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laleia. The fic itself is here.
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.
This is asking a lot of courage to reread and comment. Mostly because when I started writing this in… I think it was August 06… I had no idea that I was starting a 'verse.
I just wanted to write a fic where Hinata was bothered by the other girls about how she was a virgin, when in fact she'd been the first of them not to be anymore.
I quickly realized it was going to be a post-war fic, and because I don't do angst (DO NOT LAUGH), I knew I would never be able to kill major characters off (Ino? Lee? NarutoSasukeSakura? …do you want me to kill myself or what?), and killing, say, Tenten or Sai, would be laughable. Kinda like killing Izumo. Or third-jounin-on-the-right. That'd be cheating, like saying "This is the bad guy" without showing why the guy is, yanno, bad.
So I forced myself to shrug it off and tell myself "I'm going to write one of these post-war fics where conveniently NO ONE IMPORTANT IS DEAD!!!" and, so I wouldn't feel like a complete hypocrite, those of the Rookie Nine plus Team Gai that I felt (and still continue to feel, at least somewhat) were only minor characters got a free pass to life as well. Among those, Sai, because I'm at best ambivalent about him, but it'd be really too easy to go 'Oops – he's dead. How sad.'
The second part of 'I'm not a complete hypocrite' strategy was that practically every single one of them lost something dear to them during the war, either to themselves or to one of their loved ones. Except Team Seven, but that is their problem: how to reintegrate Konoha, even as war heroes and without being faced with imminent trials.
I felt so bad about breaking my First Rule About War Fics that the working title for this was Happy PostWar fic. Laugh all you want, go on.
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.
This is the most non-grammatical first sentence in the history of non-grammatical first sentences ever.
I placed the start of their discussions basically a little after the time skip. (The timeline was relatively easy then. Now it has become a small unmanageable nightmare to reconcile everything that is supposed to have happened.) But it also happens pre-war, because even when it's not wartime, I expect ninjas die.
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.
Sakura's mission I think happens a little before Naruto comes back to Konoha. Why an apothecary's apprentice? I wanted someone normal (read: civilian) whom Sakura would have reasons to met and talk with.
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.
I liked writing that Hinata judged that lack of inquiries on her privacy = peace, war or no war. As a ninja, Hinata is brave, and as a friend she's more than reserved.
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.
If I'd known it was going to expand into a verse, I probably wouldn't have been so hasty to kill Hanabi. Though I did think about it – the decisive point was that I wanted Hinata to be the clan head, and having Hanabi alive made things much more difficult. When I typed the part about Hanabi, I didn't know what had happened to her, just that something needed to have happened; it's only when I realized Hinata had been a prisoner that I decided to kill Hanabi.
I have a thing for blind doujutsu users, and one of the best NejiHina fics I've ever read isceresi's Cages and Kindness.
I love Hinata's definition of 'surprisingly unscathed'. Particularly after what happened to her, but she's sincere; she honestly thinks she got off easier than anyone else. (Besides, at the time I wrote this? I had no idea what had happened to her.)
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.
At that moment? I had no idea what had happened to Shika, if the thing about 'go back to being a shinobi' was a physical incapacity, if he'd been crippled, if it was a psychological thing… But the idea was that something needed to have happened to everyone, and I knew what had happened to Ino, and I had decided that since Chouji had almost died against the Sound Four, he'd get out of the war okay. Originally I had typed something different that implied it was something purely physical, but I decided it'd be too similar than what happened to Ino, so I changed it. Even then I thought that Shikamaru would be one of those most affected by what he'd been forced to do during the war.
Whether she and Neji are right or just displacing their own issues on Shikamaru and Temari is irrelevant.
By the way, I hate that cliché and the only redeeming quality of its use here is that Temari's treating him perfectly normally. Emphasis because it ties with Mostly Convenient, omg yes.
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.
Oh, please. I'd already decided no-one was going to be dead; you think I was going to stop at convenient timing?
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.
I was very careful choreographing what happened.
I wanted it to be Naruto the other two helped, because if it were Sakura the other two would have been totally panicked; it'd have needed to be something severe (thinkjc_eastling's Three Weeks, She Sleeps) to put her, medic-nin and normal, with no seal to interfere with her healing, across the shoulders of the two boys.
I didn't want it to be Sasuke either, because the point of this is that Sasuke is willing to come back, he's walking back into Konoha without being carried back – he's had his damsel in distress years.
Besides, if he's the one doing the supporting, it changes the mystique; in a way it makes him more normal, because Naruto being carried like that is an immediate signal that he's been Heroic. And I didn't know exactly how they'd killed Itachi, but of course Naruto would have been Heroic.
I tried to show them as a whole, but still with different dynamics; Sakura is cut by a kunai (not because she's clumsy, but because she must have thought it wasn't worth leaping to the side and getting the three of them into a pile with an injured Naruto) because she's one of them, but at the same time the other thing involves only Naruto and Sasuke (if I'd made Sakura take a part into it, it's have felt too much, too rehearsed to be convincing, I think). Besides I had fun with the two boys trying to outdo one another.
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.
Look how I'm not saying who killed Orochimaru.
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.
Political idealism. I told you it was the Happy PostWar fic.
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.
Oh yeah, the parenthesis of doooooooooooom. I'd managed to repress them. When I wrote them, of course they weren't a parenthesis (similar to Ino's crush on Itachi in Strange Kind of Sanity) and I didn't think the digression would be long, I was just going with the flow of backstory. (I'm a backstory junkie.)
In the end, it was… even more entirely too long and impossible to follow than is usually the case with what I write, but the thing is that I liked the digressions – and I thought they were, if not necessary, at least helpful to understand what had gone on, so I wanted to keep them.
In any case, those are Kakashi's powers of 'deception' at work.
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.
