[Naruto] The Return 1/5
Dec. 27th, 2006 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorTitle: The Return
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
runespoor7
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In the middle of a war the usual thing is that people die. It's more unusual when they return alive after having been thought dead for three months. Hinata, after being a prisoner in Sound, does.
Notes: TemaShika in later parts, implied NejiHina. Politics, original Ino-Shika-Chou, life during a war, some Ibiki. Very little angst.
I.
When Nara Shikaku started on his night patrol with Yamanaka Inoichi, he did not know what he was expecting.
He was hoping for his other teammate to be able to join them again as soon as possible, for his wife to be waiting for him at the end of the night without her forehead protector on, for his son to bring safely back their allies of Suna. He feared that he would get none of these things. He planned on making it through the night anyway.
He tried not to think of all the younger shinobi who were farther away from home, and who fought – implying stayed, and often died – on the front. Tsunade's decisions made sense, and it had been her choice to put a few of the senior jounins, those who had families and often clan responsibilities, closer to the village. They were the last barrier, the last shield, and that meant they had to bide their time and hope they'd never need to fight at all.
Shikaku kept his doubts to himself – that as a user of the shadows, he might be more useful as a spy – doubts he knew Inoichi shared. Then again, Inoichi had lost the twins when they were going through the fighting areas, so the village's best interests were likely not the most prominent thing on his mind when he dreamt of going there. It would have been alright with Shikaku if he hadn't believed that Inoichi's own life wasn't something that his teammate put much attention in either at the moment.
Beside, as he'd told Inoichi, he didn't fancy having to explain to his daughter what had happened. Thinking about Ino had made Inoichi pause. She'd always been reckless when something threatened the people she loved, and her father was pretty much the last blood family she had left.
Inoichi's sons had been killed a mere two months after the beginning of the war, and now, a year later, Shikaku no longer feared for his teammate's equilibrium. Unless the same thing happened to Ino, but Ino's skills easily outclassed those of her half-brothers, four years younger or not – and she had her teammates.
Shikaku privately thought that, in spite of everything, the original Ino-Shika-Chou trio fared rather better than a lot of the others – as parents and as clans, and maybe even as ninjas as well.
Take the Hyuuga. A 'disgrace' of an heir who had died in a massacre by the Sound months ago, an eleven-year-old spare who'd committed suicide days after her first mission, a head of clan who had stormed out of the village when news about his eldest – and last – daughter had reached him and had gone down in a dramatic last stand, a prodigy who was stuck on the front and was proceeding on methodically cutting back on his chances of survival, if the Aburame's reports were even half accurate, a clan council that blindingly refused to consider making him the new head of clan, and an entire clan torn and thrown in bloody disarray. And Konoha, paying the price for the folly of its most powerful clan.
At least the Ino-Shika-Chou occasionally got to see their children, when their duties took them back to the village, and they received messages and regular updates from the Hokage. Shikaku chose to trust the Hokage's updates on the grounds that she'd know better than to lull her shinobi into a false sense of security when they were supposed to watch over the village boundaries. He hoped that he'd never need to trust the Hokage's updates simply because she was the Hokage.
In a ninja like in anyone else, security tends to breed complacency. The village of Konoha was one of the safest places to be as the war endured.
Nara Shikaku hadn't been chosen to guard the village's area for nothing.
He felt another ninja's presence a long way before he could even hope to see them, much less pin them down with his shadows, and a quick glance at Inoichi told him his teammate had noticed as well.
There was something off with the other presence, they quickly realized as they dashed through the trees to meet the enemy. No genjutsu surrounded him, or her, not only as though the ninja was making no effort to go unnoticed, but also as though that person was genuinely alone, and neither bait nor a trap.
Chances were that if the shinobi had managed to penetrate so far into the more protected areas around Konoha, they were of a reasonably high level, and even if they were unable to pull genjutsu off, they should be aware of the two jounins sprinting forward, and yet far from making a detour, the shinobi came straight at them.
Either it was one of the suicidal attacks Orochimaru's followers did seem to be inordinately fond of – there hadn't been one over the past month; this one would bring the total to a grand thirty-one such attacks – either it was a Konoha-nin rushing back from a war zone to let the Hokage know something was wrong, and beyond the accepted level of wrongness, for the messenger to be alone. A basic strategy was to never, ever send a messenger on their own, as they were all too easily picked and killed that way.
In any case it might be bad, and Shikaku started to devise quick tricks to shove Inoichi out of the way if the other was one of Orochimaru's crazy Sound-nin.
The two men stopped before running across the enemy, as close range did nothing for their skills, and prepared themselves to cast their jutsus.
