[Naruto] Things in Sound
Jun. 10th, 2008 02:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorTitle: Things in Sound
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Rating: R
Summary: Sasuke's life in the Sound. [AU: Sound!Hinata; KabuHina. Team Seven usual complications.]
Notes: outtake from the Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son series, which are… basically exactly what they sound like. A collection of AUs on that premise. This one is: Sound Hinata. It's a continuation of this ficlet, but you don't need to read it. Long and rambly and written a long long time ago.
previously in the Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son ficlets: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Leaving Konoha should have meant leaving Konoha behind.
Instead Sound is more like Konoha than Sasuke could ever have imagined. The three persons he spends most time with – or at any rate the three persons he bothers marking down in his memory as somehow worthy of being remembered – are from Konoha.
The names Sasuke thought he'd be forbidden to pronounce, the names he thought would be banned from Sound (they don't belong here), he instead hears often. On an irregular basis, sometimes dozens of times in a day because Orochimaru and Kabuto's discussion of course requires it, sometimes merely as a casual mention through a week, their names come up often enough. Orochimaru and Kabuto never miss an occasion to drop the names.
At first Sasuke reacts; then he learns to hide his reaction. Finally he's so used to it he barely needs to keep himself in check.
Only Hinata doesn't talk about them, but that makes sense, because she never knew them.
It doesn't make her any less… conspicuous. She'd have hit off right away with Naruto, Sasuke sometimes thinks in a fit of vicious annoyance. It's not really because of any actual resemblance between the two, except that Hinata, just like Naruto, treats him as both a rival and a friend.
Sound has its own placeholders for the members of Team Seven, and Sasuke doesn't know what unnerves him more; being haunted by fragments of those he left behind, or finding Naruto in Hinata's stubbornness and dedication, Sakura in Kabuto's cloying mask of unbreaching sweetness, Kakashi in Orochimaru's encouragements to look underneath the underneath.
Mostly he spends his time with Hinata, because Orochimaru seldom has time for him.
At first he scathingly turned down her offers for a spar, instead chasing after Orochimaru to get him to teach him something, but he never found the Sannin, and when he did Orochimaru only smiled ambiguously and said that he was very busy, Sasuke-kun.
So finally he said yes to Hinata, one day he'd grown particularly frustrated and she'd reminded him more of Naruto than usual.
He hadn't had anyone to train with for several weeks, and fear of losing his edge was driving him practically crazy, he felt.
One of the reasons she reminded him of Naruto, he thought, was that while she looked nowhere near his level, she was intent upon challenging him. (Maybe it was this that had sealed her into a Naruto-shaped role in his mind; if she didn't egg him on again and again and again, he would've just identified her to Sakura – girl, weak, mildly incomprehensible, and insignificant.)
She kicked his ass.
He had barely had his Sharingan activated that she had gone Second Level of the Curse Seal. (which she used so much more efficiently than he did. Later, he learns that calling upon the power of the Second Level and its monstrous form, similar to his, is always her first move, as automatic to her as the Sharingan to him. When she restrains herself to the first level, because the Second Level doesn't let her improve her Byakugan, they are much more evenly matched.)
She kicked his ass, and when he looked up at her, Sharingan fading blearily, there was a moment he swore it was Naruto standing in front of him. Wasn't it exactly what he'd tried to flee, the dead-last not only keeping up with him, but defeating him for good this time?
He forcefully sealed the thought away before he'd finished formulating it.
Hinata was peevishly glowing at him, like Naruto himself could have done.
Sasuke admitted to himself that maybe sparring with her wouldn't be as much of a waste of time as he'd originally thought, and he stopped making any parallel between her and Sakura at that very moment. Sakura would never have dared raising her hand against him; she'd let him win anyway rather than putting up a decent fight.
After that, he discovers that the more he fights her and the more cunningly and violently, the more Orochimaru can be convinced to teach him something.
-
Sometimes he thinks about Konoha because Hinata may be a Sound girl, she has Konoha running in her blood; she has Konoha at the front of her eyes, she has it drumming in her voice when she speaks of loyalty and important persons (it's almost like Naruto's voice is echoing against the stone walls of their current hideout), and, he finally learns, she has it etched upon her skin when she activates her mark.
Konoha nins in Orochimaru's service all bear the Heaven Seal (all those who have a mark; not Kabuto).
He thought he'd leave Konoha behind, and instead Konoha is catching his eyes, displaying itself in an obscene mockery of its idiosyncrasies, with every breath he takes, deep in the bowels of Sound.
It makes it difficult because he has no idea what to call Hinata. He doesn't want to call her by her name only – the way she does for him and the way he addresses both Orochimaru and Kabuto – because… Well, he doesn't know why, except that the name is never even on his mind when he opens his mouth and calls her –
He's been trying to avoid calling her dobe, because that is not helping, and he never has yet.
Hinata isn't like Naruto in the sense that she's nowhere near loud, but there's something in her, focus and intensity, that remind Sasuke of Naruto in some moments (Naruto hadn't just shouted at the Valley of the End, and that is only the most recent glimpse Sasuke had of that part of his teammate).
He can't call her 'Hinata' in the short and sometimes condescending tone he employed with Sakura; it seems so out of place.
Sakura isn't anything like Hinata, and it would be another betrayal, one Sasuke isn't willing to deal with, to try and pretend to find her in another girl – one who is on his level and who has no emotional attachment to him the way Sakura does – when he turned down her offer to come with him.
But maybe sometimes Hinata is off daydreaming – girls in Sound daydream as well, or at least Hinata does – and he needs to call her back to the real world (real world of twisted, pseudo Leaf and eyes always the wrong colour) and he finds himself opening his mouth to say dobe, and then he remembers that's not it and instead he starts saying Sakura, and in the end he doesn't know what to call her because Hyuuga tastes like secrets and a story he hasn't been told and probably wouldn't be thanked for mentioning so casually (if he were her he wouldn't), and so he can't call her that until she mentions it first.
In the end he always foregoes the name: 'Wake up, we need to train.'
It's a few months before Hinata tells him, at the end of an afternoon spent studying a couple of scrolls, trying to work out the theory on their own before they can use it in a spar and then have Orochimaru teach them how to reach a perfect form, "You can just call me Hyuuga, you know. I know you want to."
Sasuke looks up, startled by her casual tone. Until now, he wasn't even sure she knew who and what her clan were.
He has no idea when she came to Sound, but he doesn't remember her from Konoha, from his Academy days; and he doesn't think he'd have missed it if someone could threaten his place as the best student in his class, the way she certainly would have. (Or she would have been the best student in their class.)
He watches her, looking for tell-tale signs of hatred, resentment or nervousness; she's not as apt at concealing her feelings as she should, and Sasuke doesn't need Orochimaru and Kabuto's softly-spoken reprimands to the girl to realise this.
He knows Hinata hates Konoha; he sees it in her face, every time the village is mentioned, and he knows it in his bones, even if her hatred is different from his to Itachi.
But she speaks the name of Hyuuga without any animosity.
