[Naruto] only my hands to guide me
Sep. 11th, 2010 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
runespoorTitle: only my hands to guide me
Characters/Pairing: Hinata, Neji (NejiHina, past others)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: past dub-con
Summary: Juggling family, work, and past mistakes.
Notes: For![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
au_bingo, theme 'Other: Kid fic'. Set in the same universe as Receptionist Duty, Day 37, Evening Shift. Celebrationverse flashbacks liable to happen. Title from “Now Three” by Vienna Teng.
“Hey,” Hinata calls out when she gets home for the night. She's lucky enough to be on first shift, meaning that family scenes upon getting home are part of her everyday life.
The silence she gets in return makes her frown; usually by this point she'd be fighting her daughter's enthusiastic cuddling to close the door. The kitchen's light is on, and when she approaches to ask for an explanation, she finds Neji alone at the table. Stacks of papers are spread out in front of him. The empty mug next to his elbow is a sure sign that he's getting ready for a long night of work.
“Yuuki is already asleep?” she asks, filling a glass of water.
There's left over osso bucco and rice in the pan. Her stomach rumbles with hunger, but she decides she can be patient until it's hot.
“No, her friend Ritsuko invited her to sleep over. You don't have to heat the osso bucco up, it's good cold as well.”
Hinata puts her glass back down.
The evening is turning out more tiring than she hoped. Greyer, somehow. She doesn't like to sound critical. “You know I'd rather you didn't take these decisions before asking me.”
When he looks up, his face is as perfectly calm as it ever is. “I thought you might like a quiet evening. You've had a busy two weeks. And it's Thursday, there's no school tomorrow.”
He's not wrong. For the past weeks Hinata hasn't felt the grinding tension of her job ever unhook its claws from her; for the first time in many days, she can feel her shoulders unclenching, knots she'd stopped being aware of smoothing away. But Neji's the one with his work sprawled over the kitchen table, making the most out of the evening. Just seeing him examining the latest case the DA's office gave him exhausts her.
“Maybe I'd have liked to spend the evening watching cartoons with my daughter,” she says. “Did you consider that?” Her tone is muted, inquisitive, and Hinata wonders if she'd have ever become so passive-aggressive if she and Neji didn't live together.
Only silence answers her. He doesn't take the bait, and that blows all the wind out of her sails. She's not really in the mood for a fight. She really is too tired for it, and that Neji doesn't try to argue the point tells her that his concern was genuine.
She probably wouldn't have been in the mood for watching cartoons or playing with Yuuki, if she's honest with herself. She won't have to pretend today – and the days before – haven't shaken her. It's a relief that her baby and the day's horrors won't ever be linked in her memory. That she's not going to look at Yuuki and see the case's photographs superimposing with Yuuki's smiling face.
By the time she comes to this realization, Neji's not looking at her. There's at least one too many workaholics in this house for a little girl to spend an amusing Thursday evening, and tonight the disconnect simply could not come from her.
In the pan the osso bucco's tomato sauce is fizzling, so she turns around and puts the fire out. “You're right,” she admits. The clean dish and fork and knife Neji left for her are next to the sink. Meticulously, she removes a piece of meat and complementary rice from the pan and puts it in her plate. “I haven't been sleeping well.”
Nothing Neji doesn't know, but acknowledging it erases another weight she'd forgotten about. Acknowledging it makes it more distant; something finished which she can talk about. It's not just that Hinata isn't allowed to talk about ongoing investigations, it's that she's become superstitious, over time, of talking about things when they can turn out different. When they can be used against her.
The thought of Yuuki crosses her mind, because the monstrous irony of owing the truest happiness of her life to one of the very people she's grown to fight never quite dissipates, especially with all the risks she knows she's taking. With her life, and with Yuuki's.
Disappearing would've been more careful. After she'd returned, her father had offered her money to start over a new life someplace else. She'd toyed with that idea, for as many seconds as he took to expose it. But it was unreal. Something she could find no resources in herself to embrace. Melting back into the masses, at least; returning to life, to normality, would've been advisable. She hadn't even been able to consider it.