Shikaku did not expect the other nin to come to a stop on a branch a few meters away, using arms as counterweight, and then to almost stumble on the branch, as if too drained to still stand. It took him a precious two seconds to recognize that the odd consistence and the sticky shadows on the nin's clothes were that of a blood-soaked jacket that clung to a woman's chest. There was a level of drenching in blood that even experienced jounins still needed a few instants to get used to.
Not woman, girl, Shikaku realized as he identified the long dark hair, the smooth unmarked forehead, and the dull white eyes.
Shikaku stared at the face of Hyuuga Hinata, of whom nothing had been heard since the Grass lord she was supposed to be protecting (spying) had been betrayed and attacked by the Sound. The place had burnt to the ground and Konoha had lost its one potential ally in Grass, along with the three dozens of ninjas that had been sent to secure and watch over the small lord's loyalty. The event had taken place thirteen weeks ago.
He couldn't think of voicing his astonishment, though, as he watched the expression on the girl's face.
She was a ninja – a Hyuuga – she was the Hyuuga by now – she was expected to know how to dissimulate and lie above anyone else in the village except maybe the Hokage and the ANBU, and Shikaku had known that Hyuuga Hiashi had been immensely disappointed in his older daughter, but nothing could have prepared him for the stark nakedness of her expression.
She was back in Konoha after thirteen weeks during which everyone had figured that of course she was dead, and she looked as healthy as anyone caked in drying blood possibly could.
Shikaku didn't understand the succession of feelings that flashed across her face. First relief, then blankness and a gut-wrenching understanding, then a sort of accepting weariness, the one Shikaku had only ever seen on the faces of a handful of missing-nin when they were caught and had to fight for their lives again, and then finally, her jaw and eyes setting in sheer blinding defiant stubbornness as – Shikaku didn't understand – her fingers interlaced to form the seal used to dispel genjutsu.
Her jaw clenched. Even before she finished saying the word that would break the illusion, her body slowly fell on the branch like a puppet folded by its master, eyes closed.
Inoichi cursed.
That was when Shikaku registered what had just happened, and the both of them ran towards the unconscious girl.
Crouching next to her, the two men exchanged a glance, pausing for a moment. From up close, she looked worn out, but there were no other outward marks.
"What do you think happened to her?" Shikaku asked mildly, purely out of the need to know he hadn't imagined any of it.
"I don't know," Inoichi replied in the same tone, and didn't finish his sentence because there was no use in saying out loud that 'but anyway it can't have been good'.
Shikaku pulled her on his back, wondering what had happened to her. It wasn't everyday that the village was basically given one of its dead back and there was no telling what the reappearance of the rightful Hyuuga heir would do to the clan, or to her teammates. A jolt went through him, because this girl was one of her son's comrades, one of the Rookie Nine; and that, so far, she'd been the only one whom they'd known was dead, and that, to learn she was alive…
It would give them hope back, Shikaku thought. Because it had been impossible for her to still be alive, but Shikaku remembered that it had also been impossible for the Rock Lee boy to be a ninja again, as though this particular group had an affinity with that which was impossible. As impossible as the Kyuubi vessel ever managing to drag the Uchiha boy back to Konoha.
For the first time since Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura had gone missing and Orochimaru had attacked Konoha in retaliation for the part they'd played when Uchiha Sasuke had left Sound – and despite the message the two had sent to the Hokage, in which they explained in a tone both cheerful and grim that they had to assist Sasuke in his taking-down of Akatsuki and had to leave Orochimaru and his lackeys to the village, but would be back as soon as they were finished with Psychotic Inc. – Shikaku thought that maybe the Hokage was right to trust them.
They couldn't bring her back to Konoha and to its hospital right away; they had to guard this area until dawn, and Hinata's state wasn't worrying enough that they'd take the risk to abandon their mission. It would have been much easier if Chouza had been back with them already – two of them could have stayed and watched over the girl while the last one went back to the village with the news.
They stopped when they were back at the same distance from the village's walls as they'd been before they'd spotted her presence, and settled the Hyuuga girl as well as they could.
Inoichi tried shaking her awake while Shikaku pulled a survival blanket from his pack, but her head rolled on the side; the only reaction he got was a soft sigh as her mouth opened.
"Shit, I wonder what happened to her," Inoichi muttered.
Shikaku nodded; that they had no idea was worrisome enough that it could be repeated. "She's not wearing a hitai-ate," he noted.
Both of them knew that it didn't mean anything except that she'd gone through pretty difficult moments, and as they already knew how Konoha had first lost trace of her, they had no trouble believing that.
