[Naruto] Family Out Of Home
Nov. 22nd, 2007 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorTitle: Family Out Of Home
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Rating: G
Summary: It’s Hinata first time alone out of the Hyuuga compound. She can’t get lost.
Notes: Hinata and Uchiha Fugaku, ppl, as requested by the alphabeticons meme. But not paired, because, um, no.
Hinata felt wretched.
For as long as she could remember, festival days had been the only ones she'd had the opportunity to leave the Hyuuga compound, and she had been looking forward seeing the village outside the compound walls. So far, she had only watched it with the Byakugan, inside looking out, and even then, only when she was alone and was sure no-one would scold her for it. Without ever being told, she guessed that it was not a proper use of their bloodline limit.
She had spent the last two weeks in giddy dizziness at the idea of being out, finally, alone. It would make it an even more portentous day than every other past festival days, because she had always spent those next to her father, and while it had been interesting, she had also... not felt as fulfilled as she would have had she been allowed to roam by herself. She just knew it.
And it was important because her father had as good as explicitly told her that her ability of behaving correctly on that day would be the test of whether or not she'd be allowed to attend the Ninja Academy.
Hinata had no dearest wish. Ever since she had seen Branch Family children running out of the gates toward their friends in the morning, exchanging loud good-mornings, she had wanted to go there. She wanted so badly to have her own friends, to be - to be slightly less alone.
And this year, Neji-niisan was attending the Academy too.
Hinata felt nausea as she imagined the look he would send her when, next spring, he would go back to the Academy and she wouldn't.
And now she would never go, because she was lost.
Lost in the middle of the festival, with more people than she had ever seen in her whole life bustling past her, and she had no idea where she was, and she had to find out right now, because she would be a ninja, and ninjas didn't get lost.
...Maybe if she used the Byakugan?
Bringing her fingers in front of her, she formed the seal. She forced her hands not to tremble. The seal came easily to her now, anyway; she used the Byakugan enough. …Even though she was not really supposed to, especially not in the way she tended to use it – glancing past a corner when she feared she would cross Neji-niisan’s way. Or her grandfather’s. But she did it all the same, she didn’t know why. Maybe she was too scared. A coward. Weak, and pitiful.
She was thinking in this manner, at the same time trying to focus on what she could glimpse of the buildings surrounding her through the brilliant chakra of a thousand human beings, when someone bumped her in the back and she fell over.
Had she been wearing her usual practical clothes, she’d have been able to prevent the fall and just stumble. But the yukata and geta made it impossible, and she had barely the time to throw her arms before her face so she wouldn’t hit her head on the dusty ground.
A foot brushed past her thigh, another her shoulder, and Hinata yelped as she tried to scramble to her feet. If she didn’t get up, she’d get trampled on, those people wouldn’t see her soon enough to avoid walking on her!
Suddenly, a large hand closed on her arm, and she was lifted in the air, then to her feet.
Confused, she looked up – then up – then up again – and all the way up there, there was a dark-eyed man’s face frowning down at her. Hinata’s shoulders hunched under the unfaltering gaze, and she ‘eeped’ faintly. The man didn’t look – very sympathetic.
Then again, he wasn’t from her clan, so there might a chance he wouldn’t tell her father about her pathetic failure. She had fallen.
But he had helped her up. Even it was shameful, she had to do something about it.
Swallowing, Hinata forced the words out.
“Thank you, sir,” she whispered.
She didn’t dare take her gaze off the man, because if she looked down she knew he wouldn’t hear her out over the crowd’s noise, and she was already mortified over the incident. He must know she was an incompetent now, but there was no reason to make things worse and let him think she was rude on top of it.
Politeness was one of the only things Hinata succeeded at. The unchangeable rules provided steady grounds for her to stand on.
The frown didn’t disappear, and now Hinata was really starting to fear she had done something horribly, dismally wrong.
“Aren’t you a little young to be wandering on your own?”
Hinata shook her head a little. It wasn’t too difficult, because her head already wanted to shake, along with the rest of her body, but Hinata refused to allow it.
