utensil, she meticulously polished it off with the corner of her shirt before handing it to Hinata with a wide smile.
“Here, you can have the spoon.”
Unsure what to say, she hesitantly took the item from the child, taking note of how dented and worn the metal looked. It was becoming more and more obvious that, were this not a genjutsu, this must be a child living alone. That was really the only reason for the Spartan state of the dwelling, or the slightly dirty appearance of the girl. Staring down at the soup for a minute in trepidation, she picked up the spoon but hesitated. What if it were poisoned? Or laced with a sleeping draught, designed to incapacitate her so that Neji and his team would find her an easy mark. Or worse, so that an unknown assailant would be able to use her as they saw fit?
Hinata had never been what one might call a “paranoid” person, but she was quickly finding that when one is on the run, things present themselves in a very different manner. Pale irises regarded the child carefully as the dark-haired imp lifted her own bowl and began to drink in a rather greedy fashion. Well, it didn’t make much sense to poison one’s own food, did it? Hesitantly, she lifted the spoon and scooped up a portion of the thin broth before sipping slowly. It was surprisingly good, seeming to be comprised mainly of vegetables, spices, and some sort of meat she couldn’t identify. Obviously brewed from the sorts of things one could find in the wilderness. And while the broth itself was thin, the rice in the soup made up for the lack of substance.
It was when the spoon hit the suddenly empty bowl that Hinata realized just how hungry she had actually been. Cheeks burning slightly, she painstakingly memorized the thin cracked lines that traversed the pale blue bowl, hoping that the child wouldn’t notice how hungrily she had devoured the simple meal. It was embarrassing, really. A trained shinobi like herself, and she’d done such an abysmal job in this whole “running away” idea. While leaving in the dead of night had, in itself been a good idea, it would have served her better to have waited until she was sent on a solo mission. Then she could have simply completed her mission and vanished. Already away from home, already on her own.
But rather then the idea that already seemed blatantly more sensible, she had simply thrown some things into a bag and run. And while she’d thought to bring rations and the like with her, she had miscalculated the hard terrain, the speed with which she would have to move, the inability to stop and rest. In short, she’d been a fool.
“You’re a ninja, right?”
Glancing up, she found the child once again perched at the foot of her bed, studying her with an interested and rapt sylvan gaze. Unperterbed by her “guest’s” silence, she pointed to the hitai-ate that rested around Hinata’s neck.
“That’s what that means, right? That’s cool. Are you on a mission or something?”
Plopping down, stick-thin legs outstretched, the child brushed overgrown bangs out of her face with a grin.
“I’m Saya. What’s your name?”
“Hinata… How… how long have I been here?”
She glanced around the room, trying to figure out how much time had passed since she had fainted. She had to get moving, get out of here. Every second lost was a precious second that she needed between her and the ANBU team, if she planned to remain “lost”. She went to push the covers aside, but was interrupted by Saya shoving the newly refilled bowl back into her hands.
“Don’t worry. You’re bein chased, right? They can’t find you here.”
The Hyuuga was perplexed for a moment, but chalked it up to a child’s simple mentality. The girl obviously didn’t understand how it worked, didn’t know that Neji’s Byakugan would have been able to pick out anything it wanted to, that something as mundane as a simple cottage wasn’t about to provide much defense against it. She made to protest as the girl hopped off the table and grabbed the edge of the tatami mat that covered much of the center of the floor. But any protest died in her throat as the straw shifted to reveal weathered parchment with faded crimson edges, the black ink on it turned a sepia shade with age. A seal. An old one, it looked like, as some of the characters she recognized, while others seemed vaguely familiar and yet different, as though an altered form of a language she knew. Saya stood there for a moment, regarding the parchment, before she turned back to Hinata.
“Grampa used to be a ninja. A long time ago. But they made him fight in this war, and he had to kill a lot of people. After the war was over, he said he didn’t want to be a ninja anymore, because he thought it was wrong, the way he’d had to kill so many. But the village didn’t want to let him go. They wanted him to still be a ninja. So he ran away. He told me he put this here so that no one could find him. It’s the big one, there’s little ones buried all around, in a circle. Grampa said it keeps chakra out, like a wall. So anyone who comes near it can’t tell there’s anything on the other side. I wanted to be a ninja too, but Grampa said no. He said it’s nothing but killing and war, and that I should just be a normal girl and not try and be one.”
She trailed off when she got to the part about her own future. Hinata watched as the girl paused, hands fisting slightly for a moment as though pushing back an unpleasant memory. But just as soon as the expression wafted across the child’s face, it was gone again as she turned back to the indigo-haired Chuunin with a wide grin.