Instead she'd done the most foolish thing she possibly could have, short of knocking on the door of the criminal underground she'd been saved from.
She'd become a cop.
The price to pay for being a whole person was the knowledge that she stood out on the monitors of the city's organized crime, and the fear that they'll go after Yuuki.
“We've got hunches that may be linking the case to Orochimaru.”
She's not looking, but she knows that gets his attention like few other things could.
It's not a particularly comforting thought, even though it's a reaction that would happen in any cop's house after a similar declaration, because in hers it's personal. Occasionally Hinata wishes she hadn't made her life unspeakably risky when she was sixteen, but the trade off is nothing she cares to imagine. When he'd visited her at the hospital, her father had told her they might get 'the child' adopted away. Hinata had felt dirty listening to Hiashi talk about her daughter as though she was a stain on the Hyuuga's good name. She hasn't seen her father since then.
“How sure are you?” Neji finally asks.
She attempts a shrug, but her shoulders tremble as she does. “Not at all. The girl was one of Orochimaru's and people are talking about tattoos, but since he's never been charged with anything and he supposedly disappeared five years ago, there's nothing to incriminate him. It's a typical Orochimaru operation. It's just-- it has his fingerprints all over, except for the fact that it's lacking his mark, you know? Not one formal connection to Sound.”
And she would feel better, so much better, if they'd found the proof it was just a copycat. Maybe she'd still have nightmares of her little girl being kidnapped, but the fear would let go of her throat when she was awake.
“Any sign of Kabuto?”
Water is dripping from the faucet into the sink, a drilling sound that insinuates itself into your mind until you stop noticing it, until you're unable of noticing anything else. It gets on her nerves, so she turns around and forces it closed, turning it tighter until the last drop of water threatens to fall, retracts, and stills. The moments it take her, the silence, dissipate the echoes of Kabuto's voice. In her mind he still sounds as solicitous now as he did back then. She never was able to hear a trace of the monster he was in the softly-spoken affection he addressed her with.
“No,” she answers. The edge of the sink is slippery-cold under her hands, gripping it tightly as if supporting herself would relieve her of this as surely as it would relieve an aching back. “Nothing at all hinting Kabuto's involved.”
The chair squeak a little on the kitchen's floor when Neji stands and comes to her side.
He doesn't try to touch her, for which Hinata's grateful; Neji doesn't like to offer comfort in the form of hugs or hands on shoulders, and knowing that this particular subject would make him force himself would only achieve the opposite of the desired effect. Playing mind games about physical affection is nothing she'll ever be at ease with, and it's worse where Kabuto is concerned.
She was a silly, silly teenager and she thinks the price she's paying for it is way too high.
Next to her, Neji is standing like a tower of strength, erect and unbowing, and like playing the role would be enough to reassure her somehow. Like he could make her feel safe. The unrest Kabuto stirs in her is too deep-rooted for that, predating Neji becoming a symbol of safety. Neji knows this, too, his back too ramrod-rigid to be without tension.
“Maybe he's not involved,” is the best shot at comforting Neji can finally come up with.
“Maybe he's not.”
He's close enough to her that she can feel the faint body warmth coming off from him, registering it at last. They both know Kabuto can just as easily be involved.
Even today, with everything Hinata has pieced together of the time she and Kabuto-- of the ill-advised months she was the frightened live-in girlfriend of a crimelord's second-in-command, things she's recalled and analyzed with the skills of a police officer, she cannot always discern between the things he was directly in charge of and the things he only relayed to Orochimaru. She can't place the difference between the things he took an active part in and the ones he was an accessory to.
Developing drugs wasn't the only thing Orochimaru employed him for, and at the time Hinata had been too scared, too flattered and too appreciative of Kabuto's affection to ask for details. He'd treated her like a woman in bed and like a child out of it, indulgent and dismissive. And Hinata hadn't had enough of either before him to have the good sense of leaving before she did.
She's not that girl anymore.
Slowly, she leans back against Neji's body, relaxing against his chest. His heart beats regularly, and she's close enough that she can hear his breathing.
The muted sounds of the neighbors' TV bathe around them like a distant cocoon, the city outside dark and glittering with lights.
