Categories > Anime/Manga > Naruto > Muma
When the Light Falls Away
0 reviewsWhen you possess a rare bloodline limit, it's usually best not to fall into the hands of a mad medical genius and his equally deranged master. Pity that Hinata doesn't have a choice in the matter.
0Unrated
Chapter 01: When the Light Falls Away.
A late summer sunset in Konoha, and the leaves were falling earlier than usual this year.
The village hummed its' closing-day song, wrapped in the last rays of scarlet and gold light as Naruto Uzumaki ambled home slowly, his clenched hands jammed deep in his pockets and his feet smacking loudly against the pavement, the only outward signs of his agitation aside from the scowl on his face.
The old hag had brushed him off yet again, despite his best efforts; to make matters worse, Sakura-chan had caught him coming out of her office and proceeded to yell at him for fifteen minutes straight for no good reason, ending her fit by going into a flood of tears so vast half of Konoha could have drowned in it. He hadn't even been able to say "sorry" or try and comfort her; Shizune-neesan had nipped that bud by hustling Sakura off and telling him, in a voice that crackled like lightning, to Get Out Or Else.
/Goddamn Sasuke-bastard/, he thought, but there was no real heat behind the curse, just a thick, slow weariness that flowed through his body and shut down his mind.
He stayed lost in this cloud until his path brought him up one of Konoha's side roads, a place utterly unremarkable except for the small white building that had been built on one side a bit further up. There were no signs of habitation; the door was a thick slab of faceless steel and the windows were tiny spots of black glass, which neither gave light or reflected it.
For lack of anything better to do, he stopped and stared at it. Hinata had been taken, not into this particular building but one just like it, by ANBU the instant they'd arrived back at Konoha. He'd heard the little buildings were scattered all throughout the village, hiding secret tunnels and ANBU offices behind their blank white facades, but this was only the second time he'd noticed one. If Hinata hadn't vanished into one, he'd probably never have.
His mind drifted back to that day, a little unwillingly: Hinata, standing before him swathed in drab blue robes, an ANBU each clutching one of her skinny bird arms, as if they expected her to suddenly grow wings and fly; Hinata bowing deeply to him and Neji. Thank you once again for my rescue. I can't thank you enough. Please tell Hanabi-chan that I'm all right/--this to Neji. As the ANBU led her off to the dark steel door, she'd half-turned and looked back at him. She was trying to smile, but her mouth was shaking. /P-please don't worry about me, Naruto-kun. I-I promise you I'll be all right. A second later, she was gone.
What crap/, he thought darkly, /treating Hinata like that.
As the minutes ticked by, the traffic on the road became a little less; he guessed that most of the people were on their way home. At the other end of the road, in the opposite direction from the way most people were walking, a tall figure could be seen just coming around the bend, white robes fluttering in the evening breeze; it walked a few feet closer and Naruto recognized Neji Hyuuga.
To Naruto's surprise, Neji's walk stopped directly across from the ANBU building; moving off to the grass on the side, he dipped a hand inside his robes, which emerged holding what looked like a small woven mat. Placing it down on the grass, he arranged the mat so that it more or less faced the front door of the ANBU building and knelt, head down but back straight, so that he resembled a very stern mourning figurine. His eyes closed.
No one else seemed to give him a second glance, but Naruto's curiosity was threatening to burst him out of his skin."Oi, Neji!" he called as he jogged over to him. "Isn't this kind of a lousy place to meditate?"
One pale eye opened slowly, and Neji tilted his head slightly in Naruto's direction, which for Neji was the practical equivalent of a hearty handshake from anyone else. "If you knew anything about anything, you would know that it's actually quite beneficial for those who wish to master meditative techniques to practice them in highly trafficked areas. It helps build concentration." The eye slid shut and Neji turned so that he was once again facing the ANBU door dead on. "But I'm not here to meditate."
"Huh? Then for what?"
Something like a shiver, but softer, passed through Neji's body; both eyes opened now. "For the same reason that you were rooted to the ground over there a moment ago, I presume." He paused for a moment, the harsh lines of his profile easing until it was merely grim, and, Naruto thought, kind of sad."You were thinking about Lady Hinata."