"You think she might be on his side?" Inoichi asked in a detached tone that said he didn't like thinking about it, but she'd been part of the Grass slaughter and was still alive, with no sign of allegiance to Konoha and no other mark than exhaustion and a blood-covered jacket.
Shikaku shrugged. "What's in there for her?"
Inoichi raised his eyebrows. "What do you know of the Hyuuga clan politics?"
Point. Shikaku nodded to concede the victory to Inoichi, who gently laid the girl on the branch and slipped his own pack under her head, stifling a sigh. Then he extended his hand to Shikaku, who wordlessly gave him the blanket.
"I don't think she's a traitor," Inoichi went on, tightly tucking the cover around her with as much care as if she'd been a five-year-old Ino. "Though the Hyuuga are fucked up as all hell." Shikaku could only agree. "God I don't envy her."
Again, Shikaku could only agree. There was only one way to be sure of people's loyalties when there was a war and it featured Morino Ibiki in a starring role.
Inoichi's hands stilled as they were tucking the cover at the level of the girl's hips. Shikaku sent him a quizzical look.
Inoichi pulled the blanket away and felt the girl's jacket. There was a pocket there, Shikaku saw, as Inoichi took something out of the pocket; he moved closer to have a better look at the object Inoichi was frowning at.
It was a pair of spectacles, round, with a thin silver frame. They were specked with blood.
The two jounins spent a moment staring at the glasses.
"Hm," Shikaku finally went, falling back on a habit which he'd had since he was a genin and which had never failed to annoy Yoshino. "Does this – look like what I think it does?"
"I don't know," Inoichi said in a strangely bland voice. There was a pause during which the absence of their third teammate was sorely felt, then he made the necessary remark. "It really doesn't mean anything, you know."
"There's more than one person wearing round spectacles with a thin silver frame," Shikaku stated.
"Exactly."
Another moment went by. A surreal type of silence settled.
"Suddenly the chances of her being on Orochimaru's side look seriously depleted." Inoichi sounded fascinated.
"If it's not genjutsu."
"It's not genjutsu," Inoichi confirmed.
A thin smile stretched Shikaku's lips. "If it's not an elaborate scheme of his," he countered.
"I'd like to say that it's too obvious but you'd retort that it's just underhanded enough."
Inoichi looked like his face refused to form its usual scowl at this point of the conversation. Shikaku understood the feeling perfectly, as he was sure his eyes really weren't usually that wide either.
They didn't say any more about it until they had to go back to the village.
"I bring her to the hospital," Inoichi said, putting the glasses back in Hinata's pocket. "You go find the Hokage."
Tsunade stared at the girl. Hinata was still out cold; she'd been put on a bed, and she was still wearing her own clothes – immediate proof that the shinobi authorities of the hospital expected Hokage-sama to have something to say about the girl being there.
Shikaku had just come back with the Hokage, having updated her on the situation in as few words as he could. He sneaked a glance at Inoichi, who had jerked standing when Tsunade had slid the door open, and who now had his hands behind his back. He was nervous, Shikaku translated. About what awaited the little Hyuuga girl, if Shikaku was any judge of his teammate's slightly protective stance. Damn him and his soft heart.
For his sake, Shikaku really hoped that Hinata was alright. Inoichi had this unfortunate tendency for a ninja to equate all innocent-looking, nice-seeming young kunoichis to his daughter. And apparently, he'd already adopted the inert form of Hinata.
"So you said she tried to break a genjutsu as soon as she saw you, and she fainted," Tsunade recalled. "Hm. Sounds like chakra exhaustion, I'll run a check up later."
The medical reason made sense, but of course it didn't explain why the girl would have believed them to be an illusion. Shikaku didn't like any of the conjectures he could draw, particularly as the image of the blood-streaked spectacles was still sharp in his mind.
"Anything else?" The Hokage's voice held the briskness of a medic-nin who had to make urgent decisions.
"Actually, yes," Inoichi said. Not even waiting for Shikaku to finish crossing the room, he fished through the chuunin's pocket.
The glasses caught the light when he showed them to the Hokage. Joining his teammate, Shikaku clearly saw the Hokage's expression freezing and her eyes widening.
Every Leaf-nin had been provided with precise descriptions of the most important shinobis among their enemies – Grass, Cloud, especially Sound – and Yakushi Kabuto was the Sound's second nin.
Neither Shikaku nor Inoichi had paid much attention to Kabuto when he was still in Konoha; they'd sometimes crossed paths when the genin was serving hours at the hospital, but he'd been – well, mild, smiling, and harmless. And more than twenty years younger than they were, and a genin. To say their social circles did not overlap was an understatement. Still, not many shinobi wore glasses, and when Konoha ninjas added 'Sound' and 'glasses', what they got was Kabuto.
