FicWad

AN: Hoooh boy.

Originally, this was supposed to have three parts: Neji and Hanabi, Tsunade, and finally Hinata and Hinata's dream sequence. I started to work on this, mostly finished up Tsunade's section, realized I had about 5000 words and still hadn't written anything for Neji's section and I still hadn't gotten anywhere near the meat of Hinata's section, which involves a huge and convoluted dream sequence that's probably going to end up as 3000 words just on its own.

So because I haven't updated in so long, and because I hate making people wait for fic updates (because I know how it feels, honestly) I'm splitting this chapter into two sections: Aconite (Root and Stem) which is finished and being posted now, and Aconite (Bloom and Branch) which will have Neji and Hinata and her dream. Hopefully I can get the second section done relatively soon (because it has Kabuto! and weirdness! and lots of other good stuff) but I also have a major school assignment due at the end of this week, so we'll see.



Muma V: Aconite (Root and Stem)


New love, new love, where are you to lead me?
All along a narrow way that marks a crooked line.
How are you to slake me, and how are you to feed me?
With bitter yellow berries, and a sharp new wine.
-Dorothy Parker




Thanks to Naruto, they were almost late. The clock had just started striking two when they arrived at the ANBU building Morino had chosen for their appointment; Shizune handed over their passes at the desk, and the young ANBU working there checked them over, cataloged their weapons--one pair of scissors, medium sharp, a set of arm darts, and a few kunai Tsunade had forgotten about and was surprised to discover in the depths of her jacket pockets--made them sign in, then stamped their passes with a nod for the Hokage and let them through. "The Lady Hyuuga is in room 3," he said, and pointed out the way.

The faintly oily scent of polish was strong in Tsunade's nose as they walked through the quiet halls and she resisted the urge to scuff her feet against the wooden floors. Here was the side of ANBU that very few outsiders would ever see; the "visitation" rooms for people like Hinata, who were in ANBU custody for one reason or another, but were not actually criminals. There were real windows up here, doors without fifteen pounds of iron restraints and bolts, sunlight instead of the guttering oil lamps and low-watt bulbs that the dungeon made use of. It was something of a farce, but over the deep darkness of the dungeons, a definite improvement.

A day or so back, the Hokage had calmly suggested to Ibiki Morino that since Hinata was not a criminal, there was no harm in allowing her upstairs for a visit where she could get a little fresh air and sunshine, as an aid to her mental state; he had agreed and added that if they got the girl a haircut so she wasn't constantly hiding herself behind the long strands or flicking them out of her face, he'd let Hinata out for a few more hours than normal.

"No family members, no other people except for you and Ms. Shizune," he'd rumbled in his cut-rock voice. "If everything continues well, she'll be out in a few days anyway. She can see everyone she wants then."

Hinata was sitting on a chair in the patch of sunlight cast by the only window in the room, arms resting on the sill and gaze fixed out the window, though it was doubtful how much of the outside she could actually see: ANBU had special jutsu for upstairs rooms such as this one that permitted sunlight and air in, but blocked any view of the actual landscape, as well as keeping anyone outside from looking in.

An open book lay on the windowsill by her folded arms, wind shuffling the pages with a faint rasping sound, and Tsunade was a little surprised to see that it was a child's book of fairytales, with pictures like small, brilliant jewels. Hinata glanced up and smiled faintly, greeted them in her soft voice. She looked tired and actually thinner than when she'd arrived back in Konoha; according to the ANBU reports, she hadn't been eating that well and spent much of her time sleeping when not being interrogated. The ends of her hair were very ragged, as if she'd been pulling on them.

"I wish that Tonton could've come in with us, but they refused to allow it," Shizune said, a little wistfully as she got the scissors out and Tsunade handed over her comb. "She might not look it, but she's actually really good at comforting, for a pig."

Hinata nodded a little at this, carefully holding her head steady while Shizune brushed, but her eyes kept returning to the window and the book.