“But yeah, no one can find you when you’re in here, so you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s really neat that I get to meet another ninja. Grampa was the only ninja I ever met before, and he was really old. He took care of me when Mom and Dad died from the fever. Ne, can I ask you something? I…even though Grampa said I shouldn’t, I still wanna be a ninja. What should I do so I can be one?”
Hinata felt a lump rise in her throat at the open and guileless green gaze the girl directed at her, eyes so full of hope and anticipation. This child, this girl…wanted the life Hinata herself had. She should feel honoured, amused, proud that she could be an inspiration to a child simply by virtue of being what she was. But that…wasn’t what the kunoichi felt right now. Saya didn’t know the truth. She didn’t understand the nuances and subtle shades of the world she spoke of. The world of blood and darkness and secrets that Hinata inhabited. The life that, although it was the one she had been born to, the Hyuuga couldn’t help but wish she could be free of. Yet as she opened her mouth to admonish the child, to tell her that no, she didn’t really want that life, Hinata found that the words just wouldn’t come.
She…wants it so badly. The way that…I want acknowledgement, that I yearn for notice… I can’t…take that away from her, don’t know how to tell her that it isn’t the glorious and magical thing she thinks it is.
Looking around the shabby little dwelling, she could feel, even more strongly then before, the emptiness of the room, the way all the life, all the hope seemed to be focused inward on Saya. The life of a shinobi was the girl’s dream, her hope. Likely, it was the only thing that kept the child going, alone as she was. Pushing back the lump in her throat, she managed a weak smile.
“Saya-chan, I think…I think that you should be yourself. And that if that’s what your dream is, that you should hold onto it and never let it go. And just do the best that you can. That’s really all there is to it, I think.”
She hoped her somewhat cryptic answer would suffice as reasoning, and that she wouldn’t have to delve deeper into reasoning, reveal that the painted image Saya held of the shinobi world was just that. A painted facsimile that would one day shatter in the face of reality’s harshness. And thankfully for her, it seemed to be enough for the child, who smiled and nodded before hopping to her feet and grabbing a rough wooden bucket from beside the door.
“Thanks, Hinata. I’m gonna go get some water. You can rest here for awhile. No one’s gonna find you in here, so it’s ok.”
With a smile and a nod, she pushed open the door and darted out, leaving Hinata to her own devices. Watching the door slam shut behind the small figure, she sat still for a moment before pale hands reached up to the nape of her neck. With a slight tug, fabric parted and the metal plate with it’s band fell into her lap. Turning it over, she traced the familiar symbol with one finger. This was…the symbol of herself, symbol of what she was. But…was that really all it was? Was a shinobi something so simple? In her youth, the heiress had never given it much thought. A shinobi protected the village, they were soldiers, heroes, protectors.
But that’s not all we are…We’re…killers. Destroyers. Tools of the village, as much as we are a part of it. Is that really…all that we are? Is that all that I am?
The silvery metal gleamed up at her, it’s surface marred by faint scratches and dents here and there, bearing testament to the missions she’d faced the training she’d undergone. Had it all been for nothing? All to become a tool for bloodshed and war? She respected that there were shinobi who could be perfectly fine with that. Who could lock their emotions into a box and put them aside and kill for the sake of the village. But she, she wasn’t like that. Hinata had always viewed herself as weak, but now the words of Saya’s grandfather, fallen from the mouth of a small child, brought her weakness into sharp relief against the backdrop of her own insular world. And it was proving a bitter pill to swallow, bringing her failings as a shinobi into glaring and sharp contrast against the reality she wanted to cling to. Her world was that of black and white and the deep crimson red of blood. While she herself was soft, pale, ethereal and delicate. A flower growing amidst a bloodied battlefield, her very nature a contradiction with that which she chose to use to define herself.
No wonder I’m such a failure…
Fingers clenched around the hitai-ate as a lone tear splashes onto the metal, moist droplet sliding across the slick smoothness of the plate, catching in the indentation of the carved leaf symbol. It was true. She was a failure. But that…that was the past. Afterall, wasn’t that why she’d left? To start over, make a new life for herself? Maybe…maybe she could put everything behind her. She didn’t even have to remain a shinobi, if she didn’t want to. Yet as suddenly as that thought brushed it’s tendrils through her mind, it was assaulted by memory of her fight against Neji during the Chuunin exams. Of Naruto’s words of encouragement. Of her own insistence that she wouldn’t give up. That such words would be her nindo, as they had been for Naruto. No, she wouldn’t give up on being a shinobi. Because doing that would make everything she’d worked for, everything she’d fought for become meaningless. Shaking fingers brushed over the metal, their trembling finally stilling as she grasped the cloth band and lifted the strip back up, tying it once more in it’s proper position around her neck. She wouldn’t give up. She would be strong. And then she would prove that even a failure, who couldn’t ever get rule 25 right, could still become a worthy shinobi.