Things that are only funny to me and that are not supposed to be really funny, but which I wrote because they appealed to my weird sense of humor: '…Uchiha Sasuke hadeloped bailed with his two former teammates…', omg the scandal.
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.
At first I hadn't written 'Sasuke and Sakura were the parts of Konoha that Naruto felt needed protection', but I added it because I feared my bias would be too blatant and not convincing enough otherwise. I agree with Hinata, but I still wouldn't have enjoyed being in the Hokage's office when Tsunade learned the news. *winces* That must've been painful.
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?)
Again with the wry, flippant tone.
Do they ever love Sasuke to not kill the snake bastard so very dead and instead focus on the person he wants to kill…
(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.
Between the fact that Hinata is much more perceptive of Naruto than the members of the village council and the fact that they'd have other things on their mind, while Hinata's attention pretty much zeroes on Naruto whenever it's about him…
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.
I <3 the Sannin. No, I mean really.
I think they probably had an arrangement at some point in time – and I'm not talking about sex.
They feel so much less dependent on one another and so much more ready-to-compromise than Team Seven; maybe that's only because when we meet them two-thirds aren't doing much with their lives but trying to waste it away and the remaining one-third has turned against the village he once wanted to lead and is offering poisoned candy to pretty little boys, but I guess I just like imagining them as less idealistic than that.
I also hold firm by the theory that Tsunade could have slipped into Orochimaru-like territory of research and human laboratories, for which I have no logical explanation except that I like it and she's supposed to be a genius medic-nin. (If someone knows a fic where she knew about Orochimaru's laboratories, plz to be leaving a link.)
It was the sort of things always worth knowing.)
Remember the line where Hinata thought that Tsunade knew perfectly well that the Hyuuga would side with Naruto if things ever came down to that? Yeah, that's more of it.
As a side note, maybe Hinata's just reading too much into Tsunade's comment.
Maybe Tsunade only consistently emoed in fine heroic tradition of 'why didn't I see him, why didn't I stop him' and tried to be prepared by learning everything she possibly could about Orochimaru, from scrolls, Anko, Jiraiya's spying trips, Sandaime's records…
Or maybe Orochimaru had already developed an affinity for suicide techniques when they still were part of the same village. (That would be an interesting discussion with Sandaime.)
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.
Hinata on TemaShika: is delusional and displacing her arrangement with Neji on them.
Storytelling-wise, I chose to make her think that because I wanted to state that they were an item. Retrospectively, I'm glad that it makes her less all-perceptive than she otherwise could have been, since in other parts of the Celebrationverse, the relation between Shikamaru and Temari is studied in much more details, and we learn that there's no such thing for them as being joined at the hip.
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.
I haven't any idea if thirteen is considered unlucky in Japan, and pretty much the only reason I wrote this was because I wanted the readers to know who was attending without launching into a list. ('Team Seven, Team Ten, Temari, Sai, Neji's teammates, Hinata and her team'.)
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.
I enjoyed the idea that the whole of Team Gai would be superstitious.
Between Neji who used to believe in fate and Lee with his dares ('If I catch all the leaves, Sakura-san will go out with me! But if I don't… she'll call me Fuzzy-Eyebrows for the rest of my life!!!'), I always thought it was funny that those two had something more or less in common. I see Tenten more as the type to pick up small, self-appointed superstitions than believing in fate, though. By small superstitions, I mean '…the kunai fell from my pouch. …I'm going to have such a bad day…', things that wouldn't make sense to anyone but yourself and which you're not yourself convinced you believe in (more like Lee than like Neji, so).
Neji's denial would be because he doesn't have anything in common with Lee, of course.
So, here are the facts; Neji's blind and at the hospital. (He's one of the 'more than a handful of Hyuugas' Hinata is visiting, so, and it'd make sense that the two of them would discuss Shikamaru 'who might even go back to being a ninja' and Temari 'who would be the one to put him back on his feet'.)
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.
I don't like this paragraph, but I still don't see how I could have handled it better. I choose to think of it as 'Hinata is repressing', along with several other ungraceful occurrences.
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.
This paragraph was added when it became clear to me that I needed much more about Neji. I'm speaking of several weeks after I'd written the rest, but the lack of mention that was made of Neji in the first part (before the dialogue) was revolting. The end result is not particularly smooth, but at least it gets the point across.
Another point is that the reason Hinata isn't overwhelmed by angst and guilt is because she's convinced there are still things she can do – because Hinata giving up is OOC.
'securing that thought in a corner of her mind', the first hint that Hinata's compartmentalizing, check. Description of Neji, though I'm wondering what I was smoking when I used the adjective 'joyous', check. Gratuitous council-bashing, check. Lee and Tenten, check.
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.)
I was happy when I came up with that. What can I say, I like torturing the characters. (Poor Shino hadn't done anything wrong except having a body full of bugs THAT COULD BE FUN IF BURNED.) Obligatory it-was-a-war-they-came-out-alive-but-not-unscathed thing.
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.
I don't know if this will come up in another fic, but in case it doesn't; Hinata's wrong. Lee talked to Sasuke too. So why did I write this when I didn't know there was going to be 'verse?
First I'll say that when I posted this, I had started working on a sequel that I've started twice and which is officially dead, but which mentioned Lee talking to Sasuke, so I thought I knew what I was doing.
Second, when I originally wrote that sentence, I simply hadn't thought it through. My grip on Lee's character is shaky at best THOUGH I LOVE HIM TO BITS and it was even worse at the time.
And Hinata is graciously pretending to believe Sasuke's coming back is linked to Konoha and not his teammates, but she's totally repressing a smile.
The sooner Naruto became Hokage, the better, Hinata wished.
War has ended, she's the head of the Hyuuga, it seems the next logical step, to her.
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.
Reality check.
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.
No matter how I write her, my Hinata is never content with herself.
Of all the people close enough to Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, only a few would be likely to correctly interpret their interaction.