"Did your sister send that over?" Tsunade asked, gesturing towards the little book as she pulled up the only other chair in the room. She knew that Neji and Hanabi had been allowed to send over a few small personal items--all rigorously checked by ANBU, of course--to try and give Hinata a little comfort while she was here, and she seriously doubted that ANBU kept books of fairytales on hand for their prisoners.

"Yes. I used to read this to her all the time when she was younger," Hinata replied, and her face eased a little, then tensed up again. "Though...she doesn't have to...she shouldn't worry about me too much. I'm all right. She's hurt much more badly than I ever was. I'll be home in a few more days. She has months of recovery ahead of her, doesn't she?"

Typical of Hinata to put others ahead of herself, Tsunade thought as she cast around for a suitable answer; while Hanabi had been very badly injured in the Akatsuki attack that had also taken Hiashi Hyuuga's life, Hinata had been a prisoner in bloody Sound for over half a year and would likely be feeling the mental repercussions for the next few years, if not the rest of her life, her scant physical damage be damned. Hiashi and Hanabi had fallen in battle: while it was a tragedy, it was also the shinobi way--you came, you fought, you fell and it wasn't exactly a rare thing either.

Tsunade still had a vivid recollection of standing on a dais, draped in the stifling cloth of the Hokage's formal robes and watching in silence with the other officials that made up Konoha's Council as Hiashi Hyuuga's funeral procession marched by, a wall of black and white in the middle of Konoha's bursting summer hues. The last time she'd seen the stark grandeur of the Hyuuga in procession had been over twenty years ago, when Hiraki Hyuuga had finally given up the ghost, after years of hanging on in silent ferocity while his chronic illness ate him away, bit by bit.

Against Setsuna Hyuuga's vigorous protests, Hanabi had bowed to her Great-aunt Eiko's demands and assumed her place as acting Head of the family for the funeral: her injuries has necessitated that she be carried on a litter, Neji at her side in defiance of all Hyuuga tradition. The girl could barely hold her head up from what Tsunade assumed was a heavy combination of grief as well as the massive amounts of medications she was on for her treatment and she had felt thick rage bubble up inside her; Head of the family or not, Hanabi had been in no condition to be out in public.

"Your sister's doing okay," she said finally. "She's got a lot of physical therapy ahead of her, among other things. But--depending on how well she responds to the treatment--she'll probably be able to eventually resume her training as a ninja." She decided not to mention that Hanabi would never have perfect use of that leg again, or that it had taken an entire team of med-nin nearly a day to get her crushed leg into a state where it was even repairable.

"But she'll be far behind everyone else," Hinata said sadly, "and she liked being at the Academy, even if Father didn't want her there. I thought that she was starting to make friends."

"She's keeping up with her schoolwork at home. Iruka won't let her fall behind," Tsunade said reassuringly, hoping to bring a little spark back into Hinata's face, give her something positive to hold on to. "He's very fond of her and I'm pretty sure she likes him too."

In fact, once the formal procession was over and everyone was left at the cemetery to mill around aimlessly until they'd shouldered enough of their grief to go on home, Iruka, backed by Hanabi's classmates, had stunned the Hyuuga contingent by daring to give the grief-stricken girl a fierce hug; Hanabi had then heaped insult upon injury by crying into his shoulder for a good ten minutes straight, until Hiyashi Hyuuga's death glare and Eiko Hyuuga's strangled squawking had pulled them apart. Undaunted, Iruka had told Neji and Hanabi to call on him if they ever needed anything, gathered his brood back around him and marched serenely off.

Once he had gone, Hanabi had rubbed the tears off her face (smearing her ceremonial makeup in the process) smiled for the first time since the attack, took one last look at her father's monument, and led everyone else back home.

"I'm glad," Hinata said; a smile touched the corner of her mouth, hovered there for a moment, then left. "I was so worried about her when I heard what happened. They only told me at first that Father had died. I didn't believe them, of course." Her gaze shifted to the window, the dark wings of her eyebrows coming together in a line. "Then Sasuke-kun came and told me it was true, and that Hanabi had been badly hurt, and that Father had died protecting her. Since he had no reason to lie, I believed him," she said, her voice as delicate and brittle as a bird's bone.

