Ridding Me of You

Other’s notes:
The giant oak is an acorn that held its ground.

-Anonymous

Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.

-Adele Brookman

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

-Arthur Rubenstein

If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you've always gotten.

-Anonymous


To find a fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.

-Plutarch

DISCLAIMER:
I do not own Naruto. Somebody extremely lucky does.

Ridding Me of You
By Boyarina

Chapter 17: Sasuke and Hinata

When Hinata came to, she was startled to find out that she was floating. Everything was bobbing up and down (down and up) as her body slowly swept past trees and bushes. Because she honestly could not fund any explanation as to how her body managed to do this feat, Hinata was right on the verge of screaming—to fully wake herself up if in case she is dreaming.

But soon, Hinata’s sleep laden brain registered that she was actually being carried by someone. She instantly curbed her lips in time to curdle the scream that she so wanted to belt out. Then, she trained her eyes to this person and found herself staring at the elusive Uchiha Sasuke.

What? How? Why?

“Sasuke-san?” she ventured out softly.

He looked at her. His face was set, which was the usual, but there was something in his facial expression (or his face in general) that didn’t sit right with her.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

Hinata blinked. Wrong? Did he just ask her what was wrong? Wasn’t the very situation they were in completely wrong?

“Where are we going?” she returned politely, though what her instincts were telling her to do was to demand from Sasuke the answer to the question, “Where are you taking me?!”

“Somewhere…” he replied trailing off. He lifted his head up and surveyed the trail he was walking on.

Despite the purposeful way he was trudging on earlier, he seemed to be undecided now. Hinata wasn’t sure why she hadn’t yelled bloody murder yet for to her eyes, Sasuke is appearing more and more sinister by the second.

“I believe I should be going home now.” Hinata prompted. She brought her hands to cross over her chest so she would look commanding, but had failed spectacularly. The second her arm grazed the bare skin of her belly, she did a double take. She bent forward to inspect her whole person and was wholly horrified at what she saw.

“I’m—I’m naked!” she half screamed (so much for not screaming in the first place). Her eyes traveled down the length of Sasuke’s body and likewise bleated out:

“You’re naked!”

“Hmmm.” Sasuke responded unconcernedly. He resumed walking.

Hinata gaped. She was torn between taking Sasuke down by hitting him in one of his vital chakra points or doing nothing until he has shown a true intent of harming her. With all the morals she been ingrained with, she was hard pressed to do the latter.

“Sasuke-san?”

He sighed. “Don’t you remember anything?”

“I… think,” she hedged, “I was going to train with Naruto-kun and Anko-san.”

“Naruto-kun?” he scoffed. Then he shook his head. “You fainted. Kakashi asked me to see to you.”

“Oh.” Hinata chewed on the inside of her cheek, somewhat feeling dubious about what he had said. “Kakashi-sensei really did that?”

“You don’t believe me?” He asked her idly. If Hinata had not noticed the knot that tightened on his jaw, she would have thought that he was unaffected by her question.

“You think that I would just simply assume responsibility of you? You think that the moment I saw you unconscious I would just took you from Kakashi’s arm, worried, concerned because you were not responding to the sound of my voice? You think that I’d be mad enough at Naruto to get you far, far away from him? So you would not fait and hit your head on forest boulders? You think I’d care enough to tramp all over the forest grounds just to find a spot sterile enough so I could you out fully and inspect you whole body and make sure you are all right?”

To say that Hinata had been confounded by everything that he had said was making an understatement of the century. Surely, for something entirely false, it was a tiny bit mind-boggling that Sasuke had been able to go into such details.

Hinata warily took in Sasuke’s heaving shoulders (bet he hasn’t had any chance before to say anything this long) and said the most convenient and sure to placate answer of them all:

“No.”

Contrary to what Hinata was hoping, Sasuke reacted quite violently to her response. He snapped his head to glare down at her and crisply halted in his tracks.

“Well, then, you are wrong!” he growled out.

A pregnant pause. Crickets chirped, a family of crows flew over head and cried, “Ahou! Ahou!”

