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runespoorTitle: Things that could have happened had Hizashi been the older son. (or: a cage is a cage is a curse, dammit.)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Rating: PG
Summary: series of unrelated drabbles/fics on the AU premise stated in the title.
previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
13. work – take 2
When Hinata came back to the compound in the small hours of the dawn – with the sky a shifting mosaic of night and day – she slipped easily into her room, the only part of the district that somewhat felt like home. There was nothing home-ish about a place where you couldn't walk around without risking being ordered to drop what you were doing to carry out an order.
Instead of chancing these sorts of encounters in the corridors, Hinata much preferred entering and leaving her room through the window. She'd made the occasional fancy into habit at some point when she was a genin, and she'd never met any other shinobi Hyuuga when she did. They never saw her; and that, combined with how insignificant she was, made them forget about her.
And maybe that was partly thanks to that that she'd reached her current position, she thought as she landed soundlessly on the floor.
She'd had a long three days; the trials were arduous, nerve-wreaking, and attention-consuming, and Hinata felt her weariness had gnawed its way into her bones. Between stifled yawns, she was fantasising about the lovely twenty-four of uninterrupted sleep that lay before her, before she'd be called on to her new duties.
That explained why she was only aware of an intruder's presence in her room after landing.
She'd stiffened and had already thrown a kunai at his head before she realised that it was Neji, sitting on her bed.
He deflected the kunai without taking his eyes away from her face. She winced. Her nerves must be more frayed than she'd expected for her to react so instinctively.
"Neji-sama," she apologised. It was the time needed by her brain to kick in and inform her that the Hyuuga heir on her bed and obviously waiting for her was neither normal, nor deserving of such flippancy.
But she was tired, so very tired, now she was in her room, with her bed in reach, and the Hyuuga heir was only watching her silently and Hinata didn't feel up to the subtlety, full of unspoken things and meaningful looks, of an exchange with any member of the Main House.
(She should work on that, she noted. Someday being able to read and write between the lines might come useful in her service to the Hokage. But not now. The emotional involvement was too great, surpassing even that of her becoming a genin – because she understood the consequences of her achievement better now.)
"Why are you here?" she asked simply.
He shifted.
Then he pointedly, lazily looked at the mask at her hip.
She needed a moment to realise that she was supposed to keep it a secret!!! and another, as her hand was protectively reaching to shield the white owl mask from view, that as the heir, he must already know.
Hinata had had to fill a formal request to the clan head, then had needed to go through a personal meeting with him, before finally signing her name at the bottom of the document that, in the event of her being accepted, transferred every right and responsibility on her person from the Hyuuga clan to the ANBU.
It was different for other people, she knew, because they didn't literally belong to their clans or families. For a Hyuuga to enter ANBU, he or she had to accept being no more part of the clan, and becoming the ANBU's thing as they had been the Main House's. Only Branch House Hyuugas could join ANBU. (Taking the seal was the only way for a Main House member.)
She dropped her hand, letting him see. She was feeling a little awkward under his scrutiny, though it was directed at the mask and not at her.
Finally, he spoke.
"You made it." His voice sounded flat. "I imagine congratulations are in order."
She blinked, trying to figure through her fatigue what she'd done to upset him. "Oh – thank you." She was struck by an idea, which, she realised even as she spoke it, was pretty much the obvious. "Is this why you are here? You wanted to know if I had passed?"
His face was unreadable, but then, the light wasn't so good, so it might just have been the odd shadows and Hinata's strange slowness.
"I only learnt of your contract with Otousan yesterday night," he answered as if it was an explanation. Maybe it was, but too convoluted for her to grasp right now.
She was momentarily seized by the crazy urge to cry.
She was – she was tired.
Really, honestly tired, like she hadn't been for years, and her arm hurt, where they'd put the tattoo not even two hours before, and she only wanted to curl up beneath her blankets and sleep it off, and she was not a Branch House Hyuuga anymore, and if she wanted to throw the heir to the Hyuuga out of her room on his ass then she could, and she felt so accomplished she couldn't even say if she was happy or not, and now she realised she hadn't needed to call him 'sama' if she didn't want to, and she didn't want to.