"And what," Tsunade asked carefully, "did Yakushi do when you found out?" Hinata's gaze immediately lowered at the question and her fingers played against each other once again.

"He tried," she finally murmured, "to comfort me."

The Hokage's eyebrows shot high and she couldn't stop herself from making a small noise of surprise. Well/, she thought, /that was an unexpected response. "And you...?"

"Pushed him away. By accident, really. I just wanted to be alone, so he left." The ANBU on the other side of the wall must be having a field day with this, though it's not like it wouldn't have come up eventually. "So in addition to crying, I was also afraid that he'd do something, as a punishment for shoving him, especially when he showed up later with tea."

"You suspected poison? So what did you do?"

Hinata shrugged, helplessly. "He was insistent, so I sipped it and didn't notice anything. I was pretty good at telling poison by then, since he'd spent that month or so poisoning me, and he's good, but not as good as you, Lady Tsunade; he can't make anything completely tasteless. I drank it. Nothing happened and he never told me otherwise."

"Wait a minute," Shizune said sharply, scissors stilled on the piece of hair she was about to cut, "did you just say that Kabuto poisoned you for a month?"

The sharp tone had little effect on Hinata, who merely looked tired and sad."Yes. Though he asked for my permission first. It wasn't so bad." Her eyelids fell lower and lower as she talked until they lay entirely shut.

Tsunade had already heard all this at one of the earlier interrogation sessions and put it behind her, so Hinata's statement drew forth nothing more than a frown, but Shizune had no such defense to muster and her hands jerked in shock at the younger girl's dispassionate words; if Tsunade hadn't shot forward and grabbed her wrist to steady her, Hinata would ended up missing a stupendous chunk out of her back hair. "Asked you for permission? What, what kind of nerve does that damned little brat have? Like you had a choice in the matter! Permission my ass! Why, he--"

"Shizune, if you keep going off like that at every twisted little thing Yakushi's done, you're going to stress yourself into a heart attack," Tsunade interrupted dryly, her eyes locked onto the younger woman's furious face. "Besides, this is Yakushi we're talking about here; I wouldn't be surprised if he did it just for the satisfaction of messing with people's minds if Hinata ever got out and told anyone. Now, calm down and stop waving the scissors around before you put out Hinata's eye; I'm not spending time that could be devoted to good, hard drinking repairing injuries that result from your overly-excited nerves. Sheesh." Shizune was a wonderful assistant in most ways: letting her drink in peace and quiet (most of the time) nagging just enough but not too much, and she was a competent overseer and a talented medic, but she did have a lamentable tendency to go flying off the handle at very little provocation.

(Like the way she always reacted to the Hokage's numerous, ill-fated gambling attempts; after they'd had to skip town for the fiftieth time in row, Shizune should have realized that continually yelling "Oh god, oh god, they're gaining on us, Lady Tsunade, how could you!" etc, etc, was a waste of time and breath and did more harm than good, but for some reason the younger woman just never caught on.)

For her own part, Hinata looked horribly embarrassed at being the cause of such a fuss, her hands lifted in a gesture half-defensive, half-supplicating. "Um, I don't know if he was doing it just to be contrary--with him that's always a possibility--but he was always very polite and formal with me, and I think his asking might have also been from that. And, um, you really don't have to get that upset about it. He never gave me anything that had a truly negative effect on my body; the worst they ever did was make me feel cold and sleepy, and after he got the data he wanted, he stopped. It was also a little game, of sorts; if I could tell he'd poisoned something, I didn't have to take it."

"You were helping with the examination, Shizune," Tsunade reminded, crossing one leg over the other in an attempt to get more comfortable. Damn hard chairs. "No major damage, no sign of healed major damage, no poison tracks, no nothing."

Shizune's mouth thinned as she clipped at Hinata's hair with a vengeance, no doubt wishing it was Yakushi's neck between the blades instead of innocent strands of hair. "Still," she said, her voice harsh, "he did enough and I can't believe he didn't do more."