So yay, Chapter 5 finished. I know the idea of the “chakra-proof” house is a bit hokey at first, but if you think about it, it actually makes sense that such jutsu and seals exist. They would be invaluable for stealth and concealment on the battlefield, especially if you have a wounded comrade that you can’t move at present. Just to clarify how they work, they don’t deaden ALL chakra in the area, as that would create a ‘dead zone’ that would stick out like a sore thumb. Rather they dull down the chakra concentration within them to what would be considered ‘normal’ levels for a perfectly innocuous patch of forest/grass/whatever. And since they don’t block vision, they’re often used either on a structure such as this case, or in conjunction with a genjutsu that would fool the physical senses. And yes, Saya’s grandfather was a missing-nin, as he defected and ran. And as tempting as it was to have him be from Konoha, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to settle in the same country as the place he ran from, so I made him an ex-Suna-nin. And yes, Hinata’s view of the world is really starting to open up. She’s always seen things from one side, seen the “light” side of things and never really done much thinking about what the “real” purpose of shinobi is and it’s a hard hit for her to take to realize that not only is she weak in terms of her skills, but that her very nature is an anomaly among “true” shinobi, and that in a way, her failure as one extends farther then she’d thought it had before. And yes, Saya is a girl. XD. She’s just a scrawny and skinny little bony thing that you have a hard time telling that from.
Title: A Darkened Ray of Sunshine (ADROS)
Rating: PG for now, but will eventually be more M
Pairings: NejiHina, various eventual smatterings of others.
Fandom: Naruto
Status: Ongoing
Summary: Hinata, wrestling with both her feelings for Neji and the harsh treatment she continues to receive from her family, finally decides that she can no longer bear her life as it is. Leaving Konoha, she finds herself flung into a world that is far different from the sheltered life that she once knew. And when an offer of dreams fulfilled comes from a most unexpected source, she grabs onto the chance offered to her. But what will happen when the very thing that she’s been running from comes in search of her? Will she return to Konoha, and the life that she left behind, or will she stride forward on her own onto a new path?
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto, but I’d sell my soul to Kishimoto-sensei if it would get him to make NejiHina canon.
“Are you sure we should stop here, Neji? There’s still a few more hours until daylight, we could gain some ground.”
White porcelain raised, painted lines reflecting the moon’s pale gaze as the Hyuuga pushed the mask up onto the top of his head to regard his green-suited team-mate as he shook his head. Tenten dropped to the ground beside them, bunned hair a slightly amusing parody of the ears on her panda mask as she pulled it off of her face, hands planted firmly on her hips as she raised an eyebrow at the captain.
“Lee’s right, Neji. We should keep going.”
Blank eyes regarded the two of them, taking in the slight trembling of muscles, the heavier breathing, the way chakra was beginning to falter. Shaking his head again, Neji pulled out a kunai and simply began shredding the verge, cutting down small limbs and stripping them of leaves.
“You’re tired, and your chakra’s drained. We all are. We’ll get nowhere if we run ourselves to death pushing too hard. An hour or two, three at most, is all we need. Once we’ve rested, we’ll keep going.”
She won’t get far, afterall.
He might not have spoken the words that flashed through his mind, but he knew they understood. Hinata wasn’t like them. She may have had the advantage of distance and a head start, but they were stronger, faster, more skilled then the girl whose footprints led them. Neji had no illusions of the way this mission was going to end. Afterall, it was obvious to the stoic man. Hinata-sama was weak, much weaker then he or any of his teammates. What difference would a mere few hours make in regards to distance between them, after all? Tossing the stripped branches down in a pile in the center of the clearing, he nodded to Lee.
“Lee, go get some brush to use for kindling. Tenten, you and I secure the perimeter. We don’t know what might be lurking in this part of the country. Sai.”