Tsunade took the pair of glasses from Inoichi's loose grasp and raised them to her narrowed eyes. She turned them over, studying them for a moment. Then she looked at the two jounins.
"These are Kabuto's," she said, "or a good copy."
She gave them back to Inoichi, with a steady hand.
It wasn't unheard of for a ninja to take a trophy from a high-ranking enemy, and glasses were decidedly less grisly than most. It was an unwritten ninja rule that you didn't take such trophies away if you could avoid it, unless you wanted to make a point of treating your prisoner badly and sought to strip him or her of all shinobi honor. In Hinata's case, that the Hokage didn't wasn't particularly telling.
The two of them didn't leave as Tsunade ran her chakra-coated hand a few inches above Hinata's body; they were awaiting her diagnostic with an intensity that – well – said a lot about how war could unite a village against a common enemy.
Ninjas shouldn't get attached to people, especially people they'd never really talked to, and who may well be spies – and who wielded a powerful bloodline limit to boot.
So said the rules.
As the rules tended to leave unmentioned the fact that it was far better for your sanity – and thus for your long-term efficiency – to fight for people rather than for concepts, and as Shikaku had long ago determined that, while he'd be ready to get killed in the name of his village just as well as for his teammates and family, the latter would make him feel a lot less useless, he didn't need to lie to himself and pretend that he was only staying in the room because Hokage-sama hadn't given him leave.
The Hokage was going slowly, a lot more slowly than the chakra examination Shikaku had already seen performed on a battlefield as well as in the hospital; she was frowning in concentration. She looked like what she was seeing was disquieting.
Finally she dropped her hand by her side.
"They're most likely Kabuto's."
Inoichi made a noise that could easily pass for a question. Shikaku found himself agreeing. The girl didn't look like she'd gone through anything worse than a fight and one or two all-nighters. What could Tsunade have read in the Hyuuga's chakra flux that made her so sure of that conclusion?
The Hokage's look went from one man to the other, as if she was measuring them.
"I don't suppose I need to tell you that everything happening in this room is classified." She paused, crossing her arms. "You may tell Ino and Shikamaru that she's alive, as it'd be foolish to assume nobody saw you carrying her here."
Her nails drummed against her other arm.
"As for the rest, well, she's alive and will stay that way." She sent a look at the glasses, which Inoichi had put on the bedside table.
The tiny jerk of Inoichi's hand warned Shikaku that his friend was about to intervene before he said a word.
"Will she be somehow unable to return to her responsibilities as a chuunin?"
You had to give it to Inoichi, he knew how to word his concerns in a way that made it sound smoothly professional. It still wasn't entirely appropriate – after all, they were talking to the Hokage – but Shikaku acknowledged the skill Inoichi could put into his enquiries.
The Hokage didn't seem fooled, but the small nod told him that she approved and was willing to go along with it.
"Physically, she'll be fine."
A brief, biting smile flashed through Tsunade's face. She looked like she knew something they didn't, but the harsh implications didn't fit in with her relaxed composure, even if she was the Hokage. Hyuuga Hinata was the direct, legitimate heir to a clan that would usually be considered one of Konoha's most valuable weapons; Tsunade didn't look like she was particularly worried about the girl's other, non-physical state, which would otherwise make her inconvenient.
Of course, Godaime was a sucker for gambling and did have a few of the fatalistic character traits that went with it.
"I don't think it would be wise for her cousin to leave the front for now, though."
The Hokage wasn't smiling anymore, and she kept her gaze fixed on the girl's pale face as if she was seeing the complications dancing around it.
Once more, Shikaku took in stride that some things were really, honestly off with the Hyuuga. He'd never been a personal acquaintance of the heir (the perpetually on-the-brink-of-demotion half-disgraced heir) and her cousin (her fanatic-protector-who'd-once-tried-to-murder-her prodigy of a cousin), and, logically speaking, the whole thing made no sense. Logically speaking, there was no reason Hyuuga Neji leaving the war zones would be envisaged at all. Logically speaking, Neji would need to be mad to even want to weaken the village's position in the war.
He found that his gaze had slipped to Hinata's face as well. Beside him, Inoichi was covering his emotions.
At this point, there was no discounting that her sanity may well be fragmented beyond healing abilities. Shikaku remembered that her first move when she'd seen him had been to dispel a non-existing genjutsu, Kabuto's glasses (spy, medic-nin, Orochimaru's second in command) only reinforcing the probability. He was beginning to see why the Hokage wanted Hyuuga Neji as far away and involved in other occupations as possible.
The three of them stayed silent for a moment, looking at the sleeping girl.