'Well, yeah," he admitted, dropping down besides Neji. "I just can't stop thinking about it. It doesn't seem fair to me, locking her up again after we just got her free, you know? I mean, it's /Hinata/. Just because Orochimaru got his snaky paws on her, they're treating her like she's booby-trapped. If it was something like that, shouldn't she have tried to take us out when we rescued her? She was fine! Scared, but fine!"
Well, fine, but slightly un-Hinata-like in the way she'd thrown herself in his arms, sobbing. I...I never thought I'd see either of you again! She'd hugged Neji too, making him look (for nearly a minute, which had to be some kind of record in Naruto's mind) as if he'd washed his face in blood before he got himself under control again. The Hyuuga were not big on bodily contact outside of fighting.
"That doesn't matter," Neji said flatly, jerking Naruto's attention back to the present. "There are control jutsu that can be tripped from a distance, as well as myriad other ways she could have been compromised. It is Konoha policy for anyone, ninja or civilian, who has been in prolonged contact with any criminal above B-class level to spend at least a week in ANBU confinement, both for debriefing and to ensure that they haven't been "booby-trapped", as you so charmingly put it. There is no appealing this process, no matter the circumstances. We have little choice, but to grin and bear it."
The sun above them sank further into the night; to their right, the moon was just barely visible, the ghost of a pearl shielding herself with clouds. Naruto twirled a grass stem between his fingers, watching the little leaves spin out like the blades of a shuriken, back and forth and wondered if the lady in the moon ever looked down at Konoha, and if she was cold up there. "Yeah, I know, that's what you said when they took her away the first time. That doesn't mean I have to like it, and judging from your oh so subtle frowny face, you don't either--Hey!"
Neji had reached over and tapped Naruto's shoulder, all without looking or moving a body part other than his arm; the spot he touched immediately began to tingle with a numbness that shot down to Naruto's wrist and into his fingers. He dropped the grass stem and howled. "No fair! Damnit, Neji, no using the Gentle Fist just to get back at people! Cheater! Jerk!"
"Baby," Neji said, but he smiled, the gentler version of the superior smirk he had worn back in his asshole days (not, Naruto thought, that he had left those days all that far behind, the grinning bastard). Another touch, and the numbness receded away as swiftly as it had come.
They sat in silence for a while after that, each busy with his own thoughts, as the road emptied out and darkness fell completely. For some reason, Neji had activated his Byakugan; maybe he was paranoid about someone sneaking up on them after the Akatsuki attack, Naruto decided.
"Hey," Naruto said after nearly a half hour had passed. There was only so much sitting still and thinking that he could take and the scenery around them wasn't exactly fabulous. "How's Hanabi-chan?"
Neji had been sitting with his hand curled into cups on his lap, the picture of meditative ease; at Naruto's voice, his hands unrolled. "About as well as could be expected, given the circumstances," he replied tonelessly. "She will need several months of intensive physical therapy before she can even begin to use that leg normally again and there's no question of her being able to stay with her peer group in ninja training. Naturally, this has greatly upset her, and Lady Hinata's present confinement is not helping things." His fingers made a little play over the front of his robe, seizing invisible snags in the fabric. "Each day, she asks again if I've seen Lady Hinata and when she will come home, even though I've told her over and over that Lady Hinata must remain with ANBU for a week."
Naruto thought of Hinata's younger sister, who was even more silent than she, but from watchfulness instead of shyness; she nearly always had hair hanging over her eyes, a blind to hide the intensity of her silvery stare. Unlike Hinata, Hanabi rarely ventured outside the Hyuuga compound. Once, many years ago, Naruto had spotted her up in a tree not far from the Hyuuga borders, tucked away between two branches with a book and a sackful of apples by her side. She'd stayed up there until a cheerful, buxom woman came calling for her; then she'd shouldered the book and the apple sack (much flatter than it had been earlier) and jumped down into the woman's arms, allowing herself to be carried home as if she was a baby instead of a leggy girl of nearly six.
"I wish I could give her more concrete news, but Lady Tsunade refuses to tell me anything more than Lady Hinata was not physically damaged," Neji murmured. "Something that I could see for myself when we rescued her."