There was a little silence in response, and then Hinata stirred and spoke again. "Part of that..." she murmured, her voice very soft but clear, like the sound of distant rain, "is because he didn't want to ruin me. No matter how cleanly you can repair damage, if you damage something, it will never be the same again. Even the lightest cut can leave a lasting mark. He said that I was the closest and best thing next to having an unsealed Hyuuga child to study, and he wanted to keep me as close to this "base state" as possible. It was important for his research." Her fingers dug at her hand again, but her next words were dry and perfectly even, "He's a little obsessed with bloodline limits," and the Hokage thought again of how tired Hinata must be of acting as the medium for Yakushi's message, opening her own mouth only to hear his words coming flying out.

She tapped her foot against the floor and wondered suddenly just how much of what Yakushi said was his own or if he was also silently mouthing the words of whatever personality he had appropriated for the situation.

"Your hair got so long," Shizune told Hinata quietly after another short period of silence had passed, clearly trying to move onto less inflammatory topics. "I'm a little surprised that it grew so much in just six months."

"It shouldn't have," Hinata answered as if this was a failing, one hand coming up to pull gently at a hank that lay over her breast. "It was cut before. Um, I mean that Mr. Kabuto cut it before. We both did, actually."

Tsunade's mouth dropped open as her mind worked around Hinata's last sentence. "What? What do you mean, you both cut it? And since when did Yakushi give a damn about your hair?"

"I did the sides: he cut the back, where I couldn't see. Ah, why...? My hair was a potential hazard when carrying out my duties in the labs. That's what he said, anyway... he gets very...agitated? No, not agitated. Annoyed. Resentful, if things aren't kept in order. He can't stand to have his things out of place, even little things." She looked down at her hands, and slowly moved her fingers in towards her palm, then out again, as if she was trying to coax feeling back into them after a long spell of cold.

"A place for everything and everything in its place, right?" Shizune said tightly, but her hands remained steady and her only other movement was to pinch her brows together in a frown. Tsunade silently applauded this show of effort.

At Shizune's words, Hinata's lips parted slightly and a strange light flickered in her eyes.

"...Yes. A place for everything...everything in its place," Hinata answered after a beat, her expression tight-lipped and considering. "I should have seen it before."

"Hinata?" Tsunade asked gently once a few minutes had passed; Hinata had remained silent throughout and Tsunade felt oddly troubled by the girl's reaction. It's just a common phrase, why on earth did that look come into her eyes...? Like bad news she was suspecting and was just told has come. Or...or like she's seen a complete stranger wearing a loved one's face. Thoughts and reality collide...

The Hyuuga blinked, and shook herself, pressed a thumb to her eyelid as if to wipe all traces of her former expression away, leaving nothing but blank ivory behind. "Oh, no, it's nothing. Honestly nothing. It just...made me realize something. That's all."

"Something I should know about?" she asked with a raised brow, struggling to keep her disquiet from showing on her face, but Hinata shook her head, once: no. She fiddled with her hands, the hem of her shirt, the free strands of her hair; Shizune continued to cut, face set in a glower, and finally Tsunade asked: "So, why did he have to help? Cut your hair, I mean."

Was that relief skittering over Hinata's face, or just a shadow from a passing cloud? "Oh. It probably won't surprise you to learn this, but there are no mirrors in Otogakure."

Filled to the brim with suspicions as to why Orochimaru might dislike mirrors, Tsunade said nothing, and so it fell to Shizune to finally say: "Really? No mirrors, huh...Do you know why?"

Hinata raised a shoulder in a kind of half-shrug. "Not really. Maybe the Sound nin have small mirrors for their own use; I never saw any. I wasn't allowed to associate with them at all, except for the two that escorted me when I was outside the medical wing, and even then, they weren't allowed to speak to me much beyond 'yes, miss' and 'no, miss'." A few stray hairs floated down on her bare arms and she lifted a hand to brush them away, scratching absently as if they tickled. "There were very tiny mirrors for medical use only. Nothing full-sized. Nothing where you could see even a small part of your face. So I needed him to help."

"I still can't believe he gave you scissors," Shizune murmured. "Is he so overconfident that he'll blithely hand off a potential weapon to an enemy?" Her voice shook a little with indignation as she snipped off more hair. "Or did he think so little of you that he just didn't care...?"