Characters/Pairing: Hinata, Neji (NejiHina, past others)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: past dub-con
Summary: Juggling family, work, and past mistakes.
Notes: For
au_bingo, theme 'Other: Kid fic'. Set in the same universe as Receptionist Duty, Day 37, Evening Shift. Celebrationverse flashbacks liable to happen. Title from “Now Three” by Vienna Teng.“Hey,” Hinata calls out when she gets home for the night. She's lucky enough to be on first shift, meaning that family scenes upon getting home are part of her everyday life.
The silence she gets in return makes her frown; usually by this point she'd be fighting her daughter's enthusiastic cuddling to close the door. The kitchen's light is on, and when she approaches to ask for an explanation, she finds Neji alone at the table. Stacks of papers are spread out in front of him. The empty mug next to his elbow is a sure sign that he's getting ready for a long night of work.
“Yuuki is already asleep?” she asks, filling a glass of water.
There's left over osso bucco and rice in the pan. Her stomach rumbles with hunger, but she decides she can be patient until it's hot.
“No, her friend Ritsuko invited her to sleep over. You don't have to heat the osso bucco up, it's good cold as well.”
Hinata puts her glass back down.
The evening is turning out more tiring than she hoped. Greyer, somehow. She doesn't like to sound critical. “You know I'd rather you didn't take these decisions before asking me.”
When he looks up, his face is as perfectly calm as it ever is. “I thought you might like a quiet evening. You've had a busy two weeks. And it's Thursday, there's no school tomorrow.”
He's not wrong. For the past weeks Hinata hasn't felt the grinding tension of her job ever unhook its claws from her; for the first time in many days, she can feel her shoulders unclenching, knots she'd stopped being aware of smoothing away. But Neji's the one with his work sprawled over the kitchen table, making the most out of the evening. Just seeing him examining the latest case the DA's office gave him exhausts her.
“Maybe I'd have liked to spend the evening watching cartoons with my daughter,” she says. “Did you consider that?” Her tone is muted, inquisitive, and Hinata wonders if she'd have ever become so passive-aggressive if she and Neji didn't live together.
Only silence answers her. He doesn't take the bait, and that blows all the wind out of her sails. She's not really in the mood for a fight. She really is too tired for it, and that Neji doesn't try to argue the point tells her that his concern was genuine.
She probably wouldn't have been in the mood for watching cartoons or playing with Yuuki, if she's honest with herself. She won't have to pretend today – and the days before – haven't shaken her. It's a relief that her baby and the day's horrors won't ever be linked in her memory. That she's not going to look at Yuuki and see the case's photographs superimposing with Yuuki's smiling face.
By the time she comes to this realization, Neji's not looking at her. There's at least one too many workaholics in this house for a little girl to spend an amusing Thursday evening, and tonight the disconnect simply could not come from her.
In the pan the osso bucco's tomato sauce is fizzling, so she turns around and puts the fire out. “You're right,” she admits. The clean dish and fork and knife Neji left for her are next to the sink. Meticulously, she removes a piece of meat and complementary rice from the pan and puts it in her plate. “I haven't been sleeping well.”
Nothing Neji doesn't know, but acknowledging it erases another weight she'd forgotten about. Acknowledging it makes it more distant; something finished which she can talk about. It's not just that Hinata isn't allowed to talk about ongoing investigations, it's that she's become superstitious, over time, of talking about things when they can turn out different. When they can be used against her.
The thought of Yuuki crosses her mind, because the monstrous irony of owing the truest happiness of her life to one of the very people she's grown to fight never quite dissipates, especially with all the risks she knows she's taking. With her life, and with Yuuki's.
Disappearing would've been more careful. After she'd returned, her father had offered her money to start over a new life someplace else. She'd toyed with that idea, for as many seconds as he took to expose it. But it was unreal. Something she could find no resources in herself to embrace. Melting back into the masses, at least; returning to life, to normality, would've been advisable. She hadn't even been able to consider it.
Instead she'd done the most foolish thing she possibly could have, short of knocking on the door of the criminal underground she'd been saved from.
She'd become a cop.