“N-no, I’m not,” she whispered again, in a pleading tone this time. All she could think about was that this man was going to tell her father, and she would never go to the Academy. She had no idea where she found the strength to speak further when the only thing she wanted to do was disappear. “I have just turned seven in December.”
She winced when she realised she sounded like she was arguing with him. Why would he care what month she was born into?
The man tilted his head to the side. His expression was still as grave, but there was something slightly different about his eyes. Hinata wished he was a Hyuuga so she’d be able to understand what it was. It was always so hard to understand what non-Hyuuga where feeling. Coloured eyes made things so strange.
“Then you are the same age as my son, and I wouldn’t let him run around unsupervised either.”
Immediately, Hinata perked up, gazing at the man with wide eyes. He… had a son her age?
Her timidity vanished under the amazement.
“Does he go to the Academy?” she wanted to know.
This time she was sure there was something different in the way he was looking at her. Something around the lips, but it was gone too soon for her to decide if he was unpleased or if he had been about to smile.
And in this moment, she didn’t care. All that mattered was the man’s answer. Maybe his son would be her friend.
“He is starting this spring,” he told her. Hinata’s mouth fell open. It would be – it would be so cool if he was her friend. “I assume you are starting too?”
Hinata vigorously nodded. Then, she suddenly glanced behind the man as if she suspected he might be hiding his son there. After all, she reasoned, he had said he didn’t want to leave him alone.
“Where is he?”
She suddenly blushed when she realised how insolent that sounded.
But the man didn’t seem to mind.
“He’s with his mother and brother.”
Hinata took it in.
She had a million of questions burning her lips.
How old was his brother? Hinata had a younger sister, and she also had an older brother, but she supposed Neji-niisan wasn’t really her brother. Why wasn’t the man with his family? Was his mother pretty? Hinata missed her mother, even if she was careful not to let it bother her so much it would show. How was he called? Did he already know jutsus? Hinata did, a little, but she was bad at them and she couldn’t wait for the Academy to begin, she only knew Hyuuga jutsus and she wanted to learn new ones.
She debated on how impolite it would be to ask at least one of these question when someone, another man, elbowed his way until the first man and panted, “Sir – there’s trouble at the fish stand, I thought it better to come to you – the Kyu–”
Then he did a double-take when his eyes fell on Hinata, who ‘meeped’ again, and he paled when he looked up at the man. The man with the police symbol on his shoulder. Hinata panicked. How could she ever have not noticed it? Plus, he was an Uchiha, he knew her father, he was going to tell her father everything she had done, oh kami…
The men’s eyes met – the older man, the one who had helped Hinata, looked in that instant more like Hinata’s father than he ever had until that point, stony and frosty – and Hinata, through her terror, literally felt things were being exchanged well over her head. She would have given anything to be somewhere else.
“I see,” the first man said calmly. “Yes, you did well to find me.”
Then he looked down at Hinata. She faltered under his gaze, but he didn’t look like he was angry. Not at her, she realised in a flash of insight, though there was a hard fold in his eyelids that said he was certainly angered at something.
“Last time I saw them, my family was having dango at the red tent. You should go find them, I’m sure Mikoto will be happy to offer you dango.” He eyed her for a moment while Hinata bit her lips and tried to muster enough courage to stutter it was too kind and she couldn’t accept it. Mikoto, she assumed, must be his wife. “My son’s name is Sasuke; he’ll sulk for a few moments but he’ll get over it once you get him talking. Just don’t let him run his mouth off.”
Stunned, Hinata could only nod feebly.
“I’d ask Taro to accompany you, but I’m taking him with me. The red tent is just over there,” he pointed, “and they must still be there. You will be able to find your way?”
Hinata started to nod, then paused, and asked, “H-how will I recognise them, Uchiha-san?”
He nodded gravely. “Both my sons have the Uchiha fan on the back of their shirts.”
Relief surged through. More than any physical detail, that was something she couldn’t misinterpret. It wasn’t easy for her to see differences between non-Hyuuga, except if their colouring was wildly different from the norm. And so far, she had only had a glimpse of pink, and she was pretty sure she must have confused a woman’s obi for a child’s hair.
This man had dark eyes and dark hair. If his sons and wife did too, Hinata would really have had a difficult time recognising them.