She forced herself to participate, however, because he'd never make sense on his own, and she wasn't so rude or heartless that she'd actually kick him out. There had to be a reason he was there. (Or, alternatively, she was too alienated to consider it, but she preferred not examining the proposition too closely.)
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean, Ne – Neji." She barely bit the honorific back, so easily, so much habit it was for it to roll off her tongue.
He started ever so slightly and watched her again, with hawkish eyes that made her feel horribly awkward once more, practically naked, which was ridiculous, because it was his name she'd shortened.
"Or – should I call you Hyuuga-sam – Hyuuga-san?"
Hyuuga-san. She wasn't sure where it had sprung from, but she liked the sound of it. It was new; it was a name which she'd never used, even partly, to call him or anyone else.
His jump was more obvious this time.
"Hinata –" he looked like he was having trouble finding his words. His gaze was intense, and was it tension or discomfort, or horror, or pity, in his expression? "You don't have to –"
He cut himself off.
"I want to," Hinata dazedly affirmed, though she wasn't sure what about, but it was necessarily the right answer, because there was nothing she had to do anymore. The thought made her almost giddy. Dizzy. The lack of sleep was also to blame.
Now he was looking at her with pain in his eyes. She looked back in curiosity.
"Just Neji is fine," he said in a rather choked tone.
Hinata bit her lip. She didn't dislike 'Neji' as a way to address him, especially when they were both in her bedroom – and they had, after all, known each other for twenty years – but she'd come up with 'Hyuuga-san' herself and 'Neji' was his idea. She didn't have to obey him. Then she realised he'd been calling her by her first name, and that clinched it.
'Neji' would be good enough for the oddly intimate moment, she'd see later for 'Hyuuga-san'. She couldn't wait to use that one on Hizashi.
…What had they been saying anyway?
Oh yeah. Why he was here.
She was rather glad she'd managed to recover that during the silence; she feared that if she asked him what they were speaking about they'd go on a tangent again. And tangents were keeping her away from her bed, which didn't make sense from a geometrical point of view – which Hinata knew a lot about, because when you started reading about the complicated Jyuuken techniques Neji had been well on the way to mastering when he was still a genin, there was a lot of geometry. Luckily Hinata had always been good at maths.
"I wanted to be the first to know if you had passed."
Hinata blinked at him in a manner that probably was a little owlish.
He didn't elaborate.
"Why?" she asked.
Her body had positioned herself until she was sitting on the bed as well, sagged against the wall.
She felt very grateful that there had been a shower at the ANBU headquarters before the official ceremony when she'd been tattooed and she'd received her masks and she'd been told more actual facts about how wonderful it would be to die for their Hokage and less about the same patriotic mystique, that, Hinata privately thought, if she'd wanted to continue serving, she'd have just stayed out of ANBU. The Konoha patriotic mystique never mentioned the dirty jobs.
Steadily, he looked into her eyes. Hinata only stared back, waiting.
"When I first met my team, becoming ANBU…" The words were coming out slowly, as if he had to drag them out. "That was my dream."
"Oh." The silence settled again, and Hinata blithely went on, "it wasn't mine."
He looked like he wanted to say something, opened his mouth, licked his lips, then closed it again. Hinata thought that maybe she was supposed to say something, and Neji must find the silence pretty uncomfortable, but she was too removed from the atmosphere and feelings. Her eyelids were dropping on their own, and the mattress beneath her legs was a warm, inviting torture.
"Then why did you do it?"
She looked at him. "It wasn't my dream at the time. I have changed since then."
Hinata could feel the tension drumming in his body, emanating from him. He was going to dance around the issue for at least an eternity or two more.
"Look, why don't we cut through the chase?" she suggested. "Let's pretend we've done it all. You can tell me what's bothering you right away."
He may have a point, it was surprisingly easy to talk to him as he was anyone else. And Hinata found she enjoyed being blunt when the sleepiness dulled away the acute embarrassment she'd have felt otherwise. Naruto had the right idea, she only wished she had the nervous sturdiness to be able to withstand the stares and gapes and clapping-of-one's-hand-against-one-forehead-with-the-emphasised-groan from one's teammates.
He didn't move for a very long time, so long Hinata had started drowsing into slumber.
Then he spoke, startling Hinata out of the warm serenity that had embraced her.
"Doesn't it bother you, leaving it all behind?"