I'll admit; the following paragraphs are pure self-indulgence.
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.
My Sakura doesn't come from a ninja family. Her parents are still alive.
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.
Originally I had phrased it a bit differently, so as to imply that the Aburame owed Tsunade a personal favor (something they'd feel was one) for saving someone, maybe Shino, at great risks etc, on top of Shino being Hinata's teammate, but it was unclear and it made it sound as if Shino was the clan head, which I had decided firmly against. So instead, I made sure to drop a 'his parents' and just scrapped the thing about Tsunade-being-a-medic-nin-wow entirely.
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.)
I killed Kiba's mother, but I left his older sister alive. Ain't I nice? One of them was going to die anyway, because they were canon family members, and thus nice for cheap implied angst. I don't remember why I chose to kill Tsume and not Hana, though. (…I'm an older sister?)
More of Hinata being perfectly willing to use the Hyuuga name to protect Naruto.
In parenthesis, Hinata plans and doubts herself, and decides against arrogance. Then she berates herself for not being perfect, again, and I throw yet more implied angst at Kiba. Originally I was going with 'Akamaru's dead' but when I mentioned this to my beta-listener, he was so horrified he refused to hear me out and demanded that I change it.
I was actually starting to feel guilty as well, so instead it just means Akamaru almost died and isn't in shape to accompany Kiba everywhere yet. (Cheating with angst wut.)
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.
Guess who made a seating chart.
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.
At first she was drinking sake. Then I decided she would not, because I could. (Snape can drink other things than brandy; Naruto characters don't have to drink sake.) The mention of green tea was because it's a fanon cliché to have the Hyuuga drink green tea (is it, or is it just my fanon cliché? I love it a lot, btw.) and I wanted to mention the two as if one wasn't any weirder for her than the other.
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.
Tell me if I'm spending too long waxing lyrical on a character, because, er, I won't notice otherwise.
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.
And in spite of that, I feel my Hinata as giving off straight vibes. I don't get it. My funny which is only funny to me: the parenthesis.
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.
Personally, I think it makes sense for Hinata's character.
And yeah, it kills the issue of Hinata being jealous by going '…it would never have worked anyway' and if it makes her sound ever so slightly less altruistic than cliché demands, all the better.
(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.
I wanted Ino to sit at one high-end of the table because I thought it'd make it easier for her to see everything, since she has one blind eye; Sakura grabbed the other end because that's what she'd have done pre-war and she wanted Ino to feel normal.
Here are the seating arrangements for which many charts were made: Ino; Chouji – Shikamaru – Temari – Lee – Sasuke; Sakura; Naruto – Sai – Tenten – Shino – Kiba – Hinata; back to Ino.
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.
If you read carefully, you'll notice that this is the first time I say precisely what happens at the table. 'After a few seconds' after what? I think it's after Hinata followed that train of thought and not anything that happened at the table.
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.
In the past two sentences, Hinata has thought that she was lacking somehow, though in the last she admits that the dinner doesn't exactly qualify as a normal, hostile situation.
Why Ino? Because I thought she was the most likely to intrude violently upon Hinata's privacy and I needed someone who'd have a reason for getting drunk (drunk = an excuse for OOC, so if at least I could keep their reason for it sense-making…). Plus, of course, I~NO~~~. (Who doesn't count re: Hinata's straight vibes, because she'd have chemistry with Itachi. As proven in Strange Kind of Sanity.)
"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.
I was setting the ground for possible InoChou. I like InoChou. But I didn't want it to be too blatant, because, er. 'NaruSakuSasu, NejiHina, TemaShika, InoChou…' Lookie I want everyone to have a significant other and no one to be alone and and and!!! Particularly when I realized this was a beginning and not an end, and thus didn't allow any leeway for change, because I dislike breaking up the characters I'm writing. (breaking them down, yeah.)
Oh well.
Hinata adapts, and she's not one for blaming others as she does so.
Deftly removing the sake from before the blond girl, Hinata faked a smile. She could only hope Ino wasn't a sad drunk.
For no reason that I understand, I love these two sentences. Maybe because I show Hinata as being able to react in social circumstances?
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.
Remember how Hinata feels like she got off easy? There's that, and there's also the fact that I wanted to how Hinata's sympathy hindered by the fact that she grew in the Hyuuga clan. Plus, foreshadowing, with her inability to know how to react to Ino's not being a ninja any more. (You think the clan council's happy that Neji won't be able to fight anymore?)
For my Hinata, not being a ninja any more is the worst thing she can imagine happening to her.
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.
Oh my Gawd the horribly written melodrama.
Neji had it worse.
The italics parts were added at the same time as I added the angsty paragraph about Neji being at the hospital and his team missing him.
Hinata firmly clamped down the cynical part of her mind.
No, that was me and my sadistic-sardonic side showing itself. 'that had literally cost her arm and an eye', which is in bad taste but which I wanted to write very much.
"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.
I'm always coming up with situations Hinata's wearing stuffy kimonos; it'd make sense that, head of the Hyuuga or not, she wouldn't change her dress code. Her shinobi clothes are already so unusual for a kunoichi, I don't think she'd change them to accommodate some expectation the clan would have. I think she'd be content to look like every other shinobi, without having the words 'hi, I'm the head of the Hyuuga clan' stitched into every piece of clothing.
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?"
I decided that Hinata's suffix for practically everyone would be '-san'. (plz tell me if it contradicts canon.)
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.
The only excuse I'll make for this blatant intrusion of the omniscient voice into the narrative is 'but I liked iiiiiiiiiiiiit'.
As a side note, this analysis is the very reason why I can't see Hinata as a medic-nin. I don't think she'd be able to stand not being in the middle of the fight; worrying herself to death on the outskirts and waiting for the fight to end so she could rush forward to heal someone. I think she'd be so nervous and adrenalin-filled by that point that she wouldn't be able to have enough control on herself and her chakra to heal people properly.