"Nothing like that: it just wouldn't have done anything. The scissors, I mean," Hinata said, and there was a tiny tremor in her voice that made Tsunade sit up and take notice. "He took me aside not long after I'd come, and showed me pretty graphically why he could allow me to handle scissors." Her eyes turned to the Hokage, but it was obvious that Hinata's mind was somewhere much farther off. Her hands came up, sliding slowly over her cheeks as if to make sure that the skin was still there, then moved in towards her mouth."He, ah, offered to let me stab him through the heart and said that if you were capable of withstanding it, he was as well. When I r-refused, he stabbed himself through the h-hand instead, and...and pulled..."

"Oh god, oh god," Tsunade muttered as her stomach did a slow roil and Hinata made a sound like a cut-off sob. "Regeneration or not, that little fucking bastard."

"I don't know why," Hinata said from behind her hands. Her narrow shoulders shook. "I never thought about these t-things after they happened, and they didn't really bother me while I was there, but now that I'm not, I just think about them and I feel horrible all over again..."

She leaned forward and curled her hands around Hinata's arms, rubbing gently, while a dull ache spread all over her own body, pulling worst at her belly and bones, and she wondered how much more there was to endure. "It's because you're no longer part of a situation where self-mutilation is hardly the worst thing you can experience," she said tiredly, "and because you've been doing nothing for the past few days but reliving every sordid, ugly little detail, pulling them out to the forefront when before they were just background noise. Everything's churned up in your mind now, and it's going to be a while before it settles again. It's okay to be upset. It's all right to cry. Just don't repress it--the memory or your reactions--and it will soon dissolve away into darkness, where it belongs."

Slowly, Hinata's hands lowered, revealing a few stray tears and damp white eyes that weren't even slightly bloodshot: Tsunade sometimes thought that milk ran in the veins of the Hyuuga in place of blood; it would certainly explain a lot, she decided. That Hinata was crying at all was quiet testament to the immense emotional strain she was under; she hadn't even shed one tear when her own cousin had nearly beaten her to death, Tsunade had heard. Just smiled and bled and nearly died.

"Please," Hinata asked suddenly, her voice thick and hoarse as one of her pale hands rubbed away hard at the tears."Tell me how everyone else is."

Tsunade looked across to Shizune and shrugged a little. "Kiba's been almost as bad as Naruto, coming here and trying to demand his way in. I had to get both his mother and his sister to threaten him with severe bodily damage before he called it quits with the frontal assault, but every second that he and Akamaru don't have something else to do, they're out in front, waiting. Shino...well, who can ever really tell with the Aburame? I'm sure he wants to see you just as badly, but unlike Kiba, he's actually got half a brain and some self control. He and Kurenai send wishes for your recovery and said they'll see you once you're released."

She tapped a finger against her chin, thinking, while Shizune made gentle adjustments to the position of Hinata's head. "Who else? Well-wishes from the usual suspects--Guy, Lee, Tenten, Asuma and his crew. Kakashi." Her face suddenly turned grim. "Don't be surprised if the latter corners you about Sasuke after you're released, even though I told him to leave you the hell alone and that I'd divulge any pertinent information that came out regarding Uchiha to him myself." She curled and uncurled a fist, feigning threats. "If he harasses you, let me know and I'll beat the crap out of him personally."

"I-I don't think that he'd be like that," Hinata said, voice rising on an edge of alarm. "Kakashi-sensei is basically kind, after all, and he risked himself to help the others save me..."

The Hokage snorted, breaking Hinata's chain of words. "Risked it mostly for Sasuke, you mean. Don't get me wrong, he'd save you in a heartbeat if it came to that. But you can't deny that his--and Naruto's, of course--primary interest in this mission was the possibility of recovering Sasuke." Her lips tightened on her next words. "And from what you've told us so far, I'm beginning to seriously doubt that anything about that brat is recoverable, but try and even hint at that to Naruto, and you might as well be whispering in a windstorm, for all the good it will do."