She blinked up at him. He was staring straight ahead, so she could only see his profile, black against the lightening pink sky in the open window.
"Leaving what behind?" she asked, uncomprehending. "I'm free now."
Again, she had the distinct sensation something was eluding her, something big. Next to her, Neji had stiffened.
Well, she reasoned, she was. She was the one who'd chosen to join ANBU; this indelible mark on her arm was of her own choosing, this mask she was to hide was one she had sought.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something she wasn't getting here.
"Yes," Neji echoed. "Free."
He stood up, pushing on his hands. The covers were rumpled where he had sat but the mattress didn't keep his imprint at all, and cold air replaced his arm where, Hinata realised now, it had almost been touching hers.
"Will you be leaving the Hyuuga compound soon?" he informed himself calmly, without looking at her.
"Er. I don't know. I didn't really think about it," she confessed.
But he had a point; now she was no longer legally a Hyuuga, she should be looking for a flat in Konoha proper. It was odd, she reflected, because in a way the perspective of moving out of this suffocating environment was intoxicating, and on the other hand… This room didn't feel suffocating.
She had a tiny bathroom attached to it, so she didn't have to wander through the corridors, and an electric kettle which provided her with tea to accompany the cold dinners she'd buy outside, so she never ate in the kitchens or common rooms; and she was always coming and going through the window, it must have been months since she'd used the door.
In a way, this was like an ordinary apartment already, except the neighbours had forgotten that she existed.
"You can stay here for as long as you need to, of course," he continued in a perfectly composed tone. "I do not know when I will see you again, as I don't doubt your schedule will be quite hectic, but – should you ever want to see me – for whatever reason – you know where to find me."
He paused, obviously waiting for her to react.
"Oh. Thank you," she said after a moment of puzzled thinking.
He was at the door when Hinata called out.
"N-Neji? Where can I find you?"
She didn't blush when she asked him, even though it was obviously one of the things she was expected to know, as a Hyuuga.
But Hinata was no longer a Hyuuga; and, as Hizashi had been forced to acknowledge when he'd tried to dissuade her from joining ANBU like he did with every Hyuuga who found the crack in the cage, she hadn't truly been a Hyuuga for a very long time. (When was the last clan celebration she had attended? She couldn't remember. She wasn't even sure about the dates.)
He didn't look at her, not even above his shoulder, when he answered her question.
"Here, of course. In the compound," he intoned, his voice poised and controlled.
"Wait!" Hinata acted out of sheer instinct, fumbling for the thread that she knew, if she should manage to catch it, would undo the web of half-hearted truths and artful meanings. "Why did you want to know if I'd passed so soon?"
His hand stopped a few inches from the door.
"Will you come to talk to me once you've completed your first mission?" he whispered. Hinata had to focus on his words carefully to make them out. She noted the tension in his shoulders as she rewound the sentence in her mind.
"I don't think I'll be able to talk about the mission," she said regretfully.
"But will you come?"
She looked at him, pondering the quiet hint of mixed despair and resignation in his voice – the tone of one who expects to be denied. She recognised it, because she had spent the last twenty years of her life trying to suppress it every time she spoke, as a pawn, as a servant, as a member of the Branch House of the Hyuuga. A prisoner in her own house.
I'm free now.
"Yes," she said finally. "I'll come."
Her eyes were fixed on Neji's shoulder blades; she didn't miss the minute relaxation.
"Good," he said in a casual tone. "I look forward to it."
Then he slid the door open and left the room, shutting it again behind him and abruptly muffling the sounds of his steps.
Hinata stayed a few moments blinking at the door, processing the encounter and his sudden departure, not at all sure that she hadn't imagined the whole of it; out of the corner of her eyes, she could glimpse at dark butterflies, their wings a-flutter. When she tried to focus on one, it disappeared, melting away into the nothingness of a spot of light against the bedside table or the wall.
It was only after she'd undressed, leaving the clothes where'd she'd dropped them on the floor; after she'd closed the shutters on the rising sun; after she'd rested her aching neck on the pillows and pulled the sheets under her chin, that she remembered he hadn't answered her question of why he'd been so impatient to know if she'd passed.
But, bah. She fuzzily thought it didn't matter; she could ask him later.
It wasn't as if he had other places to be.