But that may all be wishful thinking. ('girl = medic' stereotype needs to die.)
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.
Hinata as a perfectionist is one of my kinks. It doesn't seem a big stretch from canon, especially given how unconfident she is and her obsessive/driven personality (at least that's how I read her). On top of that, canon perfectionists are scary people – I think Itachi and Orochimaru are the most blatant examples of perfectionists because of how dedicated they are to their goals and how the rest of the world dims to them because of that. I like my Hinata not completely stable and this sort of flaw feels much more IC than have her randomly cut herself.
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.
And that was also only then that I realized what I'd written.
Celebrationverse was born out of these two paragraphs, which I'd originally only started writing because I was wondering 'hm, so how has Hinata spent her war? What is the price she paid?'
I don't know where they come from.
I remember my reaction though. 'Oh noes I've killed Kabuto!... ;_; hey, Hinata killed Kabuto. Cool. :3'
I'm not sure Kabuto is the character I'm the most scared of, or if he's the one I find creepiest, but of all the characters in the series, he's the one who makes me the most paranoid.
We don't know how many agendas he has, we don't know who he's really working for, we don't know what are his true motivations – we only know that Orochimaru and him have this disturbingly cheeky relationship, that Kabuto was apparently ready to give his body up for Orochimaru to use yet he doesn't seem to have a curse seal, and that Kabuto is officially the most friendly-looking character in ever. (I did the dance of victory when I read the chapters where he was revealed to be evil, 'cuz I'd totally called it. :D)
My Kabuto paranoia reaches heights I'm convinced Kishimoto didn't foresee, but I can't help it. (And it's even worse in fandom.)
So here, Hinata only managed to kill him because she herself didn't know what she was doing, she wasn't thinking or planning or anything.
She'd taken the glasses and fled, and she'd made it back to Konoha. Then she'd learnt that her father had died.
It never rains, it pours.
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.
I have doubts about Hinata's logic and I think she might be trying to convince herself not to think too deep. (Again, Kabuto = twisted plans wut.)
Oh, and KabuHina tension makes its apparition. (<- was not supposed to exist either, just so y'know.)
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.
…I managed to tie the obligatory digression of doom with something that's almost related to the subject? Wow.
This blew her away.
"That's – nice, Ino-san," and oh, did her voice sound stifled. "But it's really okay…"
That's the only use of 'nice' I can admit. I hate that adjective when it's not used in dialogue, and even then, there'd better be a damn good reason why the character is using it – irony or euphemism or deadpan or something, but otherwise it's such a meaningless adjective.
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.
This is more or less the first hint that the fic is NejiHina. And even then, it could be that she doesn't want to be reminded of him because Neji could be her Overprotective Older Brother.
In any case, I wanted to write the fic so that it'd be NejiHina while avoiding to mention the ship as much as I could. At the time I'd written this, I hadn't yet decided on writing the second part.
Ino frowned.
The sentence mentioning her perfectly plucked eyebrows, mischievous pout, delicately wrinkling nose is not there due to Hinata's straightness.
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.
I'm not sure trains exist in canon. Also, Hinata ships NaruSasu!
"Well, I know the war's ended, but there are always accidents, you know. You don't want to die a virgin, do you?"
I love when the character's practicality is headache-inducing.
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.)
One of my pet crack-explanations.
"Um," Hinata managed to say.
I loved writing that. It's indeed a very articulate, eloquent sentence.
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.
I'll admit it; I've kept several diagrams and counts of people's reactions; every time someone said something, every time their name was mentioned… I also find it hilarious whenever someone finds Sasuke reliable and/or predictable in any way; and I think it makes him more touching.
For instance, if you want to know, writing Sai was a bitch. I don't think I'm true to his character at all, perhaps in his interactions with Team Seven, but certainly not with regards to the main issue, i.e. Hinata. (which is why he speaks so little.)
It'd have been much easier to just cut him out of the fic entirely, provide an excuse why he couldn't be there or even go the AU route and ignore his existence completely, but it felt too much like cheating. Similar to killing Tenten, except even worse. Besides, I like Sai in relation to Team Seven.
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.
Crack moment. Fun to write. (why Temari? I suppose she's the one who knows Lee the least, and I imagine her as rather prone to mocking or being sardonical.)
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.
One of these heat-of-the-moment, in-the-middle-of-battle instinctive decisions my Hinata sometimes takes. Complete with the instant justification I really needed to be both there and short, so the reader understood where her answer comes from.
"Th-thank you for your concern, but it's really not a problem anymore."
This was one of the sentences I had in mind when I started writing the fic. I very much wanted Hinata to say that, for the two sides of her it represents; the unfailing politeness and the eluding privacy.
cont'd here.
laleia. The fic itself is here.Title: Oversights and Celebrations
Author:
runespoor7Rating: 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.
This is asking a lot of courage to reread and comment. Mostly because when I started writing this in… I think it was August 06… I had no idea that I was starting a 'verse.
I just wanted to write a fic where Hinata was bothered by the other girls about how she was a virgin, when in fact she'd been the first of them not to be anymore.
I quickly realized it was going to be a post-war fic, and because I don't do angst (DO NOT LAUGH), I knew I would never be able to kill major characters off (Ino? Lee? NarutoSasukeSakura? …do you want me to kill myself or what?), and killing, say, Tenten or Sai, would be laughable. Kinda like killing Izumo. Or third-jounin-on-the-right. That'd be cheating, like saying "This is the bad guy" without showing why the guy is, yanno, bad.
So I forced myself to shrug it off and tell myself "I'm going to write one of these post-war fics where conveniently NO ONE IMPORTANT IS DEAD!!!" and, so I wouldn't feel like a complete hypocrite, those of the Rookie Nine plus Team Gai that I felt (and still continue to feel, at least somewhat) were only minor characters got a free pass to life as well. Among those, Sai, because I'm at best ambivalent about him, but it'd be really too easy to go 'Oops – he's dead. How sad.'