Part II
Author:
runespoor7Rating: PG-13
Summary: In the middle of a war the usual thing is that people die. It's more unusual when they return alive after having been thought dead for three months. Hinata, after being a prisoner in Sound, does.
Notes: TemaShika in later parts, implied NejiHina. Politics, original Ino-Shika-Chou, life during a war, some Ibiki. Very little angst.
I.
When Nara Shikaku started on his night patrol with Yamanaka Inoichi, he did not know what he was expecting.
He was hoping for his other teammate to be able to join them again as soon as possible, for his wife to be waiting for him at the end of the night without her forehead protector on, for his son to bring safely back their allies of Suna. He feared that he would get none of these things. He planned on making it through the night anyway.
He tried not to think of all the younger shinobi who were farther away from home, and who fought – implying stayed, and often died – on the front. Tsunade's decisions made sense, and it had been her choice to put a few of the senior jounins, those who had families and often clan responsibilities, closer to the village. They were the last barrier, the last shield, and that meant they had to bide their time and hope they'd never need to fight at all.
Shikaku kept his doubts to himself – that as a user of the shadows, he might be more useful as a spy – doubts he knew Inoichi shared. Then again, Inoichi had lost the twins when they were going through the fighting areas, so the village's best interests were likely not the most prominent thing on his mind when he dreamt of going there. It would have been alright with Shikaku if he hadn't believed that Inoichi's own life wasn't something that his teammate put much attention in either at the moment.
Beside, as he'd told Inoichi, he didn't fancy having to explain to his daughter what had happened. Thinking about Ino had made Inoichi pause. She'd always been reckless when something threatened the people she loved, and her father was pretty much the last blood family she had left.
Inoichi's sons had been killed a mere two months after the beginning of the war, and now, a year later, Shikaku no longer feared for his teammate's equilibrium. Unless the same thing happened to Ino, but Ino's skills easily outclassed those of her half-brothers, four years younger or not – and she had her teammates.
Shikaku privately thought that, in spite of everything, the original Ino-Shika-Chou trio fared rather better than a lot of the others – as parents and as clans, and maybe even as ninjas as well.
Take the Hyuuga. A 'disgrace' of an heir who had died in a massacre by the Sound months ago, an eleven-year-old spare who'd committed suicide days after her first mission, a head of clan who had stormed out of the village when news about his eldest – and last – daughter had reached him and had gone down in a dramatic last stand, a prodigy who was stuck on the front and was proceeding on methodically cutting back on his chances of survival, if the Aburame's reports were even half accurate, a clan council that blindingly refused to consider making him the new head of clan, and an entire clan torn and thrown in bloody disarray. And Konoha, paying the price for the folly of its most powerful clan.
At least the Ino-Shika-Chou occasionally got to see their children, when their duties took them back to the village, and they received messages and regular updates from the Hokage. Shikaku chose to trust the Hokage's updates on the grounds that she'd know better than to lull her shinobi into a false sense of security when they were supposed to watch over the village boundaries. He hoped that he'd never need to trust the Hokage's updates simply because she was the Hokage.
In a ninja like in anyone else, security tends to breed complacency. The village of Konoha was one of the safest places to be as the war endured.
Nara Shikaku hadn't been chosen to guard the village's area for nothing.
He felt another ninja's presence a long way before he could even hope to see them, much less pin them down with his shadows, and a quick glance at Inoichi told him his teammate had noticed as well.
There was something off with the other presence, they quickly realized as they dashed through the trees to meet the enemy. No genjutsu surrounded him, or her, not only as though the ninja was making no effort to go unnoticed, but also as though that person was genuinely alone, and neither bait nor a trap.
Chances were that if the shinobi had managed to penetrate so far into the more protected areas around Konoha, they were of a reasonably high level, and even if they were unable to pull genjutsu off, they should be aware of the two jounins sprinting forward, and yet far from making a detour, the shinobi came straight at them.
Either it was one of the suicidal attacks Orochimaru's followers did seem to be inordinately fond of – there hadn't been one over the past month; this one would bring the total to a grand thirty-one such attacks – either it was a Konoha-nin rushing back from a war zone to let the Hokage know something was wrong, and beyond the accepted level of wrongness, for the messenger to be alone. A basic strategy was to never, ever send a messenger on their own, as they were all too easily picked and killed that way.
In any case it might be bad, and Shikaku started to devise quick tricks to shove Inoichi out of the way if the other was one of Orochimaru's crazy Sound-nin.
The two men stopped before running across the enemy, as close range did nothing for their skills, and prepared themselves to cast their jutsus.