Author:
runespoor7Rating: PG
Summary: series of unrelated drabbles/fics on the AU premise stated in the title.
previously: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
13. work – take 2
When Hinata came back to the compound in the small hours of the dawn – with the sky a shifting mosaic of night and day – she slipped easily into her room, the only part of the district that somewhat felt like home. There was nothing home-ish about a place where you couldn't walk around without risking being ordered to drop what you were doing to carry out an order.
Instead of chancing these sorts of encounters in the corridors, Hinata much preferred entering and leaving her room through the window. She'd made the occasional fancy into habit at some point when she was a genin, and she'd never met any other shinobi Hyuuga when she did. They never saw her; and that, combined with how insignificant she was, made them forget about her.
And maybe that was partly thanks to that that she'd reached her current position, she thought as she landed soundlessly on the floor.
She'd had a long three days; the trials were arduous, nerve-wreaking, and attention-consuming, and Hinata felt her weariness had gnawed its way into her bones. Between stifled yawns, she was fantasising about the lovely twenty-four of uninterrupted sleep that lay before her, before she'd be called on to her new duties.
That explained why she was only aware of an intruder's presence in her room after landing.
She'd stiffened and had already thrown a kunai at his head before she realised that it was Neji, sitting on her bed.
He deflected the kunai without taking his eyes away from her face. She winced. Her nerves must be more frayed than she'd expected for her to react so instinctively.
"Neji-sama," she apologised. It was the time needed by her brain to kick in and inform her that the Hyuuga heir on her bed and obviously waiting for her was neither normal, nor deserving of such flippancy.
But she was tired, so very tired, now she was in her room, with her bed in reach, and the Hyuuga heir was only watching her silently and Hinata didn't feel up to the subtlety, full of unspoken things and meaningful looks, of an exchange with any member of the Main House.
(She should work on that, she noted. Someday being able to read and write between the lines might come useful in her service to the Hokage. But not now. The emotional involvement was too great, surpassing even that of her becoming a genin – because she understood the consequences of her achievement better now.)
"Why are you here?" she asked simply.
He shifted.
Then he pointedly, lazily looked at the mask at her hip.
She needed a moment to realise that she was supposed to keep it a secret!!! and another, as her hand was protectively reaching to shield the white owl mask from view, that as the heir, he must already know.
Hinata had had to fill a formal request to the clan head, then had needed to go through a personal meeting with him, before finally signing her name at the bottom of the document that, in the event of her being accepted, transferred every right and responsibility on her person from the Hyuuga clan to the ANBU.
It was different for other people, she knew, because they didn't literally belong to their clans or families. For a Hyuuga to enter ANBU, he or she had to accept being no more part of the clan, and becoming the ANBU's thing as they had been the Main House's. Only Branch House Hyuugas could join ANBU. (Taking the seal was the only way for a Main House member.)
She dropped her hand, letting him see. She was feeling a little awkward under his scrutiny, though it was directed at the mask and not at her.
Finally, he spoke.
"You made it." His voice sounded flat. "I imagine congratulations are in order."
She blinked, trying to figure through her fatigue what she'd done to upset him. "Oh – thank you." She was struck by an idea, which, she realised even as she spoke it, was pretty much the obvious. "Is this why you are here? You wanted to know if I had passed?"
His face was unreadable, but then, the light wasn't so good, so it might just have been the odd shadows and Hinata's strange slowness.
"I only learnt of your contract with Otousan yesterday night," he answered as if it was an explanation. Maybe it was, but too convoluted for her to grasp right now.
She was momentarily seized by the crazy urge to cry.
She was – she was tired.
Really, honestly tired, like she hadn't been for years, and her arm hurt, where they'd put the tattoo not even two hours before, and she only wanted to curl up beneath her blankets and sleep it off, and she was not a Branch House Hyuuga anymore, and if she wanted to throw the heir to the Hyuuga out of her room on his ass then she could, and she felt so accomplished she couldn't even say if she was happy or not, and now she realised she hadn't needed to call him 'sama' if she didn't want to, and she didn't want to.
She forced herself to participate, however, because he'd never make sense on his own, and she wasn't so rude or heartless that she'd actually kick him out. There had to be a reason he was there. (Or, alternatively, she was too alienated to consider it, but she preferred not examining the proposition too closely.)