He has got used to seeing her here – a Hyuuga in Sound, what's the likelihood of that – and he has done his best to ignore her origins (distancing himself from Konoha at all costs), but this time he feels justified in asking a question, because she is the one who broached the subject first.
"Why are you here?"
Hinata's brush continues its journey on the blank scroll she has opened in front of her, tracing symbols with a sure hand, kneeling properly with her feet tucked under her.
That is one of Orochimaru's idiosyncrasies, Sasuke thinks with a whiff of contempt, this insistence on decorum and niceties. Orochimaru has more than once reminded him that Kakashi is Kakashi-sensei to Sasuke, and he always speaks of his former teacher as Sarutobi-sensei as well.
As a rule, authority figures in Sound (Orochimaru and Kabuto) are much more polite and quiet than those of Konoha, though the younger shinobi brawl and shout just as much as those he knew in the Leaf.
One difference is their behaviour when either Orochimaru or his shadowy subordinate comes into the room. It's like a fucking revelation.
They immediately drop what they were doing and they fall all over themselves, snarling and kicking at each other and trying to talk in a louder, higher voice, calling 'Orochimaru-sama, Orochimaru-sama' (they always sound breathless).
They rush to his side, even if they are far past the age, their hands fluttering at their sides or wringing their fingers as if they wanted to cling to his robe, and they look up at him (always, they always look up at him, even for the few that are technically taller than he is, on the occasions they see him between missions) with eyes so fucking wide and hopeful, as if they were begging, that Sasuke wants to kick them in the ribs, so reminiscent of fucking puppies they are.
Sasuke wants to kill them all, when he sees them cluttering around Orochimaru like that, even the younger ones (those that do not make him think of another seven-year-old looking up in hope) tripping around the limits of his personal space with flushed cheeks.
Orochimaru, Sasuke analyses, is the single most slippery person he has ever met when it comes to the definition of his personal space.
He can glide in and out of it, retract or expand brusquely its limits so as to make you step closer, closer, just one step closer and you'll be there, and when you blink he is already miles away.
Sasuke knows because of the other person he has met with serious personal-space-shifting issues, though for Naruto it never was calculated, and his signals were mixed up more often than not – as if he couldn't make up his mind about what he meant and what he wanted, and he just kept switching (unlike Sakura who, when she didn't know what she wanted – and Sasuke can remember only three times when she knew what she wanted, the three occasions she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tearfully, the bridge, the forest and the hospital – hesitated, squirming as she did, instead of doing one thing and then turning around to do the reverse).
With Orochimaru, every time it's like there's a fucking god that has stepped into the room, and he looks at them, affectionately, at every single one of them, and he has kind words for at least a handful of them – and they look so happy, so fucking happy (it doesn't hurt dammit) as he agrees, for some of them, to see how far they have gone on their training, or if he asks about the latest jutsu they were studying, or when he talks to them about a mission they will probably not come back from.
Sometimes he says he has to cancel a training/watching session with one.
Then their faces crumble, and – hard as he might try – Sasuke has to look away. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Orochimaru patting them on the head, and then they look as if –
As if it was the single most precious moment in their life.
(Once, one whose training session Orochimaru had had to cancel because he 'was a bit busy, and like this you will have more time' committed suicide; Sasuke heard Kabuto thanking Orochimaru for it.)
Occasionally, one of the older ones to still stay in Sound instead of being employed elsewhere – teenagers – looks away instead of following the general rush, and pretends Orochimaru isn't here, arms crossed, too stiff in their forced casualness. Sasuke can see through the tactic as well as Orochimaru, but this has so far happened so rarely that he hasn't been able to work out Orochimaru's pattern for those yet.
Sasuke doesn't do any of these things.
Hinata doesn't either, which would have been enough to tell him that her status within the Sound is different as well. He isn't sure of it, because he doesn't spend any time with the others if he can avoid it – he can – but he thinks she may well the only person in Sound calling Kabuto niisan.
She's closer to his position than to that of the others, but it isn't exactly the same; he doesn't much care for studying the differences, except if she obtains special training from Orochimaru which he doesn't.
She has a clan in Konoha, she acknowledges their existence, but she is in Sound and Sasuke cannot remember ever having seen her.
The only Hyuuga close to his age he does remember is the heir, Hyuuga Neji, from when they'd briefly recognised each other as a worthy opponent and had laid a challenge. They'd been unable to follow through but, as Sasuke had reflected, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing; the Hyuuga had been defeated by Naruto during the tournament, he couldn't possibly have been good. It's lucky that Sasuke never wasted his time against him.
To say that Sasuke doesn't understand her motivations would be an understatement.
He watches her as she traces notes in skilful code, and waits for her answer. What other reason would she have for being in Sound except hating her clan?
"Orochimaru-sama found me when I was two, in a civilian town not very far from Konohagakure, and he took me in." Her voice is calm, measured.
Sasuke stares as he tries to wrap his mind around the idea of a Hyuuga somehow misplaced in Fire Country.
That is surprisingly difficult to admit, because Sasuke did his research on Konoha doujutsu clans and he knows very well that a child born of a Hyuuga and an outsider will never have the Byakugan – only possess the latent gene. (It's also a way for the Hyuuga to renew their genetic pool, marrying their non-Byakugan, half-Hyuuga offsprings back into the clan.) A bastard might have been overlooked – but a child with the Byakugan?
The Hyuuga is even more jealous of their eyes than the Uchiha were, and, unlike with the Sharingan, for which activation is not an automatic thing and which never was a common trait, the child of two bearers of the Byakugan will always have it. (Sasuke is sure there must be some sort of catch there, because it seems almost too good to be true – too simple, it doesn't take into account the mutation of Byakugan into Sharingan – but chances are it wouldn't be relevant, so he lets it go.)
"Do you hate them?" he wants to know. "Your clan."
Her hand stills and she looks up.
"No, why would I?"
And there, faced with Hinata's placid estrangement from her blood clan, Sasuke doesn't have an answer.
-
Orochimaru is always bestowing careless touches on his followers. It sounds odd to Sasuke, when he thinks about it reflexively, because Sound is, in every way, colder than Konoha – it's the only word that comes to him.
Konoha was warm. Wasn't it the reason why Sasuke had to leave? His brother wanted him cold, controlled.
Once upon a time Sasuke had been on the right path, or so he'd thought; not icy, but cool.
And then Naruto had come and Sasuke couldn't keep from reacting hotly, as if the idiot was some kind of lighter – something that could make Sasuke snap and burn with flames that he is only supposed to use, he is an Uchiha, he can't be the fire, he has to control it – and with him Sakura, who seemed lukewarm on the outside and whose tears burned.
Even Kakashi irradiated his own sort of heat, only his wasn't consuming or disquieting like that of the other two, an enigma Sasuke wasn't interested in deciphering.
Snakes are cold-blooded creatures that are forever attracted to that which is warm, and, to Sasuke, Sound is cold.
Sound is control over his facial expressions and body language.