"Well..." Should I tell him? He's not going to be too happy, but the old hag did say... Naruto wrestled with his inner debate for a minute, then decided that Neji could probably handle it. "I got a little more out of Granny Hokage than you did. She said Hinata seemed to be okay, but there was evidence of healed damage, and someone poking around in her chakra system and optic nerves, probably from Creepy Kabuto. But--" he continued hastily, spotting how Neji's face was beginning to twist, "it was nothing major and wouldn't give her any problems in the future. The only other thing was that there were real faint ligature marks on Hinata's neck. Like someone tried to strangle her."
Neji sucked air in. "Ligature marks?"
He nodded. "Granny told me that Hinata said it was from Orochimaru."
"Ah." The word could have been a exhalation from a statue, so still did Neji sit, but his eyes were filled with an agonized fury. "I see. Well. You do have more of an "in" with the Hokage than I, after all. I appreciate you telling me this, Naruto."
His gaze drifted away then, towards the squat, pale, outline of the ANBU building; he whispered a word and the bunched veins of the Byakugan sprang up around his eyes once more. "Here's something interesting for you to know, Naruto. There's no one actually inside that building and it leads nowhere. It's one of ANBU's false fronts."
"What?" Naruto bounced to his feet in shock, staring first at the building, then at Neji's calm face, his faint smile. "We've been sitting outside a dummy building all this time for nothing?"
"Oh, I knew that even before I came here. ANBU can hide all it wants, but not from the Byakugan." He brushed his inky curtain of hair back with both hands, smoothing it out of the way, then turned to face Naruto squarely, all humor gone now. "It leads nowhere. But even so, the ANBU tunnels run beneath this road, as do their offices, holding cells, and...interrogation rooms."
It took a minute for him to digest this. "So," Naruto said slowly, "all this time you've been sitting here with your head down, you were looking at Hinata all along?"
"I wish," Neji said, his voice strangely fervent. "They're not entirely stupid; there are barriers over the more important rooms meant to cloud and confuse sight jutsu. I could just catch glimpses. But it's better than nothing."
He looked away, then added softly, "She's as well as could be expected, and her strength will bear her up past this. Orochimaru has nothing on Lady Hinata. Nothing."
A late summer sunset in Konoha, and the leaves were falling earlier than usual this year.
The village hummed its' closing-day song, wrapped in the last rays of scarlet and gold light as Naruto Uzumaki ambled home slowly, his clenched hands jammed deep in his pockets and his feet smacking loudly against the pavement, the only outward signs of his agitation aside from the scowl on his face.
The old hag had brushed him off yet again, despite his best efforts; to make matters worse, Sakura-chan had caught him coming out of her office and proceeded to yell at him for fifteen minutes straight for no good reason, ending her fit by going into a flood of tears so vast half of Konoha could have drowned in it. He hadn't even been able to say "sorry" or try and comfort her; Shizune-neesan had nipped that bud by hustling Sakura off and telling him, in a voice that crackled like lightning, to Get Out Or Else.
/Goddamn Sasuke-bastard/, he thought, but there was no real heat behind the curse, just a thick, slow weariness that flowed through his body and shut down his mind.
He stayed lost in this cloud until his path brought him up one of Konoha's side roads, a place utterly unremarkable except for the small white building that had been built on one side a bit further up. There were no signs of habitation; the door was a thick slab of faceless steel and the windows were tiny spots of black glass, which neither gave light or reflected it.
For lack of anything better to do, he stopped and stared at it. Hinata had been taken, not into this particular building but one just like it, by ANBU the instant they'd arrived back at Konoha. He'd heard the little buildings were scattered all throughout the village, hiding secret tunnels and ANBU offices behind their blank white facades, but this was only the second time he'd noticed one. If Hinata hadn't vanished into one, he'd probably never have.
His mind drifted back to that day, a little unwillingly: Hinata, standing before him swathed in drab blue robes, an ANBU each clutching one of her skinny bird arms, as if they expected her to suddenly grow wings and fly; Hinata bowing deeply to him and Neji. Thank you once again for my rescue. I can't thank you enough. Please tell Hanabi-chan that I'm all right/--this to Neji. As the ANBU led her off to the dark steel door, she'd half-turned and looked back at him. She was trying to smile, but her mouth was shaking. /P-please don't worry about me, Naruto-kun. I-I promise you I'll be all right. A second later, she was gone.