"I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean, Ne – Neji." She barely bit the honorific back, so easily, so much habit it was for it to roll off her tongue.
He started ever so slightly and watched her again, with hawkish eyes that made her feel horribly awkward once more, practically naked, which was ridiculous, because it was his name she'd shortened.
"Or – should I call you Hyuuga-sam – Hyuuga-san?"
Hyuuga-san. She wasn't sure where it had sprung from, but she liked the sound of it. It was new; it was a name which she'd never used, even partly, to call him or anyone else.
His jump was more obvious this time.
"Hinata –" he looked like he was having trouble finding his words. His gaze was intense, and was it tension or discomfort, or horror, or pity, in his expression? "You don't have to –"
He cut himself off.
"I want to," Hinata dazedly affirmed, though she wasn't sure what about, but it was necessarily the right answer, because there was nothing she had to do anymore. The thought made her almost giddy. Dizzy. The lack of sleep was also to blame.
Now he was looking at her with pain in his eyes. She looked back in curiosity.
"Just Neji is fine," he said in a rather choked tone.
Hinata bit her lip. She didn't dislike 'Neji' as a way to address him, especially when they were both in her bedroom – and they had, after all, known each other for twenty years – but she'd come up with 'Hyuuga-san' herself and 'Neji' was his idea. She didn't have to obey him. Then she realised he'd been calling her by her first name, and that clinched it.
'Neji' would be good enough for the oddly intimate moment, she'd see later for 'Hyuuga-san'. She couldn't wait to use that one on Hizashi.
…What had they been saying anyway?
Oh yeah. Why he was here.
She was rather glad she'd managed to recover that during the silence; she feared that if she asked him what they were speaking about they'd go on a tangent again. And tangents were keeping her away from her bed, which didn't make sense from a geometrical point of view – which Hinata knew a lot about, because when you started reading about the complicated Jyuuken techniques Neji had been well on the way to mastering when he was still a genin, there was a lot of geometry. Luckily Hinata had always been good at maths.
"I wanted to be the first to know if you had passed."
Hinata blinked at him in a manner that probably was a little owlish.
He didn't elaborate.
"Why?" she asked.
Her body had positioned herself until she was sitting on the bed as well, sagged against the wall.
She felt very grateful that there had been a shower at the ANBU headquarters before the official ceremony when she'd been tattooed and she'd received her masks and she'd been told more actual facts about how wonderful it would be to die for their Hokage and less about the same patriotic mystique, that, Hinata privately thought, if she'd wanted to continue serving, she'd have just stayed out of ANBU. The Konoha patriotic mystique never mentioned the dirty jobs.
Steadily, he looked into her eyes. Hinata only stared back, waiting.
"When I first met my team, becoming ANBU…" The words were coming out slowly, as if he had to drag them out. "That was my dream."
"Oh." The silence settled again, and Hinata blithely went on, "it wasn't mine."
He looked like he wanted to say something, opened his mouth, licked his lips, then closed it again. Hinata thought that maybe she was supposed to say something, and Neji must find the silence pretty uncomfortable, but she was too removed from the atmosphere and feelings. Her eyelids were dropping on their own, and the mattress beneath her legs was a warm, inviting torture.
"Then why did you do it?"
She looked at him. "It wasn't my dream at the time. I have changed since then."
Hinata could feel the tension drumming in his body, emanating from him. He was going to dance around the issue for at least an eternity or two more.
"Look, why don't we cut through the chase?" she suggested. "Let's pretend we've done it all. You can tell me what's bothering you right away."
He may have a point, it was surprisingly easy to talk to him as he was anyone else. And Hinata found she enjoyed being blunt when the sleepiness dulled away the acute embarrassment she'd have felt otherwise. Naruto had the right idea, she only wished she had the nervous sturdiness to be able to withstand the stares and gapes and clapping-of-one's-hand-against-one-forehead-with-the-emphasised-groan from one's teammates.
He didn't move for a very long time, so long Hinata had started drowsing into slumber.
Then he spoke, startling Hinata out of the warm serenity that had embraced her.
"Doesn't it bother you, leaving it all behind?"
She blinked up at him. He was staring straight ahead, so she could only see his profile, black against the lightening pink sky in the open window.
"Leaving what behind?" she asked, uncomprehending. "I'm free now."