Hinata looked away, and for once, her hands went still. "Sasuke-kun is very dear to Naruto-kun," she began as Shizune clicked the scissors shut and released Hinata's head, the haircut completed. Her hair now hung a little past her shoulders, crow-black and gleaming, the cut ends rising gently in the air from the window. "Naruto-kun will never give up on him, not until he's dead. He'll follow Sasuke-kun to the ends of the earth and even farther beyond." She took a breath and went on. "Naruto-kun would do all that for him."

"And when I reminded Sasuke-kun of that," she said, so quietly that Tsunade had to strain to hear her, "he almost killed me." She looked back up at Tsunade, her eyes brilliant with grief.

"What will Naruto-kun think of that?"





The Hokage managed to contain herself until they were a safe distance away; almost out of the building in fact, even though the door had been shut fast upon Hinata after they had left, and then exploded into a shower of curses.

"Goddamnit, what the hell is that brat playing at? What the hell was his whole purpose in this? Teaching her things, showing her his techniques, his secrets, if I can even use that word with a straight face about him. Sugar, poison, politeness and lies. Wheels within wheels and riddles within riddles." She kicked at a stone in the path, hard, and it bounced off into the grass on the side, lost to view. "He's so damned crooked I doubt he can even draw a straight line."

Shizune gaped at her and even Tonton made a little noise of puzzlement, turning her pink head up to look at Shizune, then back at Tsunade, her face wearing a pig's version of a frown. Tonton had napped by the entrance while they were inside, and was promptly scooped up by Shizune once they were out, the other woman apparently glad of something to hold. "What? You can't be talking about Sasuke-kun, ma'am."

"No, Yakushi. I don't want to talk about Uchiha; I don't even want to think about him until I have several drinks in me, especially since it seems that Yakushi wasn't lying for once when he warned her to stay away from him," she groused, frustration pulling her lips so thin they hurt. A wind was coming up, scattering leaves before them and carrying the faintest threat of winter chill; she pulled her jacket more tightly around her and shoved her hands deep into the pockets. "This is going to be a huge mess once Naruto finds out, and since no one from here is going to be running off to recover Yakushi, I'd rather think of him instead and delay the inevitable."

Shizune made a face at this, and shifted Tonton a little higher. "I don't know what to think," she said simply as they walked. "I mean, with him...but his being so--oh, I don't want to say 'nice' in reference to him, but there's not really another word--to Hinata, and he hurt her, he definitely hurt her, but at the same time--" Her voice broke off and she frowned and sighed, scratching Tonton's head absently. "Do you think he was trying to turn her to Sound?"

That made Tsunade laugh, if only for a moment. "Not really. To be unfairly blunt about it, she's too weak for them, and if he knew anything about her at all, he'd have known she'd rather die than turn. Hinata is Hinata, no matter what. Though," she admitted, "the thought crossed my mind that maybe--just maybe--she was supposed to be the Uchiha to his Orochimaru."

"But they're not even remotely the same, personality or circumstance-wise," Shizune pointed out. "Sasuke-kun went of his own free will, Hinata was captured. And it's not like Kabuto was going to take over her body. Besides, you said that you didn't think he was trying to turn her to Sound."

"Not to Sound. To him. Acting like she was his assistant, treating her like a royal hostage instead of a enemy prisoner. Maybe he's grooming a successor, even though Hinata never really had an interest in being a med-nin. Maybe he was bored and wanted a challenge." She stared up at the bright clouds drifting over the sky, dappled white and gold in the strong light. "Maybe...maybe..."

"Maybe what?" Shizune asked, a tiny touch of worry creeping into her voice when Tsunade failed to finish her sentence.

Tsunade looked down, exhaled a hard breath. "Maybe that's what I want to believe, even if there's no real evidence for it. Because, quite frankly, the other possibility turns my stomach and I doubt he's human enough to be capable of it," she said, and tried her damnedest not to think of a long-gone boy with a chilly, faint smile and long black hair, who she had loved and who might have, in his own strange way, tried to love her back.

It's not the same, not the same at all. Poor Hinata...