The second part of 'I'm not a complete hypocrite' strategy was that practically every single one of them lost something dear to them during the war, either to themselves or to one of their loved ones. Except Team Seven, but that is their problem: how to reintegrate Konoha, even as war heroes and without being faced with imminent trials.
I felt so bad about breaking my First Rule About War Fics that the working title for this was Happy PostWar fic. Laugh all you want, go on.
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.
This is the most non-grammatical first sentence in the history of non-grammatical first sentences ever.
I placed the start of their discussions basically a little after the time skip. (The timeline was relatively easy then. Now it has become a small unmanageable nightmare to reconcile everything that is supposed to have happened.) But it also happens pre-war, because even when it's not wartime, I expect ninjas die.
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.
Sakura's mission I think happens a little before Naruto comes back to Konoha. Why an apothecary's apprentice? I wanted someone normal (read: civilian) whom Sakura would have reasons to met and talk with.
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.
I liked writing that Hinata judged that lack of inquiries on her privacy = peace, war or no war. As a ninja, Hinata is brave, and as a friend she's more than reserved.
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.
If I'd known it was going to expand into a verse, I probably wouldn't have been so hasty to kill Hanabi. Though I did think about it – the decisive point was that I wanted Hinata to be the clan head, and having Hanabi alive made things much more difficult. When I typed the part about Hanabi, I didn't know what had happened to her, just that something needed to have happened; it's only when I realized Hinata had been a prisoner that I decided to kill Hanabi.
I have a thing for blind doujutsu users, and one of the best NejiHina fics I've ever read is
ceresi's Cages and Kindness.I love Hinata's definition of 'surprisingly unscathed'. Particularly after what happened to her, but she's sincere; she honestly thinks she got off easier than anyone else. (Besides, at the time I wrote this? I had no idea what had happened to her.)
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.
At that moment? I had no idea what had happened to Shika, if the thing about 'go back to being a shinobi' was a physical incapacity, if he'd been crippled, if it was a psychological thing… But the idea was that something needed to have happened to everyone, and I knew what had happened to Ino, and I had decided that since Chouji had almost died against the Sound Four, he'd get out of the war okay. Originally I had typed something different that implied it was something purely physical, but I decided it'd be too similar than what happened to Ino, so I changed it. Even then I thought that Shikamaru would be one of those most affected by what he'd been forced to do during the war.
Whether she and Neji are right or just displacing their own issues on Shikamaru and Temari is irrelevant.
By the way, I hate that cliché and the only redeeming quality of its use here is that Temari's treating him perfectly normally. Emphasis because it ties with Mostly Convenient, omg yes.
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.
Oh, please. I'd already decided no-one was going to be dead; you think I was going to stop at convenient timing?
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.
I was very careful choreographing what happened.
I wanted it to be Naruto the other two helped, because if it were Sakura the other two would have been totally panicked; it'd have needed to be something severe (think
jc_eastling's Three Weeks, She Sleeps) to put her, medic-nin and normal, with no seal to interfere with her healing, across the shoulders of the two boys. I didn't want it to be Sasuke either, because the point of this is that Sasuke is willing to come back, he's walking back into Konoha without being carried back – he's had his damsel in distress years.
Besides, if he's the one doing the supporting, it changes the mystique; in a way it makes him more normal, because Naruto being carried like that is an immediate signal that he's been Heroic. And I didn't know exactly how they'd killed Itachi, but of course Naruto would have been Heroic.
I tried to show them as a whole, but still with different dynamics; Sakura is cut by a kunai (not because she's clumsy, but because she must have thought it wasn't worth leaping to the side and getting the three of them into a pile with an injured Naruto) because she's one of them, but at the same time the other thing involves only Naruto and Sasuke (if I'd made Sakura take a part into it, it's have felt too much, too rehearsed to be convincing, I think). Besides I had fun with the two boys trying to outdo one another.
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.
Look how I'm not saying who killed Orochimaru.
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.
Political idealism. I told you it was the Happy PostWar fic.
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.
Oh yeah, the parenthesis of doooooooooooom. I'd managed to repress them. When I wrote them, of course they weren't a parenthesis (similar to Ino's crush on Itachi in Strange Kind of Sanity) and I didn't think the digression would be long, I was just going with the flow of backstory. (I'm a backstory junkie.)
In the end, it was… even more entirely too long and impossible to follow than is usually the case with what I write, but the thing is that I liked the digressions – and I thought they were, if not necessary, at least helpful to understand what had gone on, so I wanted to keep them.
In any case, those are Kakashi's powers of 'deception' at work.
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.
Things that are only funny to me and that are not supposed to be really funny, but which I wrote because they appealed to my weird sense of humor: '…Uchiha Sasuke had
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.
At first I hadn't written 'Sasuke and Sakura were the parts of Konoha that Naruto felt needed protection', but I added it because I feared my bias would be too blatant and not convincing enough otherwise. I agree with Hinata, but I still wouldn't have enjoyed being in the Hokage's office when Tsunade learned the news. *winces* That must've been painful.
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?)
Again with the wry, flippant tone.
Do they ever love Sasuke to not kill the snake bastard so very dead and instead focus on the person he wants to kill…
(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.
Between the fact that Hinata is much more perceptive of Naruto than the members of the village council and the fact that they'd have other things on their mind, while Hinata's attention pretty much zeroes on Naruto whenever it's about him…
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.
I <3 the Sannin. No, I mean really.
I think they probably had an arrangement at some point in time – and I'm not talking about sex.