She nodded again. “Thank you, Uchiha-san.”
He smiled at her, then gestured briskly for the other policeman to show him through the crowd.
Feeling strangely better, Hinata started in the direction Uchiha-san had indicated to her. She could see the red tent and banners between the walking people, and now she had a goal, she found she could slip more easily between them; even the geta weren’t as awkward as twenty minutes ago. She was going to spend the rest of the evening with the man’s family, where there was a nice mother, and a real older brother, and a boy who was her age and who would be her friend.
But she never reached the tent, because she caught a sudden flash of golden hair and blue eyes as a boy dashed past her, and the brilliant colours continued sparkling in her vision long after the boy had gone.
Author:
runespoor7Rating: G
Summary: It’s Hinata first time alone out of the Hyuuga compound. She can’t get lost.
Notes: Hinata and Uchiha Fugaku, ppl, as requested by the alphabeticons meme. But not paired, because, um, no.
Hinata felt wretched.
For as long as she could remember, festival days had been the only ones she'd had the opportunity to leave the Hyuuga compound, and she had been looking forward seeing the village outside the compound walls. So far, she had only watched it with the Byakugan, inside looking out, and even then, only when she was alone and was sure no-one would scold her for it. Without ever being told, she guessed that it was not a proper use of their bloodline limit.
She had spent the last two weeks in giddy dizziness at the idea of being out, finally, alone. It would make it an even more portentous day than every other past festival days, because she had always spent those next to her father, and while it had been interesting, she had also... not felt as fulfilled as she would have had she been allowed to roam by herself. She just knew it.
And it was important because her father had as good as explicitly told her that her ability of behaving correctly on that day would be the test of whether or not she'd be allowed to attend the Ninja Academy.
Hinata had no dearest wish. Ever since she had seen Branch Family children running out of the gates toward their friends in the morning, exchanging loud good-mornings, she had wanted to go there. She wanted so badly to have her own friends, to be - to be slightly less alone.
And this year, Neji-niisan was attending the Academy too.
Hinata felt nausea as she imagined the look he would send her when, next spring, he would go back to the Academy and she wouldn't.
And now she would never go, because she was lost.
Lost in the middle of the festival, with more people than she had ever seen in her whole life bustling past her, and she had no idea where she was, and she had to find out right now, because she would be a ninja, and ninjas didn't get lost.
...Maybe if she used the Byakugan?
Bringing her fingers in front of her, she formed the seal. She forced her hands not to tremble. The seal came easily to her now, anyway; she used the Byakugan enough. …Even though she was not really supposed to, especially not in the way she tended to use it – glancing past a corner when she feared she would cross Neji-niisan’s way. Or her grandfather’s. But she did it all the same, she didn’t know why. Maybe she was too scared. A coward. Weak, and pitiful.
She was thinking in this manner, at the same time trying to focus on what she could glimpse of the buildings surrounding her through the brilliant chakra of a thousand human beings, when someone bumped her in the back and she fell over.
Had she been wearing her usual practical clothes, she’d have been able to prevent the fall and just stumble. But the yukata and geta made it impossible, and she had barely the time to throw her arms before her face so she wouldn’t hit her head on the dusty ground.
A foot brushed past her thigh, another her shoulder, and Hinata yelped as she tried to scramble to her feet. If she didn’t get up, she’d get trampled on, those people wouldn’t see her soon enough to avoid walking on her!
Suddenly, a large hand closed on her arm, and she was lifted in the air, then to her feet.
Confused, she looked up – then up – then up again – and all the way up there, there was a dark-eyed man’s face frowning down at her. Hinata’s shoulders hunched under the unfaltering gaze, and she ‘eeped’ faintly. The man didn’t look – very sympathetic.
Then again, he wasn’t from her clan, so there might a chance he wouldn’t tell her father about her pathetic failure. She had fallen.
But he had helped her up. Even it was shameful, she had to do something about it.
Swallowing, Hinata forced the words out.
“Thank you, sir,” she whispered.