Sound is never letting his guard down.
Sound is the shinobi rules – the relevant ones, anyway; loyalty to one's village doesn't concern Sasuke anymore – he cannot excuse he ever allowed himself to forget.
He's been called a lot of things, but no-one'd ever say he is stupid, and he can see the cold behind the politeness and civility and low chuckles and '-kun' suffixes which are purely there to grate on his nerves, he's willing to bet.
Thus Orochimaru's casual touches – on his arm, his shoulder – throw Sasuke off practically every time.
He rarely sees them coming because he isn't expecting those (when he's eyeing or frowning or glaring at Orochimaru and his whole attention is focused on his so-called sensei, he sees them coming and he easily avoids them), simply because he hasn't learned to recognise such occurrences when someone might touch you. He isn't used to being touched.
Team Seven wasn't very touchy-feely.
It comes as a sudden realisation, once Sasuke muses no-one in Team Seven touched each other this way – put one's hand on another's arm just because they wanted their attention. Even Sakura hadn't tried this one with him.
It takes him off-balance, and he tries to regain his momentum by recalling memories, and he is surprised when almost everything he can come up with is drawn-out episodes of Naruto's fists in his face, hands in his hair, elbows in his stomach and kicks in his legs, brawls to complete the way their fights often started, with Naruto yelling 'Kage Bunshin!' and Sasuke connecting harsh strikes one after the other, with barely the time to register the feeling of flesh against flesh before the clone went 'poof!'.
There were other times he could remember being touched by Naruto and it hadn't been during a fight, but, Sasuke was astonished to count, only a handful or so. Searching through his memory (not thinking about why he did this, just a relapse, for analytical reasons, into the sickening sentimentality that was his year as a Konoha genin) he couldn't remember Naruto touching anyone, ever, when he wasn't trying to beat them up.
(It didn't fit with his view of the moron; he was loud and bouncy and he broadcasted his happiness and anger every-fucking-where, shouldn't he have been prone to tactility as well?)
Sakura is easier; Sakura never touched him. He often thought it was because she didn't dare to, and compared to Yamanaka Ino's clinginess whenever she saw Sasuke in presence of Sakura, Sakura's hesitancy was a blessing.
The three times she touched him are the three hugs, when he was dying, when he was killing, when he was waking up in the hospital. She was crying every time.
He isn't sure Kakashi ever touched him, or either of the others for that matter, that wasn't strictly related to training.
To Sasuke, touches are foreign, but he regards Orochimaru's or Kabuto's with suspicion anyway. Nothing they do can be gratuitous, and the better prepared Sasuke is, the more he knows, the more he can demand in return.
He's come into Sound with this idea vaguely lurking in the back of his mind, and observation of Hinata has brought it to the foreground.
Some of her tactics for training, he cannot use – he loathes Kabuto and he suspects the other derives a sadistic enjoyment of Sasuke's dislike, so he cannot hole up in the medic-nin's laboratories under his benevolent gaze the way she does – but he can copy others, knowing he will achieve the needed result even if he doesn't work out the reason why the tactic works – sparring and fighting Hinata much more violently than necessary, and, for instance, accepting the touches.
He doesn't necessarily get it, but he does it anyway.
In Sound, Orochimaru's touches are the most precious possession.
Sasuke understands this one day Orochimaru has put his hand on Sasuke's arm, then on Sasuke's nape, for several minutes as he was leaning over a scroll.
He isn't sure if he likes it or not – he can't help the tiny start as Orochimaru's hand settles lightly on the back of his neck, it's the first time it's happened – but he bears it stoically anyway and pretends to be able on concentrating on the jutsu's theoretical developments Orochimaru is telling him about (and did he move his finger, brushing over Sasuke's nape?).
Orochimaru's voice is very peculiar as well, the way it always is, but Sasuke's about ready to endure anything if that gets him more training.
And when Orochimaru lets go, Sasuke looks up and Hinata is looking at him. And she has such an expression of utter hatred and jealousy, twisting her mouth and making the ugly veins around her eyes stand out, that Sasuke can only gape.
It's naked need there on her face.
She is glaring white-hot destruction at him, and longing so poignant that for a moment he has this image of her naked and standing in front of Orochimaru; the picture is gone in a moment, but he can't shake the sensation all the way away. Sasuke thinks that right there, right then, she wants to kill him because Orochimaru had his hand on him and not her.
That must be when Sasuke realises the two of them are more alike and more different that he'd originally thought.
That night he dreams of Team Seven; and Orochimaru and Kabuto and Hinata; and Itachi.
-
After the fiftieth time Hinata enters his room without waiting for an answer, he stops snarling and bitching, and in fact takes to ignoring her presence altogether, except for the occasional perfunctory glare. It's been useless so far, and she doesn't seem to be aware of his hostility when he does.
Not only does she come as she pleases, but she comes to stay. Often, she doesn't even try to speak to him; she just settles on the ground with her scrolls and her brush and ink and she starts working there.
In the beginning he hates it, of course.
Then, after a while, he tacitly accepts her presence. Sasuke likes his privacy; being left alone in peace. The point of this training is to grow stronger, not complacent. When Hinata is there, he still has the 'calm' part of peace, but not the relaxation. It's better this way.
Even if he wanted, he wouldn't be able to forget how dangerous and powerful Hinata is. Not because it is immediately obvious to the eye, but because this power is demonstrated to him every time they spar. Like Orochimaru and Kabuto, Hinata, when she's not in the heart of the fight, doesn't look like much of a ninja.
(Sasuke thinks it is a Sound specialty and tries to forget about Kakashi and Naruto's deceptive appearances.)
Sparring against her is… different.
Not entirely unlike a furious spar against Naruto if he was trying to keep up with Naruto rather than the reverse. And Naruto would want to defeat Sasuke because it is Sasuke, whereas Hinata wants to beat him for someone else.
Maybe two someones, he thinks as he watches her out of the corner of his eye. She and Kabuto have been having sex for several months now.
-
He only knows that because he more or less walked in on them; Orochimaru had sent him down to the laboratories to retrieve a document of some sort. The laboratories, like the small infirmary, are part of Kabuto's domain; they represent the other side of the coin, and no-one is allowed down there unless Orochimaru-sama or Kabuto ask you to.
The laboratories library is the place were most of the research result are kept; it is made of two joint rooms. So Sasuke entered the first room, which was empty. The door to the second wasn't closed all the way.
He hadn't paid attention to it originally. He ostensibly just wanted to get the scroll, get back, get training. He also couldn't shake the grouchiness about the fact that Orochimaru was using him as a sort of servant there, and Sasuke was supposed to be many things, but his lackey wasn't one of them. Orochimaru already had Kabuto for that.
Then a curious sound had reached his ears. A hitch – practically a gasp.
He'd frowned, and, abandoning his search for the apparently misplaced scroll, soundlessly approached the door to the other room.
"Am I going too fast?" Kabuto's voice asked in a clear murmur. "Tell me."