They feel so much less dependent on one another and so much more ready-to-compromise than Team Seven; maybe that's only because when we meet them two-thirds aren't doing much with their lives but trying to waste it away and the remaining one-third has turned against the village he once wanted to lead and is offering poisoned candy to pretty little boys, but I guess I just like imagining them as less idealistic than that.
I also hold firm by the theory that Tsunade could have slipped into Orochimaru-like territory of research and human laboratories, for which I have no logical explanation except that I like it and she's supposed to be a genius medic-nin. (If someone knows a fic where she knew about Orochimaru's laboratories, plz to be leaving a link.)
It was the sort of things always worth knowing.)
Remember the line where Hinata thought that Tsunade knew perfectly well that the Hyuuga would side with Naruto if things ever came down to that? Yeah, that's more of it.
As a side note, maybe Hinata's just reading too much into Tsunade's comment.
Maybe Tsunade only consistently emoed in fine heroic tradition of 'why didn't I see him, why didn't I stop him' and tried to be prepared by learning everything she possibly could about Orochimaru, from scrolls, Anko, Jiraiya's spying trips, Sandaime's records…
Or maybe Orochimaru had already developed an affinity for suicide techniques when they still were part of the same village. (That would be an interesting discussion with Sandaime.)
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.
Hinata on TemaShika: is delusional and displacing her arrangement with Neji on them.
Storytelling-wise, I chose to make her think that because I wanted to state that they were an item. Retrospectively, I'm glad that it makes her less all-perceptive than she otherwise could have been, since in other parts of the Celebrationverse, the relation between Shikamaru and Temari is studied in much more details, and we learn that there's no such thing for them as being joined at the hip.
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.
I haven't any idea if thirteen is considered unlucky in Japan, and pretty much the only reason I wrote this was because I wanted the readers to know who was attending without launching into a list. ('Team Seven, Team Ten, Temari, Sai, Neji's teammates, Hinata and her team'.)
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.
I enjoyed the idea that the whole of Team Gai would be superstitious.
Between Neji who used to believe in fate and Lee with his dares ('If I catch all the leaves, Sakura-san will go out with me! But if I don't… she'll call me Fuzzy-Eyebrows for the rest of my life!!!'), I always thought it was funny that those two had something more or less in common. I see Tenten more as the type to pick up small, self-appointed superstitions than believing in fate, though. By small superstitions, I mean '…the kunai fell from my pouch. …I'm going to have such a bad day…', things that wouldn't make sense to anyone but yourself and which you're not yourself convinced you believe in (more like Lee than like Neji, so).
Neji's denial would be because he doesn't have anything in common with Lee, of course.
So, here are the facts; Neji's blind and at the hospital. (He's one of the 'more than a handful of Hyuugas' Hinata is visiting, so, and it'd make sense that the two of them would discuss Shikamaru 'who might even go back to being a ninja' and Temari 'who would be the one to put him back on his feet'.)
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.
I don't like this paragraph, but I still don't see how I could have handled it better. I choose to think of it as 'Hinata is repressing', along with several other ungraceful occurrences.
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.
This paragraph was added when it became clear to me that I needed much more about Neji. I'm speaking of several weeks after I'd written the rest, but the lack of mention that was made of Neji in the first part (before the dialogue) was revolting. The end result is not particularly smooth, but at least it gets the point across.
Another point is that the reason Hinata isn't overwhelmed by angst and guilt is because she's convinced there are still things she can do – because Hinata giving up is OOC.
'securing that thought in a corner of her mind', the first hint that Hinata's compartmentalizing, check. Description of Neji, though I'm wondering what I was smoking when I used the adjective 'joyous', check. Gratuitous council-bashing, check. Lee and Tenten, check.
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.)
I was happy when I came up with that. What can I say, I like torturing the characters. (Poor Shino hadn't done anything wrong except having a body full of bugs THAT COULD BE FUN IF BURNED.) Obligatory it-was-a-war-they-came-out-alive-but-not-unscathed thing.
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.
I don't know if this will come up in another fic, but in case it doesn't; Hinata's wrong. Lee talked to Sasuke too. So why did I write this when I didn't know there was going to be 'verse?
First I'll say that when I posted this, I had started working on a sequel that I've started twice and which is officially dead, but which mentioned Lee talking to Sasuke, so I thought I knew what I was doing.
Second, when I originally wrote that sentence, I simply hadn't thought it through. My grip on Lee's character is shaky at best THOUGH I LOVE HIM TO BITS and it was even worse at the time.
And Hinata is graciously pretending to believe Sasuke's coming back is linked to Konoha and not his teammates, but she's totally repressing a smile.
The sooner Naruto became Hokage, the better, Hinata wished.
War has ended, she's the head of the Hyuuga, it seems the next logical step, to her.
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.
Reality check.
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.
No matter how I write her, my Hinata is never content with herself.
Of all the people close enough to Naruto, Sakura, and Sasuke, only a few would be likely to correctly interpret their interaction.
I'll admit; the following paragraphs are pure self-indulgence.
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.
My Sakura doesn't come from a ninja family. Her parents are still alive.
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.
Originally I had phrased it a bit differently, so as to imply that the Aburame owed Tsunade a personal favor (something they'd feel was one) for saving someone, maybe Shino, at great risks etc, on top of Shino being Hinata's teammate, but it was unclear and it made it sound as if Shino was the clan head, which I had decided firmly against. So instead, I made sure to drop a 'his parents' and just scrapped the thing about Tsunade-being-a-medic-nin-wow entirely.
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.)
I killed Kiba's mother, but I left his older sister alive. Ain't I nice? One of them was going to die anyway, because they were canon family members, and thus nice for cheap implied angst. I don't remember why I chose to kill Tsume and not Hana, though. (…I'm an older sister?)
More of Hinata being perfectly willing to use the Hyuuga name to protect Naruto.