She didn’t dare take her gaze off the man, because if she looked down she knew he wouldn’t hear her out over the crowd’s noise, and she was already mortified over the incident. He must know she was an incompetent now, but there was no reason to make things worse and let him think she was rude on top of it.
Politeness was one of the only things Hinata succeeded at. The unchangeable rules provided steady grounds for her to stand on.
The frown didn’t disappear, and now Hinata was really starting to fear she had done something horribly, dismally wrong.
“Aren’t you a little young to be wandering on your own?”
Hinata shook her head a little. It wasn’t too difficult, because her head already wanted to shake, along with the rest of her body, but Hinata refused to allow it.
“N-no, I’m not,” she whispered again, in a pleading tone this time. All she could think about was that this man was going to tell her father, and she would never go to the Academy. She had no idea where she found the strength to speak further when the only thing she wanted to do was disappear. “I have just turned seven in December.”
She winced when she realised she sounded like she was arguing with him. Why would he care what month she was born into?
The man tilted his head to the side. His expression was still as grave, but there was something slightly different about his eyes. Hinata wished he was a Hyuuga so she’d be able to understand what it was. It was always so hard to understand what non-Hyuuga where feeling. Coloured eyes made things so strange.
“Then you are the same age as my son, and I wouldn’t let him run around unsupervised either.”
Immediately, Hinata perked up, gazing at the man with wide eyes. He… had a son her age?
Her timidity vanished under the amazement.
“Does he go to the Academy?” she wanted to know.
This time she was sure there was something different in the way he was looking at her. Something around the lips, but it was gone too soon for her to decide if he was unpleased or if he had been about to smile.
And in this moment, she didn’t care. All that mattered was the man’s answer. Maybe his son would be her friend.
“He is starting this spring,” he told her. Hinata’s mouth fell open. It would be – it would be so cool if he was her friend. “I assume you are starting too?”
Hinata vigorously nodded. Then, she suddenly glanced behind the man as if she suspected he might be hiding his son there. After all, she reasoned, he had said he didn’t want to leave him alone.
“Where is he?”
She suddenly blushed when she realised how insolent that sounded.
But the man didn’t seem to mind.
“He’s with his mother and brother.”
Hinata took it in.
She had a million of questions burning her lips.
How old was his brother? Hinata had a younger sister, and she also had an older brother, but she supposed Neji-niisan wasn’t really her brother. Why wasn’t the man with his family? Was his mother pretty? Hinata missed her mother, even if she was careful not to let it bother her so much it would show. How was he called? Did he already know jutsus? Hinata did, a little, but she was bad at them and she couldn’t wait for the Academy to begin, she only knew Hyuuga jutsus and she wanted to learn new ones.
She debated on how impolite it would be to ask at least one of these question when someone, another man, elbowed his way until the first man and panted, “Sir – there’s trouble at the fish stand, I thought it better to come to you – the Kyu–”
Then he did a double-take when his eyes fell on Hinata, who ‘meeped’ again, and he paled when he looked up at the man. The man with the police symbol on his shoulder. Hinata panicked. How could she ever have not noticed it? Plus, he was an Uchiha, he knew her father, he was going to tell her father everything she had done, oh kami…
The men’s eyes met – the older man, the one who had helped Hinata, looked in that instant more like Hinata’s father than he ever had until that point, stony and frosty – and Hinata, through her terror, literally felt things were being exchanged well over her head. She would have given anything to be somewhere else.
“I see,” the first man said calmly. “Yes, you did well to find me.”
Then he looked down at Hinata. She faltered under his gaze, but he didn’t look like he was angry. Not at her, she realised in a flash of insight, though there was a hard fold in his eyelids that said he was certainly angered at something.
“Last time I saw them, my family was having dango at the red tent. You should go find them, I’m sure Mikoto will be happy to offer you dango.” He eyed her for a moment while Hinata bit her lips and tried to muster enough courage to stutter it was too kind and she couldn’t accept it. Mikoto, she assumed, must be his wife. “My son’s name is Sasuke; he’ll sulk for a few moments but he’ll get over it once you get him talking. Just don’t let him run his mouth off.”
Stunned, Hinata could only nod feebly.