“I’m wrong?” Hinata repeated questioningly. She searched his onyx eyes as Sasuke worked his mouth up and down, seeming as though he was at loose ends.

After a LONG while, Sasuke finally collected himself. He cleared his throat and said, “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go over that once again.”

Hinata shrugged. Or at least attempted to shrug. She was too busy fighting the smile blossoming in her face to know if she was able to execute the act or not, because frankly, she had become very, very amused over the blush that suddenly suffused Sasuke’s face. Hinata was certain that the cosmos should not have allowed to let this kind of thing to happen (it definitely was not right and natural). The tables should have not have turned on them and made Sasuke to become flustered instead of her (technically, he was supposed to be scary) for the little devil inside of Hinata immediately started to goad her to tease Sasuke about his very unusual behavior.

She has to resist it. She should be wise enough not to do things that are thick and blatant.

Hinata shook her head faintly to clear it of devilish thoughts. “Daijabou. I understand, Sasuke-san.”

Pacified, Sasuke returned back to his normal pale (blush gone just like that), cocky and brusque (if not a teensy bit terrifying) self.

“Good.” He adjusted his grip under her legs. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression. “

“I didn’t” she said in a voice that quavered a little. “I wouldn’t dare.”

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. “Can you not sound like you’re scared of me?” he said quietly.

A hot flush rose up to Hinata’s cheeks. It could be due to anger or due to embarrassment (unfortunately, she was no way of telling which). As a ninja, Hinata should have felt indignant for what he had said. As a girl, she would have to say that she always had been bit frightened of him.

With the spotlight trained on her most unbecomingly, Hinata’s insides squirmed.

“I’m… I’m not.”

“You’re not,” Sasuke replied wryly. Even a fool would have been able to realize that he certainly did not believe her. Still, Hinata stuck to her answer.

“No.”

“You shouldn’t. I don’t bite.”

Hinata’s imagination went on overdrive at that moment. As though a large, high resolution television has been rolled right in front of her, Hinata saw vividly the picture of Sasuke bending down, lips wide apart, to prey on her poor, hapless neck.

Hinata gulped.

“Look,” Sasuke said as he set her down in her feet and subsequently pushed her up against a tree. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you, right?”

“Right,” she croaked.

Sasuke grunted, then, heaved a long, suffering breath.

“I would never.”

“Okay.” Hinata nodded weakly. Or giddily. She wasn’t sure which.

“I just want that to be clear.”

Again, Hinata nodded. “Yes.”

“Good.” Sasuke’s voice dropped a bit lower as he leaned closer to her. He didn’t make any eye contact though, but had for some reason took an odd interest on the tree bark just above her shoulders.

All these time, Hinata had been expecting for the feeling of suffocation to come. With Sasuke pinning her against the tree, his left hand resting on trunk of the tree beside her waist, their unclothed bodies barely touching—Hinata should have felt cornered and should have been searching for a means to escape. But she didn’t. Up close, Sasuke seemed safe enough.

“You like Naruto,” Sasuke said suddenly. In fact, this came so out of the blue, so out of the spur of the moment that Hinata completely blanked out for a full five-second period.

“Uh…”

Sasuke frowned. Not waiting for her to elaborate on her answer, he said matter-of-factly, “In a way, I am similar to Naruto.”

Hinata didn’t know where Sasuke and his statement were going to (she didn’t even have the slightest idea where he picked this statement from) and if she was to find out their conclusion, she really shouldn’t contradict Sasuke and his (God-knows-where-it-came-from) statement. But the law of supreme of Nature screamed at her to do so.

And she did.

“No. You’re not.”

Unbelievably, a low rumbling chuckle came out of him. Hinata was willing to slap herself just to check and see if she was dreaming but Sasuke quieted down all too quickly. With undue seriousness now, he directed his eyes to her and stared at for the longest while.

He opened his mouth as a blush started (again?) to spread on his cheeks. Obviously, he was to say something, just that the arrival of the one person Hinata was not totally expecting cut Sasuke off.

‘Hinata-sama!”

Neji, the person whom her father appointed to be her guardian since that day her father began grooming her to be the next head of the Hyuuga houses, flew over to them. By the looks on his face, Hinata could tell that he is furious, scandalized, and, well, furious.