In parenthesis, Hinata plans and doubts herself, and decides against arrogance. Then she berates herself for not being perfect, again, and I throw yet more implied angst at Kiba. Originally I was going with 'Akamaru's dead' but when I mentioned this to my beta-listener, he was so horrified he refused to hear me out and demanded that I change it.
I was actually starting to feel guilty as well, so instead it just means Akamaru almost died and isn't in shape to accompany Kiba everywhere yet. (Cheating with angst wut.)
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.
Guess who made a seating chart.
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.
At first she was drinking sake. Then I decided she would not, because I could. (Snape can drink other things than brandy; Naruto characters don't have to drink sake.) The mention of green tea was because it's a fanon cliché to have the Hyuuga drink green tea (is it, or is it just my fanon cliché? I love it a lot, btw.) and I wanted to mention the two as if one wasn't any weirder for her than the other.
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.
Tell me if I'm spending too long waxing lyrical on a character, because, er, I won't notice otherwise.
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.
And in spite of that, I feel my Hinata as giving off straight vibes. I don't get it. My funny which is only funny to me: the parenthesis.
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.
Personally, I think it makes sense for Hinata's character.
And yeah, it kills the issue of Hinata being jealous by going '…it would never have worked anyway' and if it makes her sound ever so slightly less altruistic than cliché demands, all the better.
(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.
I wanted Ino to sit at one high-end of the table because I thought it'd make it easier for her to see everything, since she has one blind eye; Sakura grabbed the other end because that's what she'd have done pre-war and she wanted Ino to feel normal.
Here are the seating arrangements for which many charts were made: Ino; Chouji – Shikamaru – Temari – Lee – Sasuke; Sakura; Naruto – Sai – Tenten – Shino – Kiba – Hinata; back to Ino.
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.
If you read carefully, you'll notice that this is the first time I say precisely what happens at the table. 'After a few seconds' after what? I think it's after Hinata followed that train of thought and not anything that happened at the table.
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.
In the past two sentences, Hinata has thought that she was lacking somehow, though in the last she admits that the dinner doesn't exactly qualify as a normal, hostile situation.
Why Ino? Because I thought she was the most likely to intrude violently upon Hinata's privacy and I needed someone who'd have a reason for getting drunk (drunk = an excuse for OOC, so if at least I could keep their reason for it sense-making…). Plus, of course, I~NO~~~. (Who doesn't count re: Hinata's straight vibes, because she'd have chemistry with Itachi. As proven in Strange Kind of Sanity.)
"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.
I was setting the ground for possible InoChou. I like InoChou. But I didn't want it to be too blatant, because, er. 'NaruSakuSasu, NejiHina, TemaShika, InoChou…' Lookie I want everyone to have a significant other and no one to be alone and and and!!! Particularly when I realized this was a beginning and not an end, and thus didn't allow any leeway for change, because I dislike breaking up the characters I'm writing. (breaking them down, yeah.)
Oh well.
Hinata adapts, and she's not one for blaming others as she does so.
Deftly removing the sake from before the blond girl, Hinata faked a smile. She could only hope Ino wasn't a sad drunk.
For no reason that I understand, I love these two sentences. Maybe because I show Hinata as being able to react in social circumstances?
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.
Remember how Hinata feels like she got off easy? There's that, and there's also the fact that I wanted to how Hinata's sympathy hindered by the fact that she grew in the Hyuuga clan. Plus, foreshadowing, with her inability to know how to react to Ino's not being a ninja any more. (You think the clan council's happy that Neji won't be able to fight anymore?)
For my Hinata, not being a ninja any more is the worst thing she can imagine happening to her.
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.
Oh my Gawd the horribly written melodrama.
Neji had it worse.
The italics parts were added at the same time as I added the angsty paragraph about Neji being at the hospital and his team missing him.
Hinata firmly clamped down the cynical part of her mind.
No, that was me and my sadistic-sardonic side showing itself. 'that had literally cost her arm and an eye', which is in bad taste but which I wanted to write very much.
"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.
I'm always coming up with situations Hinata's wearing stuffy kimonos; it'd make sense that, head of the Hyuuga or not, she wouldn't change her dress code. Her shinobi clothes are already so unusual for a kunoichi, I don't think she'd change them to accommodate some expectation the clan would have. I think she'd be content to look like every other shinobi, without having the words 'hi, I'm the head of the Hyuuga clan' stitched into every piece of clothing.
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?"
I decided that Hinata's suffix for practically everyone would be '-san'. (plz tell me if it contradicts canon.)
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.
The only excuse I'll make for this blatant intrusion of the omniscient voice into the narrative is 'but I liked iiiiiiiiiiiiit'.
As a side note, this analysis is the very reason why I can't see Hinata as a medic-nin. I don't think she'd be able to stand not being in the middle of the fight; worrying herself to death on the outskirts and waiting for the fight to end so she could rush forward to heal someone. I think she'd be so nervous and adrenalin-filled by that point that she wouldn't be able to have enough control on herself and her chakra to heal people properly.
But that may all be wishful thinking. ('girl = medic' stereotype needs to die.)
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.
Hinata as a perfectionist is one of my kinks. It doesn't seem a big stretch from canon, especially given how unconfident she is and her obsessive/driven personality (at least that's how I read her). On top of that, canon perfectionists are scary people – I think Itachi and Orochimaru are the most blatant examples of perfectionists because of how dedicated they are to their goals and how the rest of the world dims to them because of that. I like my Hinata not completely stable and this sort of flaw feels much more IC than have her randomly cut herself.
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.
And that was also only then that I realized what I'd written.
Celebrationverse was born out of these two paragraphs, which I'd originally only started writing because I was wondering 'hm, so how has Hinata spent her war? What is the price she paid?'
I don't know where they come from.
I remember my reaction though. 'Oh noes I've killed Kabuto!... ;_; hey, Hinata killed Kabuto. Cool. :3'
I'm not sure Kabuto is the character I'm the most scared of, or if he's the one I find creepiest, but of all the characters in the series, he's the one who makes me the most paranoid.