“I’d ask Taro to accompany you, but I’m taking him with me. The red tent is just over there,” he pointed, “and they must still be there. You will be able to find your way?”
Hinata started to nod, then paused, and asked, “H-how will I recognise them, Uchiha-san?”
He nodded gravely. “Both my sons have the Uchiha fan on the back of their shirts.”
Relief surged through. More than any physical detail, that was something she couldn’t misinterpret. It wasn’t easy for her to see differences between non-Hyuuga, except if their colouring was wildly different from the norm. And so far, she had only had a glimpse of pink, and she was pretty sure she must have confused a woman’s obi for a child’s hair.
This man had dark eyes and dark hair. If his sons and wife did too, Hinata would really have had a difficult time recognising them.
She nodded again. “Thank you, Uchiha-san.”
He smiled at her, then gestured briskly for the other policeman to show him through the crowd.
Feeling strangely better, Hinata started in the direction Uchiha-san had indicated to her. She could see the red tent and banners between the walking people, and now she had a goal, she found she could slip more easily between them; even the geta weren’t as awkward as twenty minutes ago. She was going to spend the rest of the evening with the man’s family, where there was a nice mother, and a real older brother, and a boy who was her age and who would be her friend.
But she never reached the tent, because she caught a sudden flash of golden hair and blue eyes as a boy dashed past her, and the brilliant colours continued sparkling in her vision long after the boy had gone.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-26 01:01 pm (UTC)But yeah, I get what you mean. Thanks for commenting!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 10:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-26 01:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-22 11:03 pm (UTC)Bittersweet. Hinata wanted in on a *real* family (a heteronormative and nuclear idea of a real family, but nevermind), but something incredibly horrible is gonna happen to that family soon. And Naruto ... he's kind of tragic, too, totally needy, but Hinata doesn't have what he needs.
It kind of brings out all these dysfunctional elements in Konoha family life, and sets them alongside each other in such a way that each dysfunctionality looks *worse*, bc the products of those dysfunctionalities (Hinata, Sasuke, Naruto) can't fix things for each other. It's like, there's no way out.
But you do it very beautifully. Love your use of color ; )
Well, maybe a little wordy. I mean, *to me* the main points are at the end, Hinata wanting to appropriate her idealized Uchiha family, and getting visually distracted by a little orphan, and it takes you awhile to get there. I've never been terribly interested in getting inside Hinata's head, and this fic doesn't change that.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-26 01:32 pm (UTC)(a heteronormative and nuclear idea of a real family, but nevermind)
I think it's just that the first person who came up and talked about having a family fit that mold. She'd have been just as happy if Iruka has been telling her that he took care of Naruto. If Hinata's first notion of the Uchiha family had been through one of the scenes where Fugaku is snubbing his younger son for the older, she'd have felt very differently about him, though she'd still have been all awed about how great a big brother Itachi was.
I'm an optimist about family dysfunctionality, really - things are bound to get better, if only because the effort required to make it go worse would be greater than the reverse. It'd take some pretty awesome skills to fuck the Uchiha situation even more than it already is, after all.
bc the products of those dysfunctionalities (Hinata, Sasuke, Naruto) can't fix things for each other.
Well, I don't know. When I started writing this and Fugaku wanted to talk about his family, I knew I couldn't let Hinata meet them, because Mikoto would've taken an instant liking to her and in my world, chibisuke and chibinata would easily relate to one another.
And then Sasuke would have had a friend or something like it out of his clan/family, instead of the huge gaping nothingness we get from the flashbacks - it seems like the kid was going nothing else of his days but hero-worshipping his brother. And the same would have applied to Hinata, and it would have taken her out of her father's opinion that she's not worth the air she breathes - and I couldn't let that happen because of her one-way hero-worshipping of Naruto.
The Sasuke-Hinata relationship wouldn't be much more than a crutch, but it'd be a two-way crutch in that scenario.
there's no way out.
Hmm, that's why I had Hinata be distracted. I couldn't let her meet Sasuke. When she sees Naruto, she's still inside looking out. I needed to preserve that balance to leave the manga backstory intact.
When they meet one another and there starts being more to their worlds than their respective family-related dyfunctionality, things will get better. At least they'll be different.