Shikaku did not expect the other nin to come to a stop on a branch a few meters away, using arms as counterweight, and then to almost stumble on the branch, as if too drained to still stand. It took him a precious two seconds to recognize that the odd consistence and the sticky shadows on the nin's clothes were that of a blood-soaked jacket that clung to a woman's chest. There was a level of drenching in blood that even experienced jounins still needed a few instants to get used to.
Not woman, girl, Shikaku realized as he identified the long dark hair, the smooth unmarked forehead, and the dull white eyes.
Shikaku stared at the face of Hyuuga Hinata, of whom nothing had been heard since the Grass lord she was supposed to be protecting (spying) had been betrayed and attacked by the Sound. The place had burnt to the ground and Konoha had lost its one potential ally in Grass, along with the three dozens of ninjas that had been sent to secure and watch over the small lord's loyalty. The event had taken place thirteen weeks ago.
He couldn't think of voicing his astonishment, though, as he watched the expression on the girl's face.
She was a ninja – a Hyuuga – she was the Hyuuga by now – she was expected to know how to dissimulate and lie above anyone else in the village except maybe the Hokage and the ANBU, and Shikaku had known that Hyuuga Hiashi had been immensely disappointed in his older daughter, but nothing could have prepared him for the stark nakedness of her expression.
She was back in Konoha after thirteen weeks during which everyone had figured that of course she was dead, and she looked as healthy as anyone caked in drying blood possibly could.
Shikaku didn't understand the succession of feelings that flashed across her face. First relief, then blankness and a gut-wrenching understanding, then a sort of accepting weariness, the one Shikaku had only ever seen on the faces of a handful of missing-nin when they were caught and had to fight for their lives again, and then finally, her jaw and eyes setting in sheer blinding defiant stubbornness as – Shikaku didn't understand – her fingers interlaced to form the seal used to dispel genjutsu.
Her jaw clenched. Even before she finished saying the word that would break the illusion, her body slowly fell on the branch like a puppet folded by its master, eyes closed.
Inoichi cursed.
That was when Shikaku registered what had just happened, and the both of them ran towards the unconscious girl.
Crouching next to her, the two men exchanged a glance, pausing for a moment. From up close, she looked worn out, but there were no other outward marks.
"What do you think happened to her?" Shikaku asked mildly, purely out of the need to know he hadn't imagined any of it.
"I don't know," Inoichi replied in the same tone, and didn't finish his sentence because there was no use in saying out loud that 'but anyway it can't have been good'.
Shikaku pulled her on his back, wondering what had happened to her. It wasn't everyday that the village was basically given one of its dead back and there was no telling what the reappearance of the rightful Hyuuga heir would do to the clan, or to her teammates. A jolt went through him, because this girl was one of her son's comrades, one of the Rookie Nine; and that, so far, she'd been the only one whom they'd known was dead, and that, to learn she was alive…
It would give them hope back, Shikaku thought. Because it had been impossible for her to still be alive, but Shikaku remembered that it had also been impossible for the Rock Lee boy to be a ninja again, as though this particular group had an affinity with that which was impossible. As impossible as the Kyuubi vessel ever managing to drag the Uchiha boy back to Konoha.
For the first time since Uzumaki Naruto and Haruno Sakura had gone missing and Orochimaru had attacked Konoha in retaliation for the part they'd played when Uchiha Sasuke had left Sound – and despite the message the two had sent to the Hokage, in which they explained in a tone both cheerful and grim that they had to assist Sasuke in his taking-down of Akatsuki and had to leave Orochimaru and his lackeys to the village, but would be back as soon as they were finished with Psychotic Inc. – Shikaku thought that maybe the Hokage was right to trust them.
They couldn't bring her back to Konoha and to its hospital right away; they had to guard this area until dawn, and Hinata's state wasn't worrying enough that they'd take the risk to abandon their mission. It would have been much easier if Chouza had been back with them already – two of them could have stayed and watched over the girl while the last one went back to the village with the news.
They stopped when they were back at the same distance from the village's walls as they'd been before they'd spotted her presence, and settled the Hyuuga girl as well as they could.
Inoichi tried shaking her awake while Shikaku pulled a survival blanket from his pack, but her head rolled on the side; the only reaction he got was a soft sigh as her mouth opened.
"Shit, I wonder what happened to her," Inoichi muttered.
Shikaku nodded; that they had no idea was worrisome enough that it could be repeated. "She's not wearing a hitai-ate," he noted.
Both of them knew that it didn't mean anything except that she'd gone through pretty difficult moments, and as they already knew how Konoha had first lost trace of her, they had no trouble believing that.