We don't know how many agendas he has, we don't know who he's really working for, we don't know what are his true motivations – we only know that Orochimaru and him have this disturbingly cheeky relationship, that Kabuto was apparently ready to give his body up for Orochimaru to use yet he doesn't seem to have a curse seal, and that Kabuto is officially the most friendly-looking character in ever. (I did the dance of victory when I read the chapters where he was revealed to be evil, 'cuz I'd totally called it. :D)
My Kabuto paranoia reaches heights I'm convinced Kishimoto didn't foresee, but I can't help it. (And it's even worse in fandom.)
So here, Hinata only managed to kill him because she herself didn't know what she was doing, she wasn't thinking or planning or anything.
She'd taken the glasses and fled, and she'd made it back to Konoha. Then she'd learnt that her father had died.
It never rains, it pours.
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.
I have doubts about Hinata's logic and I think she might be trying to convince herself not to think too deep. (Again, Kabuto = twisted plans wut.)
Oh, and KabuHina tension makes its apparition. (<- was not supposed to exist either, just so y'know.)
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.
…I managed to tie the obligatory digression of doom with something that's almost related to the subject? Wow.
This blew her away.
"That's – nice, Ino-san," and oh, did her voice sound stifled. "But it's really okay…"
That's the only use of 'nice' I can admit. I hate that adjective when it's not used in dialogue, and even then, there'd better be a damn good reason why the character is using it – irony or euphemism or deadpan or something, but otherwise it's such a meaningless adjective.
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.
This is more or less the first hint that the fic is NejiHina. And even then, it could be that she doesn't want to be reminded of him because Neji could be her Overprotective Older Brother.
In any case, I wanted to write the fic so that it'd be NejiHina while avoiding to mention the ship as much as I could. At the time I'd written this, I hadn't yet decided on writing the second part.
Ino frowned.
The sentence mentioning her perfectly plucked eyebrows, mischievous pout, delicately wrinkling nose is not there due to Hinata's straightness.
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.
I'm not sure trains exist in canon. Also, Hinata ships NaruSasu!
"Well, I know the war's ended, but there are always accidents, you know. You don't want to die a virgin, do you?"
I love when the character's practicality is headache-inducing.
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.)
One of my pet crack-explanations.
"Um," Hinata managed to say.
I loved writing that. It's indeed a very articulate, eloquent sentence.
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.
I'll admit it; I've kept several diagrams and counts of people's reactions; every time someone said something, every time their name was mentioned… I also find it hilarious whenever someone finds Sasuke reliable and/or predictable in any way; and I think it makes him more touching.
For instance, if you want to know, writing Sai was a bitch. I don't think I'm true to his character at all, perhaps in his interactions with Team Seven, but certainly not with regards to the main issue, i.e. Hinata. (which is why he speaks so little.)
It'd have been much easier to just cut him out of the fic entirely, provide an excuse why he couldn't be there or even go the AU route and ignore his existence completely, but it felt too much like cheating. Similar to killing Tenten, except even worse. Besides, I like Sai in relation to Team Seven.
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.
Crack moment. Fun to write. (why Temari? I suppose she's the one who knows Lee the least, and I imagine her as rather prone to mocking or being sardonical.)
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.
One of these heat-of-the-moment, in-the-middle-of-battle instinctive decisions my Hinata sometimes takes. Complete with the instant justification I really needed to be both there and short, so the reader understood where her answer comes from.
"Th-thank you for your concern, but it's really not a problem anymore."
This was one of the sentences I had in mind when I started writing the fic. I very much wanted Hinata to say that, for the two sides of her it represents; the unfailing politeness and the eluding privacy.
cont'd here.
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Re: Sorry reposted because I don't know my HTML AGAIN.
Date: 2007-05-24 05:15 am (UTC)I don't know, because I think that Kishi is setting up a deliberate pattern with all this teasing--all these "did he or didn't he...he didn't" moments are clearly meant to lead up to the one where it will turn out that this time, Kabuto did.
Or more accurately, he hasn't been shown as having betrayed Oro so far. I go by the theory that Kabuto is currently (was currently? until the pwnage of chap. 345 at least) working for Oro in so far as he's working for anyone and not a double triple argh, quadruple agent (or something) really serving someone else.
Well, there's that theory about him being Jiraiya's spy (which, IMO, is totally invalidated by his attack on Naruto--we see his thoughts, and it is overtly, blindingly obvious that yes, he meant for Naruto to die there; there's no way in hell Jiraiya would let something like that slide but I don't trust Kishi enough to remember that), and given that he had Jiraiya make a point of talking about his spy in Sound in a recent chapter, Kabuto seems to be the obvious choice (unless it's Karin and then I will be very pleasantly surprised).
However, other people have pointed out that even if Kabuto is Jiraiya's spy, that doesn't mean he's any more loyal to him than he is to Oro. Jiraiya tells Tsunade that his spy said Oro is definitely dead, which we know is blatantly false and Kabuto knows that.
So I could see him being Jiraiya's spy for whatever reason, but not loyal to him either.
(It'd be different if Kabuto had been 'betraying' Oro for his own goal - confirming the Kimimaro situation, for instance - because again, I agree that to Kabuto, Kabuto is more important than Orochimaru. ^_^)
Yup yup. I've always had an inkling that a very large part of the reason (if not the whole reason) that Kabuto is with Orochimaru is because he needs Orochimaru to do something for him. Something big. It would also fit in with why he stays with Orochimaru despite his comment about "unfortunately" being chosen by him/looking like he was seriously contemplating letting Oro die with Tsunade, etc.
Every other underling--Sasuke, Kimimaro, the Sound Four, etc.--was with Orochimaru because they saw him as the only person who could give them what they needed. Why should Kabuto be any different?