"No!" an immediate gasp, made slightly different by the breathlessness, but unmistakeably Hinata. "D-don't slow down."
Sasuke had stared at the offending door, frowning. Since when were examinations conducted in the library?
"I don't want to hurt you."
A ruffling sound, as if Hinata was shaking her head. "You're – not." But she was taking short breaths, obviously to accommodate the pain.
"Well, if you're sure…"
Sasuke couldn't help wondering if Hinata really did believe Kabuto meant it. On principle, he assumed everything Kabuto said and did was pretend. Except perhaps when they concerned Orochimaru, but even then, for someone who was always on Sasuke's case because he didn't pay enough respect to Orochimaru-sama and for all his subservience, Kabuto was surprisingly cheeky.
A sharp gasp tore him from his thoughts, almost immediately followed by a lower sound. A moan, Sasuke realised.
Standing against the wall, by the door, so he was hidden, Sasuke focused his Sharingan and peered inside the room. If he had stopped to think, he would probably have second-guessed himself, scoffed, and gone on his way, feeling vaguely ashamed that he'd concern himself with other people's business rather than with his goal.
On the other hand, prudence demanded that he knew what was taking place out of the ordinary in Sound. If Hinata was somehow beneficiating from Kabuto's dislike of Sasuke, then it was his business to learn as much as he could about it to be able to turn it against Kabuto.
He had needed a moment to make sense of what he was seeing.
Sprawled on the long table where piles of documents were stacked at one end, Hinata had her legs wrapped around Kabuto.
She was naked, except for the long fingerless gloves, much like his own arm-guards, that stopped over her elbows. Sasuke was shocked by the contrast of that white skin emerging suddenly. Usually, her arms were hidden by the flowing white shirt she wore over her attire.
Kabuto was bare-chested, and his pants – it took Sasuke a few seconds to notice – were around his thighs. His arms were braced on the table, Hinata's hands clutched on his shoulders.
Sasuke was struck by how small she was.
Sometimes it was hard to believe that she was really a few months younger than him; her body was more developed than that of Sakura, or even of many older girls Sasuke had seen during the chuunin exams, and the only thing lending some credibility to this was her height. Sasuke thought she might even be smaller than Naruto.
Right then it was hard to admit she wasn't even fourteen, except for how small she was compared to Kabuto.
"—I can't fuck you into the table or you'll have bruises, Hinata-chan."
Sasuke stayed frozen. Kabuto had a very patient tone that triggered long-gone childhood memories.
"I like the table," Hinata muttered. Her cheeks had reddened after Kabuto's use of language; her voice had an accent of stubbornness.
Kabuto's smile was more strained than usual.
"I know you like the table,—ah!"
Hinata's legs contracted against him. His hips bucked forward and he hissed at the same time as Hinata moaned and her nails dug into his flesh, violently enough that Sasuke could see it.
"Hinata-chan," he warned.
Hinata's hands slipped behind his neck and she arched her back, grinding their – their hips…
Sasuke felt a crimson glow rise to his face as he suddenly came back to his senses as to what exactly he was seeing – nay, watching. He hurriedly looked away, his ears burning. Determined on ignoring everything that went on in the other room, he went back to the scroll shelves he'd originally been looking through, and –
"N-niisan," Hinata pleaded amidst the heavy breathing.
He abandoned the search.
-
It makes Sasuke slightly uneasy, when she slips into his room, and he isn't quite sure where she comes from. But is also puts some of his doubts at rest – because Hinata doesn't have a crush on him, and doesn't pretend to treat him like he was her broth- at any rate, they are not close.
He knows this.
One of the things he has learnt since coming to Sound is that it is always advantageous to know what other people think. And unlike with his former team, he knows whatever Hinata believes will not upset him, because they are neither close not in danger of becoming so.
(Sasuke has to step carefully and take many mental precautions so as not to slip and use the wrong expressions, one that would imply his involvement with Team Seven. He cannot always avoid it; after a few mental arguments that had ended precisely where they shouldn't, he got into the habit of ignoring the possibilities of digressions.)
The easiest way to learn that, what Hinata thinks, is to ask her.
If she lies, Sasuke has never noticed it; if she's good enough that he doesn't realise it, it would be pointless to think she wouldn't see right through manipulation.
"Hinata, what are we?"
Are we friends?
Sasuke doesn't recall when he started using her first name, but he finally did because it's easier to disguise his dobe-Sakura-Hyuuga like that. It also mirrors her way of addressing him. (It doesn't help with the necessity to keep distant, though. Maybe it is the reason why he is asking her how she'd define their relationship.)
Are we rivals?
Probably, but he doesn't want to think about it. They don't care enough about each other for that, anyway.
Are we teammates?
There's no team in Sound.
"We're companions," Hinata answers in a cool, tranquil tone.
Without looking at her, Sasuke relaxes.
Author:
runespoor7Rating: R
Summary: Sasuke's life in the Sound. [AU: Sound!Hinata; KabuHina. Team Seven usual complications.]
Notes: outtake from the Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son series, which are… basically exactly what they sound like. A collection of AUs on that premise. This one is: Sound Hinata. It's a continuation of this ficlet, but you don't need to read it. Long and rambly and written a long long time ago.
previously in the Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son ficlets: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Leaving Konoha should have meant leaving Konoha behind.
Instead Sound is more like Konoha than Sasuke could ever have imagined. The three persons he spends most time with – or at any rate the three persons he bothers marking down in his memory as somehow worthy of being remembered – are from Konoha.
The names Sasuke thought he'd be forbidden to pronounce, the names he thought would be banned from Sound (they don't belong here), he instead hears often. On an irregular basis, sometimes dozens of times in a day because Orochimaru and Kabuto's discussion of course requires it, sometimes merely as a casual mention through a week, their names come up often enough. Orochimaru and Kabuto never miss an occasion to drop the names.
At first Sasuke reacts; then he learns to hide his reaction. Finally he's so used to it he barely needs to keep himself in check.
Only Hinata doesn't talk about them, but that makes sense, because she never knew them.
It doesn't make her any less… conspicuous. She'd have hit off right away with Naruto, Sasuke sometimes thinks in a fit of vicious annoyance. It's not really because of any actual resemblance between the two, except that Hinata, just like Naruto, treats him as both a rival and a friend.
Sound has its own placeholders for the members of Team Seven, and Sasuke doesn't know what unnerves him more; being haunted by fragments of those he left behind, or finding Naruto in Hinata's stubbornness and dedication, Sakura in Kabuto's cloying mask of unbreaching sweetness, Kakashi in Orochimaru's encouragements to look underneath the underneath.
Mostly he spends his time with Hinata, because Orochimaru seldom has time for him.
At first he scathingly turned down her offers for a spar, instead chasing after Orochimaru to get him to teach him something, but he never found the Sannin, and when he did Orochimaru only smiled ambiguously and said that he was very busy, Sasuke-kun.
So finally he said yes to Hinata, one day he'd grown particularly frustrated and she'd reminded him more of Naruto than usual.