"You think she might be on his side?" Inoichi asked in a detached tone that said he didn't like thinking about it, but she'd been part of the Grass slaughter and was still alive, with no sign of allegiance to Konoha and no other mark than exhaustion and a blood-covered jacket.
Shikaku shrugged. "What's in there for her?"
Inoichi raised his eyebrows. "What do you know of the Hyuuga clan politics?"
Point. Shikaku nodded to concede the victory to Inoichi, who gently laid the girl on the branch and slipped his own pack under her head, stifling a sigh. Then he extended his hand to Shikaku, who wordlessly gave him the blanket.
"I don't think she's a traitor," Inoichi went on, tightly tucking the cover around her with as much care as if she'd been a five-year-old Ino. "Though the Hyuuga are fucked up as all hell." Shikaku could only agree. "God I don't envy her."
Again, Shikaku could only agree. There was only one way to be sure of people's loyalties when there was a war and it featured Morino Ibiki in a starring role.
Inoichi's hands stilled as they were tucking the cover at the level of the girl's hips. Shikaku sent him a quizzical look.
Inoichi pulled the blanket away and felt the girl's jacket. There was a pocket there, Shikaku saw, as Inoichi took something out of the pocket; he moved closer to have a better look at the object Inoichi was frowning at.
It was a pair of spectacles, round, with a thin silver frame. They were specked with blood.
The two jounins spent a moment staring at the glasses.
"Hm," Shikaku finally went, falling back on a habit which he'd had since he was a genin and which had never failed to annoy Yoshino. "Does this – look like what I think it does?"
"I don't know," Inoichi said in a strangely bland voice. There was a pause during which the absence of their third teammate was sorely felt, then he made the necessary remark. "It really doesn't mean anything, you know."
"There's more than one person wearing round spectacles with a thin silver frame," Shikaku stated.
"Exactly."
Another moment went by. A surreal type of silence settled.
"Suddenly the chances of her being on Orochimaru's side look seriously depleted." Inoichi sounded fascinated.
"If it's not genjutsu."
"It's not genjutsu," Inoichi confirmed.
A thin smile stretched Shikaku's lips. "If it's not an elaborate scheme of his," he countered.
"I'd like to say that it's too obvious but you'd retort that it's just underhanded enough."
Inoichi looked like his face refused to form its usual scowl at this point of the conversation. Shikaku understood the feeling perfectly, as he was sure his eyes really weren't usually that wide either.
They didn't say any more about it until they had to go back to the village.
"I bring her to the hospital," Inoichi said, putting the glasses back in Hinata's pocket. "You go find the Hokage."
Tsunade stared at the girl. Hinata was still out cold; she'd been put on a bed, and she was still wearing her own clothes – immediate proof that the shinobi authorities of the hospital expected Hokage-sama to have something to say about the girl being there.
Shikaku had just come back with the Hokage, having updated her on the situation in as few words as he could. He sneaked a glance at Inoichi, who had jerked standing when Tsunade had slid the door open, and who now had his hands behind his back. He was nervous, Shikaku translated. About what awaited the little Hyuuga girl, if Shikaku was any judge of his teammate's slightly protective stance. Damn him and his soft heart.
For his sake, Shikaku really hoped that Hinata was alright. Inoichi had this unfortunate tendency for a ninja to equate all innocent-looking, nice-seeming young kunoichis to his daughter. And apparently, he'd already adopted the inert form of Hinata.
"So you said she tried to break a genjutsu as soon as she saw you, and she fainted," Tsunade recalled. "Hm. Sounds like chakra exhaustion, I'll run a check up later."
The medical reason made sense, but of course it didn't explain why the girl would have believed them to be an illusion. Shikaku didn't like any of the conjectures he could draw, particularly as the image of the blood-streaked spectacles was still sharp in his mind.
"Anything else?" The Hokage's voice held the briskness of a medic-nin who had to make urgent decisions.
"Actually, yes," Inoichi said. Not even waiting for Shikaku to finish crossing the room, he fished through the chuunin's pocket.
The glasses caught the light when he showed them to the Hokage. Joining his teammate, Shikaku clearly saw the Hokage's expression freezing and her eyes widening.
Every Leaf-nin had been provided with precise descriptions of the most important shinobis among their enemies – Grass, Cloud, especially Sound – and Yakushi Kabuto was the Sound's second nin.
Neither Shikaku nor Inoichi had paid much attention to Kabuto when he was still in Konoha; they'd sometimes crossed paths when the genin was serving hours at the hospital, but he'd been – well, mild, smiling, and harmless. And more than twenty years younger than they were, and a genin. To say their social circles did not overlap was an understatement. Still, not many shinobi wore glasses, and when Konoha ninjas added 'Sound' and 'glasses', what they got was Kabuto.