From the nearby tree branch, the fourth member of the team simply nodded his head in acknowledgement, without saying a word. Neji fought back a frown at the other Jounin’s attitude. He didn’t particularly like Sai, not because there was anything wrong with the other man, but because the ex-Team 7 member had that disconcerting manner about him. As though everything about him was fake, a façade to hide the emotionless coldness that ran beneath. And even to Neji, one who was schooled in stoicism, in keeping his emotions under lock and key and presenting a calm and unruffled front to the world, it was disturbing to see someone who seemed less as though they merely hid those same emotions and more as though they simply didn’t possess them. Robotic, expressionless. Like the puppets that proliferated themselves through Sunagakure whenever his ANBU team was assigned a joint mission with their allies of the Wind country.
“I can track her, you know. It wouldn’t be that hard, White-eyes.”
Biting back irritation at the nickname, the ANBU in question shook his head. That was another reason why he didn’t like Sai. The annoying nicknames and attempts at jokes. Hyuuga Neji did not, as far as he was aware, possess anything that could have been termed a “sense of humor”, no matter how many times his comrades and teammates tried to find one within his countenance.
“No. That takes more chakra and could lead any enemy nin in the area to either us or to her. Just light the fire, if you want to draw so badly.”
Getting to his feet, he nodded to Tenten before the two of them leapt off into the trees to scout the perimeter. Without a word, Sai shrugged his shoulders and took a seat, back leaning against the rough bark of the tree. Pulling out his sketchbook, he put pencil to paper, the rough scratching of lead against off-white fiber soon becoming the only sound. Moments later, the relative silence was broken by the arrival of Lee, armful of brush tucked against the gray of his armour. Kneeling down beside the jumble of sticks that Neji had provided, the thick-browed man began artfully arranging them into a tent-like formation around the brush, lower lip caught between his teeth as though deep in thought. Sitting back on his heels, he beamed at his work with a nod, rummaging in his pockets.
“Wonderful! Now all that is needed is a source of flame!”
With a flourish of brush, Sai sent the inked creation scurrying down the trunk of the tree, the small dragonish creature pausing at Lee’s knee before it took a deep breath and reared back to blast a minute inferno onto the dried kindling. Twigs and leaves rustled, caught, and soon blazed up with a deep crimson glow as the construct evaporated into a puddle of ink that slipped along the ground and found it’s way back into the inkpot at Sai’s waist. He regarded Lee with a smile.
“There you go, Fuzzy-brows.”
Mentally calculating that this might be the time to try and make “friends” with the green-suited taijutsu user, Sai nodded to himself. Certainly he had grown close to his own team-members, as well as some of the other shinobi he worked with, but that still didn’t mean he’d made a lot of progress. Especially with the group that he was currently traveling with. They were older, even by only a year, and with the exception of Lee, the three of them tended to keep somewhat to themselves. Especially Neji. The white-eyed captain was positively elusive when he wasn’t on missions, always training or meditating or doing whatever it was that tight-assed Hyuuga did when they weren’t on mission. Whatever that might be, Sai didn’t know, and as his initial attempts at making conversation with the long-haired captain had yielded less then favourable results, perhaps it was time to try a different approach.
Tenten was the same, only for different reasons. While she was certainly more friendly then her stoic teammate, she wasn’t like most of the other kunoichi. For one, she was fairly plain, brown hair and eyes doing nothing much to distinguish her, and having, in Sai’s personal point of view, no special ninja traits of much mention. But that being said, the girl with the buns in her hair was a formidable fighter, and made up for her lack of memorable jutsu with her very memorable arsenal of weapons and taijutsu techniques. An arsenal of which Sai did not wish to be on the receiving end of, especially since the brown-haired girl seemed to have some indication of leaning more towards the violent persuasion of his own pink-haired teammate.
Which left Lee. With a nod, Sai flashed a wide grin at the black-haired man, cocked his head to the side, and began his “friendship conversation” in what seemed to be his favourite way.
“So, since you’re engaged and all, I’d assume you’ve got a decent-sized one, right?”
The somewhat perplexed look on the taijutsu-user’s face was interrupted by the return of the other two members of their party. Neji glowered at Sai for a moment as he dropped a pair of dead rabbits in front of them.
“Cut that out, there isn’t time for it.”
As little patience as he normally had for Sai’s antics, that patience was already wearing thin with the length of time it was taking to track down his wayward cousin. By all rights they should have already overtaken her and drug her back home to where she belonged, surrounded by the posh walls of the Hyuuga compound, simply submitting to fate’s determination for her future. Not sitting in the wilderness, eating over a campfire and chasing her irritating person through the woods. But that was something to worry about later.