He hadn't had anyone to train with for several weeks, and fear of losing his edge was driving him practically crazy, he felt.
One of the reasons she reminded him of Naruto, he thought, was that while she looked nowhere near his level, she was intent upon challenging him. (Maybe it was this that had sealed her into a Naruto-shaped role in his mind; if she didn't egg him on again and again and again, he would've just identified her to Sakura – girl, weak, mildly incomprehensible, and insignificant.)
She kicked his ass.
He had barely had his Sharingan activated that she had gone Second Level of the Curse Seal. (which she used so much more efficiently than he did. Later, he learns that calling upon the power of the Second Level and its monstrous form, similar to his, is always her first move, as automatic to her as the Sharingan to him. When she restrains herself to the first level, because the Second Level doesn't let her improve her Byakugan, they are much more evenly matched.)
She kicked his ass, and when he looked up at her, Sharingan fading blearily, there was a moment he swore it was Naruto standing in front of him. Wasn't it exactly what he'd tried to flee, the dead-last not only keeping up with him, but defeating him for good this time?
He forcefully sealed the thought away before he'd finished formulating it.
Hinata was peevishly glowing at him, like Naruto himself could have done.
Sasuke admitted to himself that maybe sparring with her wouldn't be as much of a waste of time as he'd originally thought, and he stopped making any parallel between her and Sakura at that very moment. Sakura would never have dared raising her hand against him; she'd let him win anyway rather than putting up a decent fight.
After that, he discovers that the more he fights her and the more cunningly and violently, the more Orochimaru can be convinced to teach him something.
-
Sometimes he thinks about Konoha because Hinata may be a Sound girl, she has Konoha running in her blood; she has Konoha at the front of her eyes, she has it drumming in her voice when she speaks of loyalty and important persons (it's almost like Naruto's voice is echoing against the stone walls of their current hideout), and, he finally learns, she has it etched upon her skin when she activates her mark.
Konoha nins in Orochimaru's service all bear the Heaven Seal (all those who have a mark; not Kabuto).
He thought he'd leave Konoha behind, and instead Konoha is catching his eyes, displaying itself in an obscene mockery of its idiosyncrasies, with every breath he takes, deep in the bowels of Sound.
It makes it difficult because he has no idea what to call Hinata. He doesn't want to call her by her name only – the way she does for him and the way he addresses both Orochimaru and Kabuto – because… Well, he doesn't know why, except that the name is never even on his mind when he opens his mouth and calls her –
He's been trying to avoid calling her dobe, because that is not helping, and he never has yet.
Hinata isn't like Naruto in the sense that she's nowhere near loud, but there's something in her, focus and intensity, that remind Sasuke of Naruto in some moments (Naruto hadn't just shouted at the Valley of the End, and that is only the most recent glimpse Sasuke had of that part of his teammate).
He can't call her 'Hinata' in the short and sometimes condescending tone he employed with Sakura; it seems so out of place.
Sakura isn't anything like Hinata, and it would be another betrayal, one Sasuke isn't willing to deal with, to try and pretend to find her in another girl – one who is on his level and who has no emotional attachment to him the way Sakura does – when he turned down her offer to come with him.
But maybe sometimes Hinata is off daydreaming – girls in Sound daydream as well, or at least Hinata does – and he needs to call her back to the real world (real world of twisted, pseudo Leaf and eyes always the wrong colour) and he finds himself opening his mouth to say dobe, and then he remembers that's not it and instead he starts saying Sakura, and in the end he doesn't know what to call her because Hyuuga tastes like secrets and a story he hasn't been told and probably wouldn't be thanked for mentioning so casually (if he were her he wouldn't), and so he can't call her that until she mentions it first.
In the end he always foregoes the name: 'Wake up, we need to train.'
It's a few months before Hinata tells him, at the end of an afternoon spent studying a couple of scrolls, trying to work out the theory on their own before they can use it in a spar and then have Orochimaru teach them how to reach a perfect form, "You can just call me Hyuuga, you know. I know you want to."
Sasuke looks up, startled by her casual tone. Until now, he wasn't even sure she knew who and what her clan were.
He has no idea when she came to Sound, but he doesn't remember her from Konoha, from his Academy days; and he doesn't think he'd have missed it if someone could threaten his place as the best student in his class, the way she certainly would have. (Or she would have been the best student in their class.)
He watches her, looking for tell-tale signs of hatred, resentment or nervousness; she's not as apt at concealing her feelings as she should, and Sasuke doesn't need Orochimaru and Kabuto's softly-spoken reprimands to the girl to realise this.
He knows Hinata hates Konoha; he sees it in her face, every time the village is mentioned, and he knows it in his bones, even if her hatred is different from his to Itachi.
But she speaks the name of Hyuuga without any animosity.
He has got used to seeing her here – a Hyuuga in Sound, what's the likelihood of that – and he has done his best to ignore her origins (distancing himself from Konoha at all costs), but this time he feels justified in asking a question, because she is the one who broached the subject first.
"Why are you here?"
Hinata's brush continues its journey on the blank scroll she has opened in front of her, tracing symbols with a sure hand, kneeling properly with her feet tucked under her.
That is one of Orochimaru's idiosyncrasies, Sasuke thinks with a whiff of contempt, this insistence on decorum and niceties. Orochimaru has more than once reminded him that Kakashi is Kakashi-sensei to Sasuke, and he always speaks of his former teacher as Sarutobi-sensei as well.
As a rule, authority figures in Sound (Orochimaru and Kabuto) are much more polite and quiet than those of Konoha, though the younger shinobi brawl and shout just as much as those he knew in the Leaf.
One difference is their behaviour when either Orochimaru or his shadowy subordinate comes into the room. It's like a fucking revelation.
They immediately drop what they were doing and they fall all over themselves, snarling and kicking at each other and trying to talk in a louder, higher voice, calling 'Orochimaru-sama, Orochimaru-sama' (they always sound breathless).
They rush to his side, even if they are far past the age, their hands fluttering at their sides or wringing their fingers as if they wanted to cling to his robe, and they look up at him (always, they always look up at him, even for the few that are technically taller than he is, on the occasions they see him between missions) with eyes so fucking wide and hopeful, as if they were begging, that Sasuke wants to kick them in the ribs, so reminiscent of fucking puppies they are.
Sasuke wants to kill them all, when he sees them cluttering around Orochimaru like that, even the younger ones (those that do not make him think of another seven-year-old looking up in hope) tripping around the limits of his personal space with flushed cheeks.
Orochimaru, Sasuke analyses, is the single most slippery person he has ever met when it comes to the definition of his personal space.
He can glide in and out of it, retract or expand brusquely its limits so as to make you step closer, closer, just one step closer and you'll be there, and when you blink he is already miles away.
Sasuke knows because of the other person he has met with serious personal-space-shifting issues, though for Naruto it never was calculated, and his signals were mixed up more often than not – as if he couldn't make up his mind about what he meant and what he wanted, and he just kept switching (unlike Sakura who, when she didn't know what she wanted – and Sasuke can remember only three times when she knew what she wanted, the three occasions she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tearfully, the bridge, the forest and the hospital – hesitated, squirming as she did, instead of doing one thing and then turning around to do the reverse).