What crap/, he thought darkly, /treating Hinata like that.
As the minutes ticked by, the traffic on the road became a little less; he guessed that most of the people were on their way home. At the other end of the road, in the opposite direction from the way most people were walking, a tall figure could be seen just coming around the bend, white robes fluttering in the evening breeze; it walked a few feet closer and Naruto recognized Neji Hyuuga.
To Naruto's surprise, Neji's walk stopped directly across from the ANBU building; moving off to the grass on the side, he dipped a hand inside his robes, which emerged holding what looked like a small woven mat. Placing it down on the grass, he arranged the mat so that it more or less faced the front door of the ANBU building and knelt, head down but back straight, so that he resembled a very stern mourning figurine. His eyes closed.
No one else seemed to give him a second glance, but Naruto's curiosity was threatening to burst him out of his skin."Oi, Neji!" he called as he jogged over to him. "Isn't this kind of a lousy place to meditate?"
One pale eye opened slowly, and Neji tilted his head slightly in Naruto's direction, which for Neji was the practical equivalent of a hearty handshake from anyone else. "If you knew anything about anything, you would know that it's actually quite beneficial for those who wish to master meditative techniques to practice them in highly trafficked areas. It helps build concentration." The eye slid shut and Neji turned so that he was once again facing the ANBU door dead on. "But I'm not here to meditate."
"Huh? Then for what?"
Something like a shiver, but softer, passed through Neji's body; both eyes opened now. "For the same reason that you were rooted to the ground over there a moment ago, I presume." He paused for a moment, the harsh lines of his profile easing until it was merely grim, and, Naruto thought, kind of sad."You were thinking about Lady Hinata."
'Well, yeah," he admitted, dropping down besides Neji. "I just can't stop thinking about it. It doesn't seem fair to me, locking her up again after we just got her free, you know? I mean, it's /Hinata/. Just because Orochimaru got his snaky paws on her, they're treating her like she's booby-trapped. If it was something like that, shouldn't she have tried to take us out when we rescued her? She was fine! Scared, but fine!"
Well, fine, but slightly un-Hinata-like in the way she'd thrown herself in his arms, sobbing. I...I never thought I'd see either of you again! She'd hugged Neji too, making him look (for nearly a minute, which had to be some kind of record in Naruto's mind) as if he'd washed his face in blood before he got himself under control again. The Hyuuga were not big on bodily contact outside of fighting.
"That doesn't matter," Neji said flatly, jerking Naruto's attention back to the present. "There are control jutsu that can be tripped from a distance, as well as myriad other ways she could have been compromised. It is Konoha policy for anyone, ninja or civilian, who has been in prolonged contact with any criminal above B-class level to spend at least a week in ANBU confinement, both for debriefing and to ensure that they haven't been "booby-trapped", as you so charmingly put it. There is no appealing this process, no matter the circumstances. We have little choice, but to grin and bear it."
The sun above them sank further into the night; to their right, the moon was just barely visible, the ghost of a pearl shielding herself with clouds. Naruto twirled a grass stem between his fingers, watching the little leaves spin out like the blades of a shuriken, back and forth and wondered if the lady in the moon ever looked down at Konoha, and if she was cold up there. "Yeah, I know, that's what you said when they took her away the first time. That doesn't mean I have to like it, and judging from your oh so subtle frowny face, you don't either--Hey!"
Neji had reached over and tapped Naruto's shoulder, all without looking or moving a body part other than his arm; the spot he touched immediately began to tingle with a numbness that shot down to Naruto's wrist and into his fingers. He dropped the grass stem and howled. "No fair! Damnit, Neji, no using the Gentle Fist just to get back at people! Cheater! Jerk!"
"Baby," Neji said, but he smiled, the gentler version of the superior smirk he had worn back in his asshole days (not, Naruto thought, that he had left those days all that far behind, the grinning bastard). Another touch, and the numbness receded away as swiftly as it had come.