“What in the freaking hell are you doing to Hinata-sama!” Neji-niisan yellered as he shoved Sasuke on his shoulder.

Fearing that an all out fight would break out, Hinata placed herself between them, arms extended to each of their chests.

“Sasuke was escorting me home, Niisan.” She said hastily, her words stumbling upon each other.

“You’re naked!” Neji thundered, stating the most obvious. “How the hell did you get naked?!” He grasped her by the shoulder, dragged her to his side and shook her.

“Did Uchiha do this to you? Tell me Hinata-sama!”

“Niisan! He did not!” She gasped, quite shocked by what her cousin implied.

Neji-niisan shot a nasty glance at Sasuke despite her claim and took hold of her wrist.

“So you say, Hinata-sama. But I will get to the root of this. You!” He pointed a finger at Sasuke’s direction, contempt oozing from every pore of him. “I don’t want you anywhere near my cousin!”

“Or?” Sasuke challenged.

Neji’s nostrils enlarged visibly. With his mouth stretched into a line drawn by a 0.2 tipped fountain pen, he replied, “Or I will kick your sorry ass and castrate you.”

Sasuke snorted, apparently unconvinced by Neji’s threat. “How about we try that right now?”

Frantic, Hinata shot both Neji and Sasuke desperate glances. When no one heeded her unspoken plea for a truce, she stepped up between them and tried to become the mediator once again.

“How about we all just go home?” She proposed in the calmest voice she could generate as she clasped her hands behind her. She sought Neji’s yes so she could easily beg him to acquiesce, but he would not look at her. His eyes were fully directed at Sasuke, sizing him up like meat he desired to get quartered, cubed, and then, grounded to a meal.

Seeing that she would not get anywhere with her cousin, Hinata shifted her attention to Sasuke. Unlike Neji, she did not have any problems getting Sasuke to spare her his notice this time. The second she looked in his direction, her eyes collided with his.

“I can take you home,” he said as though replying to something she had asked of him.

Hinata automatically blushed as the feeling of being disconcerted and speechlessness came over hee due to 1) Sasuke’s words and 2) the way he was staring at her. Now Hinata was not very intelligent when it comes to words with double-meaning. However, what Sasuke said hit her with such force that it split apart and her brain translated each of these individual thoughts into their own connotations: 1) take you home to his house and 2) take you home to your house.

Hinata was rooted to the spot. Much like what Sasuke did before, she worked her mouth up and down, quite undecided whether to say, “No, thank you.” And “okay.” Sasuke waited for her expectantly but she didn’t get as far as letting a whisper of breath out of her lips. A cloth that was slipped over her head obscured her vision and impeded her mouth from speaking. After only a moment of shock did she realized Neji was dressing her up with his shirt.

“Would you quite staring at my cousin’s breasts?” Neji snarled as he continued to pull the shirt down to her torso. Hinata could feel her face flaming. When Neji was done, Hinata ducked her head down to hide the evidence of her embarrassment and tried to appear as small as possible.

“I am not staring, “ Sasuke said, denying the obvious flippantly. “It’s called getting entranced by the captivating view.”

Mortification. Hinata would have gladly died on the piece of forest ground she was standing on. However her concern for both Neji’s and Sasuke’s health overrode her need to kick the bucket. Compared to some people, Hinata cared about the future relationship of the Hyuuga and the Uchiha families and she would rather not mar it with this very, very silly event.

(Sasuke thinks her breasts are captivating?)

Hoping to save their family’s future by preventing the escalation of this verbal argument to a contest of how brutal man’s capacity to fight could be, Hinata summoned all her strength, ducked her head down, hauled Sasuke on her shoulders and whisked Sasuke away by teleporting to the one place she and only she has a knowledge of.

She would just sort this out with Neji later.

Hopefully.

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Hi! Sorry this took so long. I kinda got sick (got hospitalized, overworked running for a promotion which I didn’t get by the way). Anyways, this is the best that I could come up with…more delays in later chapter…will over work myself again because I need to get promoted!!!!!!!

Thanks for reading…