You're right about the point of the story, I think, looking back. When I was writing it, I was... mostly trying to keep up with Fugaku not being a complete asshole and talking about his family in a way that sounded as though he gave a shit about them as more than 'my son. good.' I didn't question what I was writing too much, because I was enjoying taking the scenery route, though. ;)
no subject
Date: 2007-11-28 06:15 pm (UTC)I think I was reading this as a Kid With An Atypical Family Who Wants A Family Just Like Everyone Else's, but it could be that she's not aware of what a 'typical' family is, that's if the nuclear family is even the basic unit or typical in Konoha. We've seen mostly clans and people without families bc they've all died, actually.
"I'm an optimist about family dysfunctionality, really - things are bound to get better, if only because the effort required to make it go worse would be greater than the reverse. It'd take some pretty awesome skills to fuck the Uchiha situation even more than it already is, after all."
My view is that if you've got a bad interpersonal situation, then doing nothing will either allow it to remain in stasis or it'll get worse. Something has to change before it can get better. Sometimes things do change and it makes things worse. I think something did change for Itachi that caused him to massacre the clan *when* he did. That is, being in ANBU put *more* of the same old kind of goldenboygenius stress on him, but he didn't change how dealt with issues, he didn't decide to show others that he's flawed and vulnerable but instead decided to fit the image made for him. More widdle angstmuffin.
I'd really like to read an AU where Hinata and Sasuke are friends, and each other's lifelines, and they're friendship is totally imperfect - Sasuke would hurt Hinata's feelings all the fricking time. But she'd show it much more than Naruto ever does, and maybe Sasuke would learn a little about kindness. And they certainly wouldn't have the competitive thing, which allows Sasuke to become close to Naruto without admitting it, but isn't good for him in the long run, you might say. Whereas being friends with Hinata might cause him to gradually start to *show* that he cares. I mean, in ways besides *not* killing her ; )
I only started writing fic this summer (and poetry, in a serious way, like, yesterday zomg), and one of the interesting things is that, much more than in academic writing, you discover things *after* you've written them. You go back to look at a story, and you realize truths about a character and your interpretation of the character in this particular telling which you knew in a way that made it possible to write the story, but which you didn't know in any other way.
But for me, this story is all about the moment at the end, and *whatever* it means.
And maybe you were working too hard to try to make Fugaku not be a complete asshole? Bc no one does things intending to be assholish - his behavior made sense to him somehow or was necessary for him (being openly affectionate would contradict his understanding of himself as a man and a shinobi and a father of sons). It wouldn't be ooc for Fugaku to be nice to a little girl he runs into by herself at a public event, though it would be ooc for him not to be taking into consideration the fact that she's a Hyuuga and he's an Uchiha.
Ok, I'm in a babbly mood, hope you don't mind.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 12:20 pm (UTC)That is, being in ANBU put *more* of the same old kind of goldenboygenius stress on him
Sometimes the "more" is all the change required. Or time - time on its own can be the change. Sometimes people take time to reach the point where they call it quit - or where they do something to change their situation.
Of course I have NO IDEA what's going on inside Itachi's head. It doesn't help that I have this sort of superstitious dread of thinking about the workings of Itachi's mind. I'm like Sasuke that way, feeling much better when I don't count him as part of humanity.
Something has to change before it can get better.
Oh yes, I agree. But like I said, I think sometimes time can provide the change needed - people can change, grow up, find other focuses, etc.
I've in fact read such an AU.
The way I justify Fugaku's behavior here is that I think he does care for his family, in his way. he just has very strict ideas of what is and what isn't appropriate and being in any way demonstrative toward them falls under the latter. He notices things about his sons, but he doesn't think of acting on it when they're together - after all, they are his sons, clearly it's obvious he has to
care forlove them. Thus the wry affection for Sasuke through what he tells Hinata. (...Well, that's how it felt to me.)I don't think their clans had any weight in the way he acted. He was being a
niceresponsible cop/adult/thing and Taking Charge. *manly*OH LYK, I TTLY MIND. TTLY. TL;DR!!!! *IS A NASTY HYPOCRIT*