The price to pay for being a whole person was the knowledge that she stood out on the monitors of the city's organized crime, and the fear that they'll go after Yuuki.
“We've got hunches that may be linking the case to Orochimaru.”
She's not looking, but she knows that gets his attention like few other things could.
It's not a particularly comforting thought, even though it's a reaction that would happen in any cop's house after a similar declaration, because in hers it's personal. Occasionally Hinata wishes she hadn't made her life unspeakably risky when she was sixteen, but the trade off is nothing she cares to imagine. When he'd visited her at the hospital, her father had told her they might get 'the child' adopted away. Hinata had felt dirty listening to Hiashi talk about her daughter as though she was a stain on the Hyuuga's good name. She hasn't seen her father since then.
“How sure are you?” Neji finally asks.
She attempts a shrug, but her shoulders tremble as she does. “Not at all. The girl was one of Orochimaru's and people are talking about tattoos, but since he's never been charged with anything and he supposedly disappeared five years ago, there's nothing to incriminate him. It's a typical Orochimaru operation. It's just-- it has his fingerprints all over, except for the fact that it's lacking his mark, you know? Not one formal connection to Sound.”
And she would feel better, so much better, if they'd found the proof it was just a copycat. Maybe she'd still have nightmares of her little girl being kidnapped, but the fear would let go of her throat when she was awake.
“Any sign of Kabuto?”
Water is dripping from the faucet into the sink, a drilling sound that insinuates itself into your mind until you stop noticing it, until you're unable of noticing anything else. It gets on her nerves, so she turns around and forces it closed, turning it tighter until the last drop of water threatens to fall, retracts, and stills. The moments it take her, the silence, dissipate the echoes of Kabuto's voice. In her mind he still sounds as solicitous now as he did back then. She never was able to hear a trace of the monster he was in the softly-spoken affection he addressed her with.
“No,” she answers. The edge of the sink is slippery-cold under her hands, gripping it tightly as if supporting herself would relieve her of this as surely as it would relieve an aching back. “Nothing at all hinting Kabuto's involved.”
The chair squeak a little on the kitchen's floor when Neji stands and comes to her side.
He doesn't try to touch her, for which Hinata's grateful; Neji doesn't like to offer comfort in the form of hugs or hands on shoulders, and knowing that this particular subject would make him force himself would only achieve the opposite of the desired effect. Playing mind games about physical affection is nothing she'll ever be at ease with, and it's worse where Kabuto is concerned.
She was a silly, silly teenager and she thinks the price she's paying for it is way too high.
Next to her, Neji is standing like a tower of strength, erect and unbowing, and like playing the role would be enough to reassure her somehow. Like he could make her feel safe. The unrest Kabuto stirs in her is too deep-rooted for that, predating Neji becoming a symbol of safety. Neji knows this, too, his back too ramrod-rigid to be without tension.
“Maybe he's not involved,” is the best shot at comforting Neji can finally come up with.
“Maybe he's not.”
He's close enough to her that she can feel the faint body warmth coming off from him, registering it at last. They both know Kabuto can just as easily be involved.
Even today, with everything Hinata has pieced together of the time she and Kabuto-- of the ill-advised months she was the frightened live-in girlfriend of a crimelord's second-in-command, things she's recalled and analyzed with the skills of a police officer, she cannot always discern between the things he was directly in charge of and the things he only relayed to Orochimaru. She can't place the difference between the things he took an active part in and the ones he was an accessory to.
Developing drugs wasn't the only thing Orochimaru employed him for, and at the time Hinata had been too scared, too flattered and too appreciative of Kabuto's affection to ask for details. He'd treated her like a woman in bed and like a child out of it, indulgent and dismissive. And Hinata hadn't had enough of either before him to have the good sense of leaving before she did.
She's not that girl anymore.
Slowly, she leans back against Neji's body, relaxing against his chest. His heart beats regularly, and she's close enough that she can hear his breathing.
The muted sounds of the neighbors' TV bathe around them like a distant cocoon, the city outside dark and glittering with lights.
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no subject
Date: 2010-09-11 03:38 pm (UTC)