Again, she had the distinct sensation something was eluding her, something big. Next to her, Neji had stiffened.
Well, she reasoned, she was. She was the one who'd chosen to join ANBU; this indelible mark on her arm was of her own choosing, this mask she was to hide was one she had sought.
But she couldn't shake the feeling that there was something she wasn't getting here.
"Yes," Neji echoed. "Free."
He stood up, pushing on his hands. The covers were rumpled where he had sat but the mattress didn't keep his imprint at all, and cold air replaced his arm where, Hinata realised now, it had almost been touching hers.
"Will you be leaving the Hyuuga compound soon?" he informed himself calmly, without looking at her.
"Er. I don't know. I didn't really think about it," she confessed.
But he had a point; now she was no longer legally a Hyuuga, she should be looking for a flat in Konoha proper. It was odd, she reflected, because in a way the perspective of moving out of this suffocating environment was intoxicating, and on the other hand… This room didn't feel suffocating.
She had a tiny bathroom attached to it, so she didn't have to wander through the corridors, and an electric kettle which provided her with tea to accompany the cold dinners she'd buy outside, so she never ate in the kitchens or common rooms; and she was always coming and going through the window, it must have been months since she'd used the door.
In a way, this was like an ordinary apartment already, except the neighbours had forgotten that she existed.
"You can stay here for as long as you need to, of course," he continued in a perfectly composed tone. "I do not know when I will see you again, as I don't doubt your schedule will be quite hectic, but – should you ever want to see me – for whatever reason – you know where to find me."
He paused, obviously waiting for her to react.
"Oh. Thank you," she said after a moment of puzzled thinking.
He was at the door when Hinata called out.
"N-Neji? Where can I find you?"
She didn't blush when she asked him, even though it was obviously one of the things she was expected to know, as a Hyuuga.
But Hinata was no longer a Hyuuga; and, as Hizashi had been forced to acknowledge when he'd tried to dissuade her from joining ANBU like he did with every Hyuuga who found the crack in the cage, she hadn't truly been a Hyuuga for a very long time. (When was the last clan celebration she had attended? She couldn't remember. She wasn't even sure about the dates.)
He didn't look at her, not even above his shoulder, when he answered her question.
"Here, of course. In the compound," he intoned, his voice poised and controlled.
"Wait!" Hinata acted out of sheer instinct, fumbling for the thread that she knew, if she should manage to catch it, would undo the web of half-hearted truths and artful meanings. "Why did you want to know if I'd passed so soon?"
His hand stopped a few inches from the door.
"Will you come to talk to me once you've completed your first mission?" he whispered. Hinata had to focus on his words carefully to make them out. She noted the tension in his shoulders as she rewound the sentence in her mind.
"I don't think I'll be able to talk about the mission," she said regretfully.
"But will you come?"
She looked at him, pondering the quiet hint of mixed despair and resignation in his voice – the tone of one who expects to be denied. She recognised it, because she had spent the last twenty years of her life trying to suppress it every time she spoke, as a pawn, as a servant, as a member of the Branch House of the Hyuuga. A prisoner in her own house.
I'm free now.
"Yes," she said finally. "I'll come."
Her eyes were fixed on Neji's shoulder blades; she didn't miss the minute relaxation.
"Good," he said in a casual tone. "I look forward to it."
Then he slid the door open and left the room, shutting it again behind him and abruptly muffling the sounds of his steps.
Hinata stayed a few moments blinking at the door, processing the encounter and his sudden departure, not at all sure that she hadn't imagined the whole of it; out of the corner of her eyes, she could glimpse at dark butterflies, their wings a-flutter. When she tried to focus on one, it disappeared, melting away into the nothingness of a spot of light against the bedside table or the wall.
It was only after she'd undressed, leaving the clothes where'd she'd dropped them on the floor; after she'd closed the shutters on the rising sun; after she'd rested her aching neck on the pillows and pulled the sheets under her chin, that she remembered he hadn't answered her question of why he'd been so impatient to know if she'd passed.
But, bah. She fuzzily thought it didn't matter; she could ask him later.
It wasn't as if he had other places to be.
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no subject
Date: 2007-06-15 04:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-06-18 05:47 am (UTC)Was Hinata just a touch smug in that last line? though I can't really blame her if she was.
*