They sat in silence for a while after that, each busy with his own thoughts, as the road emptied out and darkness fell completely. For some reason, Neji had activated his Byakugan; maybe he was paranoid about someone sneaking up on them after the Akatsuki attack, Naruto decided.
"Hey," Naruto said after nearly a half hour had passed. There was only so much sitting still and thinking that he could take and the scenery around them wasn't exactly fabulous. "How's Hanabi-chan?"
Neji had been sitting with his hand curled into cups on his lap, the picture of meditative ease; at Naruto's voice, his hands unrolled. "About as well as could be expected, given the circumstances," he replied tonelessly. "She will need several months of intensive physical therapy before she can even begin to use that leg normally again and there's no question of her being able to stay with her peer group in ninja training. Naturally, this has greatly upset her, and Lady Hinata's present confinement is not helping things." His fingers made a little play over the front of his robe, seizing invisible snags in the fabric. "Each day, she asks again if I've seen Lady Hinata and when she will come home, even though I've told her over and over that Lady Hinata must remain with ANBU for a week."
Naruto thought of Hinata's younger sister, who was even more silent than she, but from watchfulness instead of shyness; she nearly always had hair hanging over her eyes, a blind to hide the intensity of her silvery stare. Unlike Hinata, Hanabi rarely ventured outside the Hyuuga compound. Once, many years ago, Naruto had spotted her up in a tree not far from the Hyuuga borders, tucked away between two branches with a book and a sackful of apples by her side. She'd stayed up there until a cheerful, buxom woman came calling for her; then she'd shouldered the book and the apple sack (much flatter than it had been earlier) and jumped down into the woman's arms, allowing herself to be carried home as if she was a baby instead of a leggy girl of nearly six.
"I wish I could give her more concrete news, but Lady Tsunade refuses to tell me anything more than Lady Hinata was not physically damaged," Neji murmured. "Something that I could see for myself when we rescued her."
"Well..." Should I tell him? He's not going to be too happy, but the old hag did say... Naruto wrestled with his inner debate for a minute, then decided that Neji could probably handle it. "I got a little more out of Granny Hokage than you did. She said Hinata seemed to be okay, but there was evidence of healed damage, and someone poking around in her chakra system and optic nerves, probably from Creepy Kabuto. But--" he continued hastily, spotting how Neji's face was beginning to twist, "it was nothing major and wouldn't give her any problems in the future. The only other thing was that there were real faint ligature marks on Hinata's neck. Like someone tried to strangle her."
Neji sucked air in. "Ligature marks?"
He nodded. "Granny told me that Hinata said it was from Orochimaru."
"Ah." The word could have been a exhalation from a statue, so still did Neji sit, but his eyes were filled with an agonized fury. "I see. Well. You do have more of an "in" with the Hokage than I, after all. I appreciate you telling me this, Naruto."
His gaze drifted away then, towards the squat, pale, outline of the ANBU building; he whispered a word and the bunched veins of the Byakugan sprang up around his eyes once more. "Here's something interesting for you to know, Naruto. There's no one actually inside that building and it leads nowhere. It's one of ANBU's false fronts."
"What?" Naruto bounced to his feet in shock, staring first at the building, then at Neji's calm face, his faint smile. "We've been sitting outside a dummy building all this time for nothing?"
"Oh, I knew that even before I came here. ANBU can hide all it wants, but not from the Byakugan." He brushed his inky curtain of hair back with both hands, smoothing it out of the way, then turned to face Naruto squarely, all humor gone now. "It leads nowhere. But even so, the ANBU tunnels run beneath this road, as do their offices, holding cells, and...interrogation rooms."
It took a minute for him to digest this. "So," Naruto said slowly, "all this time you've been sitting here with your head down, you were looking at Hinata all along?"
"I wish," Neji said, his voice strangely fervent. "They're not entirely stupid; there are barriers over the more important rooms meant to cloud and confuse sight jutsu. I could just catch glimpses. But it's better than nothing."
He looked away, then added softly, "She's as well as could be expected, and her strength will bear her up past this. Orochimaru has nothing on Lady Hinata. Nothing."
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