Schooling his features into their normal calm appearance, he reminded himself that regardless of what he may have felt, he was shinobi. A mission was a mission, whether he wanted it or not. Hyuuga Neji did not fail his missions. And at present, his mission was to recover his cousin, the same cousin that he was supposed to devote his life to serving. That being the case, recovering her was exactly what he would do. Pulling out his kunai and making quick work of cleaning the two carcasses, he soon had the two rabbits on a spit over the fire. They wouldn’t take long at all to cook, then they could nourish themselves and be on their way again.
X
Sandaled feet pounded against the ground as she ran, steps uneven and faltering. The soft grunt as a body impacted with the trunk of a tree gave way to more footsteps as she pushed herself away from the barked surface and continued onward. Further, she had to get further. It would be dawn soon, she had to get as far away from them as she could.
Can’t…stop. Have to…keep going. Just…just a little farther…
If anything about the current situation could have been considered “good”, it would have been the fact that the young Hyuuga’s chakra was so drained from constantly having to heal and bolster her muscles that she wouldn’t have been surprised if even Neji’s sharp senses weren’t able to pick her up. But that didn’t mean much of anything in the face of the ANBU training. Neji wouldn’t have needed her chakra signature to find her. Hinata stumbled, falling to one knee as she gritted her teeth. The muscles in her legs simply refused to go any farther. Straining, she pushed herself up, feeling injured flesh protesting mightily, biting her lip against the pain as she mentally begged her body not to fail her now.
Just…a little…more…
Sadly, however, a little more proved to be a little more then bruised self could take. She felt her head spin and her legs give out as the no-longer familiar trees and branches of her surroundings swirled together into a maelstrom of chaotic colours, blackness bleeding in from the edges of her field of vision. With a soft sigh, the exhausted kunoichi crumpled to the ground in a heap, chakra utterly spent, resources tapped dry. Un-noticed by the unconscious girl, a small pair of green eyes peered out of the foliage at her prone form, watching the rising sun’s light play across her features.
She wouldn’t have been able to say how much time had passed, seeing as she barely remembered passing out in the first place. Hinata felt the first vestiges of consciousness press softly against her mind with gentle fingertips. First sound, the quiet twittering of birds, the soft rustle of wind through tees as the morning’s breeze caressed the new leaves with a tender and loving touch. For a moment, she thought she heard the faint tinkling of windchimes, remniscent of the small globe of blown glass with it’s metal tails that had hung outside the window of her room in the Soke portion of the Hyuuga estate. Or perhaps it was the faintest tinge of homesickness that made her think she could hear a slight bubbling, the frothing of liquid over a crackling fire as though something were being cooked. Like how she could so nearly remember her mother when she was a child. How Hyuuga Hanako had insisted on cooking meals for her daughter herself, despite the fact that there were numerous servants who could have taken care of the duty instead.
Which brought her hazy mind to the next sense, smell. It had to be unconscious memories surfacing, because interlaced with the familiar scents of spring flowers and fresh water and clean wind was the scent of kindling being consumed by flame, the enticing aroma of rice and spices, the sharp tang of medicinal herbs and the earthy scent that she usually associated with the huts and cottages of small villages she had visited while on mission. Touch was also a sense that seemed confused, as rather then the cool softness of grass beneath her limbs, or the soft kiss of the spring breeze against her hair, exposed skin rested against something that seemed far different in it’s softness. Something that suggested fibers, linen or simple cotton, worn and fuzzed to a comforting level of soft smoothness. There was also the feel of a covering draped across her, and semiconscious though she may have been, Hinata knew she certainly hadn’t had the forsight to cover herself before she had fainted to the forest floor.
“Are you still not awake?”
The sudden sprinkle of vocal tones that lanced their way into her ears brought her stumbling back to consciousness, senses melding together into a muddled cacophony of sound and light and sensation that threatened to send her reeling back into the blackness. Lurching up, she clawed for the thin tremulous beam of light that signified a returning to reality, grasping it with slippery fingers and refusing to let go. With a sputtering cough of surprise, Hinata exploded into consciousness, arms flailing wildly in momentary shock and disorientation. Blinking the last vestiges of unconsciousness from her eyes, she allowed honed reflexes to take over, sending her hand reaching for a kunai, feet pushing against the thin mattress and driving her back against the unyielding surface of the wall that thwarted her efforts at fleeing.
“Hey, don’t freak out, I’m not gonna hurt you!”