With Orochimaru, every time it's like there's a fucking god that has stepped into the room, and he looks at them, affectionately, at every single one of them, and he has kind words for at least a handful of them – and they look so happy, so fucking happy (it doesn't hurt dammit) as he agrees, for some of them, to see how far they have gone on their training, or if he asks about the latest jutsu they were studying, or when he talks to them about a mission they will probably not come back from.
Sometimes he says he has to cancel a training/watching session with one.
Then their faces crumble, and – hard as he might try – Sasuke has to look away. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Orochimaru patting them on the head, and then they look as if –
As if it was the single most precious moment in their life.
(Once, one whose training session Orochimaru had had to cancel because he 'was a bit busy, and like this you will have more time' committed suicide; Sasuke heard Kabuto thanking Orochimaru for it.)
Occasionally, one of the older ones to still stay in Sound instead of being employed elsewhere – teenagers – looks away instead of following the general rush, and pretends Orochimaru isn't here, arms crossed, too stiff in their forced casualness. Sasuke can see through the tactic as well as Orochimaru, but this has so far happened so rarely that he hasn't been able to work out Orochimaru's pattern for those yet.
Sasuke doesn't do any of these things.
Hinata doesn't either, which would have been enough to tell him that her status within the Sound is different as well. He isn't sure of it, because he doesn't spend any time with the others if he can avoid it – he can – but he thinks she may well the only person in Sound calling Kabuto niisan.
She's closer to his position than to that of the others, but it isn't exactly the same; he doesn't much care for studying the differences, except if she obtains special training from Orochimaru which he doesn't.
She has a clan in Konoha, she acknowledges their existence, but she is in Sound and Sasuke cannot remember ever having seen her.
The only Hyuuga close to his age he does remember is the heir, Hyuuga Neji, from when they'd briefly recognised each other as a worthy opponent and had laid a challenge. They'd been unable to follow through but, as Sasuke had reflected, this wasn't necessarily a bad thing; the Hyuuga had been defeated by Naruto during the tournament, he couldn't possibly have been good. It's lucky that Sasuke never wasted his time against him.
To say that Sasuke doesn't understand her motivations would be an understatement.
He watches her as she traces notes in skilful code, and waits for her answer. What other reason would she have for being in Sound except hating her clan?
"Orochimaru-sama found me when I was two, in a civilian town not very far from Konohagakure, and he took me in." Her voice is calm, measured.
Sasuke stares as he tries to wrap his mind around the idea of a Hyuuga somehow misplaced in Fire Country.
That is surprisingly difficult to admit, because Sasuke did his research on Konoha doujutsu clans and he knows very well that a child born of a Hyuuga and an outsider will never have the Byakugan – only possess the latent gene. (It's also a way for the Hyuuga to renew their genetic pool, marrying their non-Byakugan, half-Hyuuga offsprings back into the clan.) A bastard might have been overlooked – but a child with the Byakugan?
The Hyuuga is even more jealous of their eyes than the Uchiha were, and, unlike with the Sharingan, for which activation is not an automatic thing and which never was a common trait, the child of two bearers of the Byakugan will always have it. (Sasuke is sure there must be some sort of catch there, because it seems almost too good to be true – too simple, it doesn't take into account the mutation of Byakugan into Sharingan – but chances are it wouldn't be relevant, so he lets it go.)
"Do you hate them?" he wants to know. "Your clan."
Her hand stills and she looks up.
"No, why would I?"
And there, faced with Hinata's placid estrangement from her blood clan, Sasuke doesn't have an answer.
-
Orochimaru is always bestowing careless touches on his followers. It sounds odd to Sasuke, when he thinks about it reflexively, because Sound is, in every way, colder than Konoha – it's the only word that comes to him.
Konoha was warm. Wasn't it the reason why Sasuke had to leave? His brother wanted him cold, controlled.
Once upon a time Sasuke had been on the right path, or so he'd thought; not icy, but cool.
And then Naruto had come and Sasuke couldn't keep from reacting hotly, as if the idiot was some kind of lighter – something that could make Sasuke snap and burn with flames that he is only supposed to use, he is an Uchiha, he can't be the fire, he has to control it – and with him Sakura, who seemed lukewarm on the outside and whose tears burned.
Even Kakashi irradiated his own sort of heat, only his wasn't consuming or disquieting like that of the other two, an enigma Sasuke wasn't interested in deciphering.
Snakes are cold-blooded creatures that are forever attracted to that which is warm, and, to Sasuke, Sound is cold.
Sound is control over his facial expressions and body language.
Sound is never letting his guard down.
Sound is the shinobi rules – the relevant ones, anyway; loyalty to one's village doesn't concern Sasuke anymore – he cannot excuse he ever allowed himself to forget.
He's been called a lot of things, but no-one'd ever say he is stupid, and he can see the cold behind the politeness and civility and low chuckles and '-kun' suffixes which are purely there to grate on his nerves, he's willing to bet.
Thus Orochimaru's casual touches – on his arm, his shoulder – throw Sasuke off practically every time.
He rarely sees them coming because he isn't expecting those (when he's eyeing or frowning or glaring at Orochimaru and his whole attention is focused on his so-called sensei, he sees them coming and he easily avoids them), simply because he hasn't learned to recognise such occurrences when someone might touch you. He isn't used to being touched.
Team Seven wasn't very touchy-feely.
It comes as a sudden realisation, once Sasuke muses no-one in Team Seven touched each other this way – put one's hand on another's arm just because they wanted their attention. Even Sakura hadn't tried this one with him.
It takes him off-balance, and he tries to regain his momentum by recalling memories, and he is surprised when almost everything he can come up with is drawn-out episodes of Naruto's fists in his face, hands in his hair, elbows in his stomach and kicks in his legs, brawls to complete the way their fights often started, with Naruto yelling 'Kage Bunshin!' and Sasuke connecting harsh strikes one after the other, with barely the time to register the feeling of flesh against flesh before the clone went 'poof!'.
There were other times he could remember being touched by Naruto and it hadn't been during a fight, but, Sasuke was astonished to count, only a handful or so. Searching through his memory (not thinking about why he did this, just a relapse, for analytical reasons, into the sickening sentimentality that was his year as a Konoha genin) he couldn't remember Naruto touching anyone, ever, when he wasn't trying to beat them up.
(It didn't fit with his view of the moron; he was loud and bouncy and he broadcasted his happiness and anger every-fucking-where, shouldn't he have been prone to tactility as well?)
Sakura is easier; Sakura never touched him. He often thought it was because she didn't dare to, and compared to Yamanaka Ino's clinginess whenever she saw Sasuke in presence of Sakura, Sakura's hesitancy was a blessing.
The three times she touched him are the three hugs, when he was dying, when he was killing, when he was waking up in the hospital. She was crying every time.