Tsunade took the pair of glasses from Inoichi's loose grasp and raised them to her narrowed eyes. She turned them over, studying them for a moment. Then she looked at the two jounins.
"These are Kabuto's," she said, "or a good copy."
She gave them back to Inoichi, with a steady hand.
It wasn't unheard of for a ninja to take a trophy from a high-ranking enemy, and glasses were decidedly less grisly than most. It was an unwritten ninja rule that you didn't take such trophies away if you could avoid it, unless you wanted to make a point of treating your prisoner badly and sought to strip him or her of all shinobi honor. In Hinata's case, that the Hokage didn't wasn't particularly telling.
The two of them didn't leave as Tsunade ran her chakra-coated hand a few inches above Hinata's body; they were awaiting her diagnostic with an intensity that – well – said a lot about how war could unite a village against a common enemy.
Ninjas shouldn't get attached to people, especially people they'd never really talked to, and who may well be spies – and who wielded a powerful bloodline limit to boot.
So said the rules.
As the rules tended to leave unmentioned the fact that it was far better for your sanity – and thus for your long-term efficiency – to fight for people rather than for concepts, and as Shikaku had long ago determined that, while he'd be ready to get killed in the name of his village just as well as for his teammates and family, the latter would make him feel a lot less useless, he didn't need to lie to himself and pretend that he was only staying in the room because Hokage-sama hadn't given him leave.
The Hokage was going slowly, a lot more slowly than the chakra examination Shikaku had already seen performed on a battlefield as well as in the hospital; she was frowning in concentration. She looked like what she was seeing was disquieting.
Finally she dropped her hand by her side.
"They're most likely Kabuto's."
Inoichi made a noise that could easily pass for a question. Shikaku found himself agreeing. The girl didn't look like she'd gone through anything worse than a fight and one or two all-nighters. What could Tsunade have read in the Hyuuga's chakra flux that made her so sure of that conclusion?
The Hokage's look went from one man to the other, as if she was measuring them.
"I don't suppose I need to tell you that everything happening in this room is classified." She paused, crossing her arms. "You may tell Ino and Shikamaru that she's alive, as it'd be foolish to assume nobody saw you carrying her here."
Her nails drummed against her other arm.
"As for the rest, well, she's alive and will stay that way." She sent a look at the glasses, which Inoichi had put on the bedside table.
The tiny jerk of Inoichi's hand warned Shikaku that his friend was about to intervene before he said a word.
"Will she be somehow unable to return to her responsibilities as a chuunin?"
You had to give it to Inoichi, he knew how to word his concerns in a way that made it sound smoothly professional. It still wasn't entirely appropriate – after all, they were talking to the Hokage – but Shikaku acknowledged the skill Inoichi could put into his enquiries.
The Hokage didn't seem fooled, but the small nod told him that she approved and was willing to go along with it.
"Physically, she'll be fine."
A brief, biting smile flashed through Tsunade's face. She looked like she knew something they didn't, but the harsh implications didn't fit in with her relaxed composure, even if she was the Hokage. Hyuuga Hinata was the direct, legitimate heir to a clan that would usually be considered one of Konoha's most valuable weapons; Tsunade didn't look like she was particularly worried about the girl's other, non-physical state, which would otherwise make her inconvenient.
Of course, Godaime was a sucker for gambling and did have a few of the fatalistic character traits that went with it.
"I don't think it would be wise for her cousin to leave the front for now, though."
The Hokage wasn't smiling anymore, and she kept her gaze fixed on the girl's pale face as if she was seeing the complications dancing around it.
Once more, Shikaku took in stride that some things were really, honestly off with the Hyuuga. He'd never been a personal acquaintance of the heir (the perpetually on-the-brink-of-demotion half-disgraced heir) and her cousin (her fanatic-protector-who'd-once-tried-to-murder-her prodigy of a cousin), and, logically speaking, the whole thing made no sense. Logically speaking, there was no reason Hyuuga Neji leaving the war zones would be envisaged at all. Logically speaking, Neji would need to be mad to even want to weaken the village's position in the war.
He found that his gaze had slipped to Hinata's face as well. Beside him, Inoichi was covering his emotions.
At this point, there was no discounting that her sanity may well be fragmented beyond healing abilities. Shikaku remembered that her first move when she'd seen him had been to dispel a non-existing genjutsu, Kabuto's glasses (spy, medic-nin, Orochimaru's second in command) only reinforcing the probability. He was beginning to see why the Hokage wanted Hyuuga Neji as far away and involved in other occupations as possible.
The three of them stayed silent for a moment, looking at the sleeping girl.
Part II