The voice again, though haze-matted eyes hadn’t yet managed to make out the source. Taking a precious moment for retrospection, she turned the tones over in her head. A soft-toned, young-sounding voice, and one that didn’t seem to possess any notes of malice or harm. Closing her eyes carefully, she opened them, the bleariness that seemed to come when she’d overused the doujutsu clearing enough that she could make out her surroundings. Her initial senses had been right, though she’d dismissed them as mere mirages brought on by her subconscious. A small cottage, from the looks of things, dirt floor partially covered by a worn tatami mat, aging fireplace of cracked stone bricks set against one corner. Over the fire hung a simple iron pot from whence the delicious smells as well as the sound of bubbling liquid seemed to issue forth from. Hinata herself was laying on a small cot, a thin coverlet drawn up over her, patchworked markings on it’s surface playing blatant evidence to the many repairs the homely blanket had seen. At the end of the bed, her kunai pouch and shuriken holster sat, undisturbed, beside a small bowl of water and a jar of what looked to be some sort of ointment. A simple table and chairs was made from what looked to be a battered table with a wooden crate on either side, sitting against the far wall beneath a window.
“Hey! You done freaking out yet?”
With a startled gasp, she spun around, searching for the source of the voice that had drawn her from unconsciousness. White eyes widened, then narrowed, settling on the form of a…child? Perched at the end of her cot was what appeared to be a child of roughly 7 or 8 years of age, sitting on her haunches, skinny elbows resting on equally bony knees, chin cradled in small hands. Brownish black bangs hung askance around green eyes, the small face held in an almost smirk of amusement at this adult creature who seemed so afraid of a mere child. Cocking head to the side, the child repeated her question.
“Can’t you talk? You done freaking out yet?”
Shaking herself out of the sudden shock, Hinata took a deep breath, running fingers through cropped indigo hair before nodding. The girl, at least she assumed it was a girl, didn’t appear threatening, but looks could be deceiving after all. Best to stay on her guard. The child had a certain androgynous quality about her, not as though it was a natural trait, but more of the sort that one saw in children living on the streets or in a ghetto, who simply had no means of caring for themselves beyond the basest necessities of life, and who often had to make do with what they could find. Skinny, scrawny figures, longish, often unkempt hair either straggling across dirty faces or pulled into a simple style that could have sufficed for either gender. No ornamentation or anything else to suggest gender or status, as those children had no status, and had no need or means to draw attention to themselves.
A child living by herself, perhaps? Or just an illusion, designed to make me drop my guard?
Clearing her throat, she moved to say something, but was interrupted by the sudden shoving of a bowl of some sort of soup into her hands. The child waited patiently for Hinata’s fingers to grasp the chipped and dented ceramic before turning and ladling a second portion into a worn wooden bowl and setting it on the table at the end of the cot. Dragging over one of the battered crates from the other table, she sat down, legs crossed and pulled up on the crate, and rummaged in her pocket. Pulling out a slightly dirty utensil, she meticulously polished it off with the corner of her shirt before handing it to Hinata with a wide smile.
“Here, you can have the spoon.”
Unsure what to say, she hesitantly took the item from the child, taking note of how dented and worn the metal looked. It was becoming more and more obvious that, were this not a genjutsu, this must be a child living alone. That was really the only reason for the Spartan state of the dwelling, or the slightly dirty appearance of the girl. Staring down at the soup for a minute in trepidation, she picked up the spoon but hesitated. What if it were poisoned? Or laced with a sleeping draught, designed to incapacitate her so that Neji and his team would find her an easy mark. Or worse, so that an unknown assailant would be able to use her as they saw fit?
Hinata had never been what one might call a “paranoid” person, but she was quickly finding that when one is on the run, things present themselves in a very different manner. Pale irises regarded the child carefully as the dark-haired imp lifted her own bowl and began to drink in a rather greedy fashion. Well, it didn’t make much sense to poison one’s own food, did it? Hesitantly, she lifted the spoon and scooped up a portion of the thin broth before sipping slowly. It was surprisingly good, seeming to be comprised mainly of vegetables, spices, and some sort of meat she couldn’t identify. Obviously brewed from the sorts of things one could find in the wilderness. And while the broth itself was thin, the rice in the soup made up for the lack of substance.
It was when the spoon hit the suddenly empty bowl that Hinata realized just how hungry she had actually been. Cheeks burning slightly, she painstakingly memorized the thin cracked lines that traversed the pale blue bowl, hoping that the child wouldn’t notice how hungrily she had devoured the simple meal. It was embarrassing, really. A trained shinobi like herself, and she’d done such an abysmal job in this whole “running away” idea. While leaving in the dead of night had, in itself been a good idea, it would have served her better to have waited until she was sent on a solo mission. Then she could have simply completed her mission and vanished. Already away from home, already on her own.