He isn't sure Kakashi ever touched him, or either of the others for that matter, that wasn't strictly related to training.
To Sasuke, touches are foreign, but he regards Orochimaru's or Kabuto's with suspicion anyway. Nothing they do can be gratuitous, and the better prepared Sasuke is, the more he knows, the more he can demand in return.
He's come into Sound with this idea vaguely lurking in the back of his mind, and observation of Hinata has brought it to the foreground.
Some of her tactics for training, he cannot use – he loathes Kabuto and he suspects the other derives a sadistic enjoyment of Sasuke's dislike, so he cannot hole up in the medic-nin's laboratories under his benevolent gaze the way she does – but he can copy others, knowing he will achieve the needed result even if he doesn't work out the reason why the tactic works – sparring and fighting Hinata much more violently than necessary, and, for instance, accepting the touches.
He doesn't necessarily get it, but he does it anyway.
In Sound, Orochimaru's touches are the most precious possession.
Sasuke understands this one day Orochimaru has put his hand on Sasuke's arm, then on Sasuke's nape, for several minutes as he was leaning over a scroll.
He isn't sure if he likes it or not – he can't help the tiny start as Orochimaru's hand settles lightly on the back of his neck, it's the first time it's happened – but he bears it stoically anyway and pretends to be able on concentrating on the jutsu's theoretical developments Orochimaru is telling him about (and did he move his finger, brushing over Sasuke's nape?).
Orochimaru's voice is very peculiar as well, the way it always is, but Sasuke's about ready to endure anything if that gets him more training.
And when Orochimaru lets go, Sasuke looks up and Hinata is looking at him. And she has such an expression of utter hatred and jealousy, twisting her mouth and making the ugly veins around her eyes stand out, that Sasuke can only gape.
It's naked need there on her face.
She is glaring white-hot destruction at him, and longing so poignant that for a moment he has this image of her naked and standing in front of Orochimaru; the picture is gone in a moment, but he can't shake the sensation all the way away. Sasuke thinks that right there, right then, she wants to kill him because Orochimaru had his hand on him and not her.
That must be when Sasuke realises the two of them are more alike and more different that he'd originally thought.
That night he dreams of Team Seven; and Orochimaru and Kabuto and Hinata; and Itachi.
-
After the fiftieth time Hinata enters his room without waiting for an answer, he stops snarling and bitching, and in fact takes to ignoring her presence altogether, except for the occasional perfunctory glare. It's been useless so far, and she doesn't seem to be aware of his hostility when he does.
Not only does she come as she pleases, but she comes to stay. Often, she doesn't even try to speak to him; she just settles on the ground with her scrolls and her brush and ink and she starts working there.
In the beginning he hates it, of course.
Then, after a while, he tacitly accepts her presence. Sasuke likes his privacy; being left alone in peace. The point of this training is to grow stronger, not complacent. When Hinata is there, he still has the 'calm' part of peace, but not the relaxation. It's better this way.
Even if he wanted, he wouldn't be able to forget how dangerous and powerful Hinata is. Not because it is immediately obvious to the eye, but because this power is demonstrated to him every time they spar. Like Orochimaru and Kabuto, Hinata, when she's not in the heart of the fight, doesn't look like much of a ninja.
(Sasuke thinks it is a Sound specialty and tries to forget about Kakashi and Naruto's deceptive appearances.)
Sparring against her is… different.
Not entirely unlike a furious spar against Naruto if he was trying to keep up with Naruto rather than the reverse. And Naruto would want to defeat Sasuke because it is Sasuke, whereas Hinata wants to beat him for someone else.
Maybe two someones, he thinks as he watches her out of the corner of his eye. She and Kabuto have been having sex for several months now.
-
He only knows that because he more or less walked in on them; Orochimaru had sent him down to the laboratories to retrieve a document of some sort. The laboratories, like the small infirmary, are part of Kabuto's domain; they represent the other side of the coin, and no-one is allowed down there unless Orochimaru-sama or Kabuto ask you to.
The laboratories library is the place were most of the research result are kept; it is made of two joint rooms. So Sasuke entered the first room, which was empty. The door to the second wasn't closed all the way.
He hadn't paid attention to it originally. He ostensibly just wanted to get the scroll, get back, get training. He also couldn't shake the grouchiness about the fact that Orochimaru was using him as a sort of servant there, and Sasuke was supposed to be many things, but his lackey wasn't one of them. Orochimaru already had Kabuto for that.
Then a curious sound had reached his ears. A hitch – practically a gasp.
He'd frowned, and, abandoning his search for the apparently misplaced scroll, soundlessly approached the door to the other room.
"Am I going too fast?" Kabuto's voice asked in a clear murmur. "Tell me."
"No!" an immediate gasp, made slightly different by the breathlessness, but unmistakeably Hinata. "D-don't slow down."
Sasuke had stared at the offending door, frowning. Since when were examinations conducted in the library?
"I don't want to hurt you."
A ruffling sound, as if Hinata was shaking her head. "You're – not." But she was taking short breaths, obviously to accommodate the pain.
"Well, if you're sure…"
Sasuke couldn't help wondering if Hinata really did believe Kabuto meant it. On principle, he assumed everything Kabuto said and did was pretend. Except perhaps when they concerned Orochimaru, but even then, for someone who was always on Sasuke's case because he didn't pay enough respect to Orochimaru-sama and for all his subservience, Kabuto was surprisingly cheeky.
A sharp gasp tore him from his thoughts, almost immediately followed by a lower sound. A moan, Sasuke realised.
Standing against the wall, by the door, so he was hidden, Sasuke focused his Sharingan and peered inside the room. If he had stopped to think, he would probably have second-guessed himself, scoffed, and gone on his way, feeling vaguely ashamed that he'd concern himself with other people's business rather than with his goal.
On the other hand, prudence demanded that he knew what was taking place out of the ordinary in Sound. If Hinata was somehow beneficiating from Kabuto's dislike of Sasuke, then it was his business to learn as much as he could about it to be able to turn it against Kabuto.
He had needed a moment to make sense of what he was seeing.
Sprawled on the long table where piles of documents were stacked at one end, Hinata had her legs wrapped around Kabuto.
She was naked, except for the long fingerless gloves, much like his own arm-guards, that stopped over her elbows. Sasuke was shocked by the contrast of that white skin emerging suddenly. Usually, her arms were hidden by the flowing white shirt she wore over her attire.
Kabuto was bare-chested, and his pants – it took Sasuke a few seconds to notice – were around his thighs. His arms were braced on the table, Hinata's hands clutched on his shoulders.
Sasuke was struck by how small she was.
Sometimes it was hard to believe that she was really a few months younger than him; her body was more developed than that of Sakura, or even of many older girls Sasuke had seen during the chuunin exams, and the only thing lending some credibility to this was her height. Sasuke thought she might even be smaller than Naruto.
Right then it was hard to admit she wasn't even fourteen, except for how small she was compared to Kabuto.
"—I can't fuck you into the table or you'll have bruises, Hinata-chan."