But rather then the idea that already seemed blatantly more sensible, she had simply thrown some things into a bag and run. And while she’d thought to bring rations and the like with her, she had miscalculated the hard terrain, the speed with which she would have to move, the inability to stop and rest. In short, she’d been a fool.
“You’re a ninja, right?”
Glancing up, she found the child once again perched at the foot of her bed, studying her with an interested and rapt sylvan gaze. Unperterbed by her “guest’s” silence, she pointed to the hitai-ate that rested around Hinata’s neck.
“That’s what that means, right? That’s cool. Are you on a mission or something?”
Plopping down, stick-thin legs outstretched, the child brushed overgrown bangs out of her face with a grin.
“I’m Saya. What’s your name?”
“Hinata… How… how long have I been here?”
She glanced around the room, trying to figure out how much time had passed since she had fainted. She had to get moving, get out of here. Every second lost was a precious second that she needed between her and the ANBU team, if she planned to remain “lost”. She went to push the covers aside, but was interrupted by Saya shoving the newly refilled bowl back into her hands.
“Don’t worry. You’re bein chased, right? They can’t find you here.”
The Hyuuga was perplexed for a moment, but chalked it up to a child’s simple mentality. The girl obviously didn’t understand how it worked, didn’t know that Neji’s Byakugan would have been able to pick out anything it wanted to, that something as mundane as a simple cottage wasn’t about to provide much defense against it. She made to protest as the girl hopped off the table and grabbed the edge of the tatami mat that covered much of the center of the floor. But any protest died in her throat as the straw shifted to reveal weathered parchment with faded crimson edges, the black ink on it turned a sepia shade with age. A seal. An old one, it looked like, as some of the characters she recognized, while others seemed vaguely familiar and yet different, as though an altered form of a language she knew. Saya stood there for a moment, regarding the parchment, before she turned back to Hinata.
“Grampa used to be a ninja. A long time ago. But they made him fight in this war, and he had to kill a lot of people. After the war was over, he said he didn’t want to be a ninja anymore, because he thought it was wrong, the way he’d had to kill so many. But the village didn’t want to let him go. They wanted him to still be a ninja. So he ran away. He told me he put this here so that no one could find him. It’s the big one, there’s little ones buried all around, in a circle. Grampa said it keeps chakra out, like a wall. So anyone who comes near it can’t tell there’s anything on the other side. I wanted to be a ninja too, but Grampa said no. He said it’s nothing but killing and war, and that I should just be a normal girl and not try and be one.”
She trailed off when she got to the part about her own future. Hinata watched as the girl paused, hands fisting slightly for a moment as though pushing back an unpleasant memory. But just as soon as the expression wafted across the child’s face, it was gone again as she turned back to the indigo-haired Chuunin with a wide grin.
“But yeah, no one can find you when you’re in here, so you don’t have to worry about anything. It’s really neat that I get to meet another ninja. Grampa was the only ninja I ever met before, and he was really old. He took care of me when Mom and Dad died from the fever. Ne, can I ask you something? I…even though Grampa said I shouldn’t, I still wanna be a ninja. What should I do so I can be one?”
Hinata felt a lump rise in her throat at the open and guileless green gaze the girl directed at her, eyes so full of hope and anticipation. This child, this girl…wanted the life Hinata herself had. She should feel honoured, amused, proud that she could be an inspiration to a child simply by virtue of being what she was. But that…wasn’t what the kunoichi felt right now. Saya didn’t know the truth. She didn’t understand the nuances and subtle shades of the world she spoke of. The world of blood and darkness and secrets that Hinata inhabited. The life that, although it was the one she had been born to, the Hyuuga couldn’t help but wish she could be free of. Yet as she opened her mouth to admonish the child, to tell her that no, she didn’t really want that life, Hinata found that the words just wouldn’t come.
She…wants it so badly. The way that…I want acknowledgement, that I yearn for notice… I can’t…take that away from her, don’t know how to tell her that it isn’t the glorious and magical thing she thinks it is.
Looking around the shabby little dwelling, she could feel, even more strongly then before, the emptiness of the room, the way all the life, all the hope seemed to be focused inward on Saya. The life of a shinobi was the girl’s dream, her hope. Likely, it was the only thing that kept the child going, alone as she was. Pushing back the lump in her throat, she managed a weak smile.
“Saya-chan, I think…I think that you should be yourself. And that if that’s what your dream is, that you should hold onto it and never let it go. And just do the best that you can. That’s really all there is to it, I think.”
She hoped her somewhat cryptic answer would suffice as reasoning, and that she wouldn’t have to delve deeper into reasoning, reveal that the painted image Saya held of the shinobi world was just that. A painted facsimile that would one day shatter in the face of reality’s harshness. And thankfully for her, it seemed to be enough for the child, who smiled and nodded before hopping to her feet and grabbing a rough wooden bucket from beside the door.
“Thanks, Hinata. I’m gonna go get some water. You can rest here for awhile. No one’s gonna find you in here, so it’s ok.”
With a smile and a nod, she pushed open the door and darted out, leaving Hinata to her own devices. Watching the door slam shut behind the small figure, she sat still for a moment before pale hands reached up to the nape of her neck. With a slight tug, fabric parted and the metal plate with it’s band fell into her lap. Turning it over, she traced the familiar symbol with one finger. This was…the symbol of herself, symbol of what she was. But…was that really all it was? Was a shinobi something so simple? In her youth, the heiress had never given it much thought. A shinobi protected the village, they were soldiers, heroes, protectors.
But that’s not all we are…We’re…killers. Destroyers. Tools of the village, as much as we are a part of it. Is that really…all that we are? Is that all that I am?
The silvery metal gleamed up at her, it’s surface marred by faint scratches and dents here and there, bearing testament to the missions she’d faced the training she’d undergone. Had it all been for nothing? All to become a tool for bloodshed and war? She respected that there were shinobi who could be perfectly fine with that. Who could lock their emotions into a box and put them aside and kill for the sake of the village. But she, she wasn’t like that. Hinata had always viewed herself as weak, but now the words of Saya’s grandfather, fallen from the mouth of a small child, brought her weakness into sharp relief against the backdrop of her own insular world. And it was proving a bitter pill to swallow, bringing her failings as a shinobi into glaring and sharp contrast against the reality she wanted to cling to. Her world was that of black and white and the deep crimson red of blood. While she herself was soft, pale, ethereal and delicate. A flower growing amidst a bloodied battlefield, her very nature a contradiction with that which she chose to use to define herself.
No wonder I’m such a failure…
Fingers clenched around the hitai-ate as a lone tear splashes onto the metal, moist droplet sliding across the slick smoothness of the plate, catching in the indentation of the carved leaf symbol. It was true. She was a failure. But that…that was the past. Afterall, wasn’t that why she’d left? To start over, make a new life for herself? Maybe…maybe she could put everything behind her. She didn’t even have to remain a shinobi, if she didn’t want to. Yet as suddenly as that thought brushed it’s tendrils through her mind, it was assaulted by memory of her fight against Neji during the Chuunin exams. Of Naruto’s words of encouragement. Of her own insistence that she wouldn’t give up. That such words would be her nindo, as they had been for Naruto. No, she wouldn’t give up on being a shinobi. Because doing that would make everything she’d worked for, everything she’d fought for become meaningless. Shaking fingers brushed over the metal, their trembling finally stilling as she grasped the cloth band and lifted the strip back up, tying it once more in it’s proper position around her neck. She wouldn’t give up. She would be strong. And then she would prove that even a failure, who couldn’t ever get rule 25 right, could still become a worthy shinobi.
So yay, Chapter 5 finished. I know the idea of the “chakra-proof” house is a bit hokey at first, but if you think about it, it actually makes sense that such jutsu and seals exist. They would be invaluable for stealth and concealment on the battlefield, especially if you have a wounded comrade that you can’t move at present. Just to clarify how they work, they don’t deaden ALL chakra in the area, as that would create a ‘dead zone’ that would stick out like a sore thumb. Rather they dull down the chakra concentration within them to what would be considered ‘normal’ levels for a perfectly innocuous patch of forest/grass/whatever. And since they don’t block vision, they’re often used either on a structure such as this case, or in conjunction with a genjutsu that would fool the physical senses. And yes, Saya’s grandfather was a missing-nin, as he defected and ran. And as tempting as it was to have him be from Konoha, it wouldn’t have made sense for him to settle in the same country as the place he ran from, so I made him an ex-Suna-nin. And yes, Hinata’s view of the world is really starting to open up. She’s always seen things from one side, seen the “light” side of things and never really done much thinking about what the “real” purpose of shinobi is and it’s a hard hit for her to take to realize that not only is she weak in terms of her skills, but that her very nature is an anomaly among “true” shinobi, and that in a way, her failure as one extends farther then she’d thought it had before. And yes, Saya is a girl. XD. She’s just a scrawny and skinny little bony thing that you have a hard time telling that from.