Sasuke stayed frozen. Kabuto had a very patient tone that triggered long-gone childhood memories.
"I like the table," Hinata muttered. Her cheeks had reddened after Kabuto's use of language; her voice had an accent of stubbornness.
Kabuto's smile was more strained than usual.
"I know you like the table,—ah!"
Hinata's legs contracted against him. His hips bucked forward and he hissed at the same time as Hinata moaned and her nails dug into his flesh, violently enough that Sasuke could see it.
"Hinata-chan," he warned.
Hinata's hands slipped behind his neck and she arched her back, grinding their – their hips…
Sasuke felt a crimson glow rise to his face as he suddenly came back to his senses as to what exactly he was seeing – nay, watching. He hurriedly looked away, his ears burning. Determined on ignoring everything that went on in the other room, he went back to the scroll shelves he'd originally been looking through, and –
"N-niisan," Hinata pleaded amidst the heavy breathing.
He abandoned the search.
-
It makes Sasuke slightly uneasy, when she slips into his room, and he isn't quite sure where she comes from. But is also puts some of his doubts at rest – because Hinata doesn't have a crush on him, and doesn't pretend to treat him like he was her broth- at any rate, they are not close.
He knows this.
One of the things he has learnt since coming to Sound is that it is always advantageous to know what other people think. And unlike with his former team, he knows whatever Hinata believes will not upset him, because they are neither close not in danger of becoming so.
(Sasuke has to step carefully and take many mental precautions so as not to slip and use the wrong expressions, one that would imply his involvement with Team Seven. He cannot always avoid it; after a few mental arguments that had ended precisely where they shouldn't, he got into the habit of ignoring the possibilities of digressions.)
The easiest way to learn that, what Hinata thinks, is to ask her.
If she lies, Sasuke has never noticed it; if she's good enough that he doesn't realise it, it would be pointless to think she wouldn't see right through manipulation.
"Hinata, what are we?"
Are we friends?
Sasuke doesn't recall when he started using her first name, but he finally did because it's easier to disguise his dobe-Sakura-Hyuuga like that. It also mirrors her way of addressing him. (It doesn't help with the necessity to keep distant, though. Maybe it is the reason why he is asking her how she'd define their relationship.)
Are we rivals?
Probably, but he doesn't want to think about it. They don't care enough about each other for that, anyway.
Are we teammates?
There's no team in Sound.
"We're companions," Hinata answers in a cool, tranquil tone.
Without looking at her, Sasuke relaxes.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 03:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 06:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 11:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-10 08:55 pm (UTC)I loved how though she hates konoha she has no special hatred for her cla... they hold no power over her that way!
and also Sasuke being confused as to his place in sound and their relationship was cute!
also loved him as voyeur!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-12 11:40 pm (UTC)Yay for Denial!Sasuke working for you!
also loved him as voyeur!
He was so mortified, it was a joy to write. Plus I got to play with his brother issues. :D
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 07:58 am (UTC)Yay, sequel! How do you feel about this one compared to the first, btw?
Also, I like your Sasuke far, far more than canon Sasuke right now. Just saying.
And there, faced with Hinata's placid estrangement from her blood clan, Sasuke doesn't have an answer.
Curious--if push ever came to shove and Oro did actually manage to destroy Konoha--would Hinata care if the Hyuuga were killed off? Would she care if they were spared? Does she have any interest in them at all?
With Orochimaru, every time it's like there's a fucking god that has stepped into the room, and he looks at them, affectionately, at every single one of them, and he has kind words for at least a handful of them
But with Oro, it's all fake for the most part, poor things.
LOL at voyeur Sasuke. I enjoy him being (overtly, anyway) far more freaked out from witnessing Kabuto and Hinata's consensual sex life than he got from Oro's Pedotastic Touches. Seems that Hinata's niisan complex is resonating a little too hard with him as well.
I confess though, that when I was first reading this, I was going "KabuHina? This seems pretty Sasuke-centric with a lot of Sasuke/Hinata interaction, not really seeing where the KabuHina comes in...oooooohhhh. :DDDDDD"
"—I can't fuck you into the table or you'll have bruises, Hinata-chan."
But he could heal them!
Actually, Kabuto's probably the best person in the Narutoverse after Tsunade and Sakura to have rough, kinky sex with--though, that's assuming he'll heal you afterwards. XD
Also, Hinata and Kabuto, who jumped who first. INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 08:08 am (UTC)Does she have any interest in them at all?
She thinks she doesn't, that's for sure, and she'd never realise it even if she was wrong, not if they stayed 'the Hyuuga'. She'd need to know them before her feelings left the blank state.
LOL at voyeur Sasuke.
Sasuke Never Wants to Speak About That Again Ever. Also, Sasuke Doesn't Get the pedotastic-ness of Oro, so that mostly gets shoved under the blank, whereas even he cannot possibly misunderstand Kabuto and Hinata going at it in innappropriate places. ;)
Seems that Hinata's niisan complex is resonating a little too hard with him as well.
Yes, yes it does. :D
I confess though, that when I was first reading this, I was going "KabuHina? This seems pretty Sasuke-centric with a lot of Sasuke/Hinata interaction, not really seeing where the KabuHina comes in...
I knooooooow. :/ I was feeling that way as well when I was writing/editing it. More of my issues with Sasuke acting canon-like and the fic not having a structure.
But he could heal them!
Well, yeah, but he enjoys denying Hinata, and it turns him on when she's needy and demanding.
Also, Hinata and Kabuto, who jumped who first.
Hinata, of course. AND YOU KNOW IT. >_>
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Date: 2008-06-18 12:50 am (UTC)But does everything have to change, in a AU that's mostly focused around the different life of one character? Sasuke's life wouldn't necessarily be affected by Hinata being abandoned in this world: they barely (scratch that, never) interact in canon, so why should Hinata's different circumstances affect him and the way he acts? Unless there's more about this world that's different beyond Hinata being in Sound, but I didn't really get the sense that that was the case.
And it's... probably a bit long for a character sketch. At the same time I like it, because describing twisted Sound things = always fun.
It's a Sound sketch with a Sasuke-flavored perspective. :D
Sasuke Never Wants to Speak About That Again Ever.
There's nothing in that sentence that says he won't think about it, though. :DDD
Well, yeah, but he enjoys denying Hinata, and it turns him on when she's needy and demanding.
<.< Plus, Kabuto (in canon and in this fic) really does seem to enjoy playing the "niisan" role in more than just name: the whole exchange has a very "Listen to big brother because I know best and I only have your best interests at heart, Hinata-chan"
not reallyvibe.Hinata, of course. AND YOU KNOW IT. >_>
Requesting fic of first time, plz.And I'll bet that when she did approach him, he pretended to be startled and surprised and even a little shocked that his little Hinata-chan harbored such naughty feelings for him.What changed her mind about acting on her attraction to Kabuto, btw? In the first, she was attracted, but determined not to do anything about it: now, only a few months (?) later, she's screwing Kabuto's brains out on the laboratory tables.