Sealed

Sealed
VIII

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Author: Ms. Trick

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Note: Reviews make my life. No seriously.

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Chapter 8

“The entire district burned down?!” Sakura shrieked incredulously.

“You’re kidding,” Temari said, eyes wide. “That’s no accident. That’s blatant sabotage.”

“Oh when I find the bastard who did this...” Sakura fumed, pounding a hand into the other.

Sasuke saw the laughter bubbling up inside and threatening to spill out of Naruto. He nonchalantly knocked the blonde sideways.

“What the hell?” Naruto hollered, righting himself.

Sasuke’s glare spoke volumes. More volumes than usual. And Sakura figured Team 7 was as fixed at it had ever been.

Kakashi appeared out of nowhere, which was getting less impressive every day. Before he had even opened his mouth, Temari and Sakura were waving goodbye, claiming they needed the day to prepare and that they’d see them all that evening.

The three males watched speechless as the two waltzed off, giggling happily.

“I’m kinda happy I didn’t have to marry a girl,” Naruto said.

“Mm,” Sasuke said by way of agreement.

“Well,” Kakashi said with a cough. “I’ll be training with Sasuke today. So Naruto you--”

“--can have the day off?”

“--can help Kiba with the Inuzuka bridge.”

“Shoot.”

- - - - -

“Sasuke wouldn’t sleep with you, huh?” Temari said as soon as they were out of earshot of the bridge.

Sakura stopped in her tracks. “What?”

“Isn’t that what you did last night? Get one last lay in before the shackles of marriage are set?”

“No. That’s...that’s not what I did at all.”

“It’s okay. I mean, you’re a bit young I guess.”

“Sasuke is Naruto’s. He’s Naruto’s husband...Gah, there’s Ino,” Sakura said, spotting the blond girl across the street.

“Right, right,” Temari said, shifting her fan slightly. As she wandered away she called out, “I’ll see you tonight.”

“Sakura!” Ino singsonged giddily as she approached. “I have a fabulous idea!”

The pink-haired girl watched her fiancée’s back for a split second before being effectively distracted by girl talk. She linked arms with her best friend and they sauntered down the street towards the Yamanakas’ shop.

“Okay, so I’m having a plum/lavender theme and I know we were thinking of doing cherry blossoms for you ‘cause it’d be cute, but the petals fall off so easily, and then I thought ‘why not just go original?’ I think it’ll really work for you! Your kimono’s magenta, right?”

“Yeah. Uh...Original? Meaning what?” Sakura asked, marvelling at the amount of thought Ino put into this.

“White, duh! I think we should put your hair up with white roses instead. AND why don’t we string pearls in too?”

Sakura grinned, the excitement buzzing in her veins. She was getting married. This was her big day and it was finally starting to feel like it, despite the fact that she wasn’t marrying her dream guy.

The two girls gossiped while they admired and selected several of the lush white roses from the multitude basking happily in the sunshine out front of the flower shop.

Ino slyly admitted that she had already gotten Shikamaru to kiss her once or twice.

Sakura mentioned that Temari and she had a sort of silent agreement that since children weren’t really expected of a female couple, they didn’t need to do anything all that intimate.

“She’s not too bad looking though,” Ino said sideways.

“Ino!”

“Whaaaat?” The blonde asked innocently. “I’m just saying that if you have to play for the other team, at least you got paired with a hottie.”

“Easy for you to say,” Sakura grumbled. “You’re marrying a guy.”

“Nah, just Shikamaru. His parents and mine decided that we were too young to move into our own place but after the wedding we’re expected to spend some time with each other every day. It probably won’t be too bad. It’s kinda like just being on the same team again.”

- - - - -

“Ne, Kiba, don’t you have cousins or something to do this?”

The Inuzuka boy heard Naruto’s voice along with a watery shuffle from the blonde’s position in the river.

Naruto and Lee were both holding up the half of the bridge that had been completed by standing in the stream, whose waters came above waist level. That is, Lee’s waist. Naruto was nearly up to his armpits in meandering muddy water.

On the bank opposite them, Kiba and Hinata were quickly finishing assembling the other half of the bridge out of wooden logs. The stream wasn’t very wide--no problem for a ninja to simply leap over. But his mom wanted a bridge and Kiba wasn’t going to argue.

“Naruto-kun! Treat this as a special form of training!” Lee said, enthusiasm not tapered by the fact that he had had his arms over his head for over five minutes.

“Almost done, Naruto-kun!” Hinata called out, holding the last log in place as Kiba nailed it to the rest of the structure.

Kiba let the two large nails he was holding between his teeth drop into his hand.

“We’re the village’s special pursuit division,” he called out to answer the soggy Naruto while he hammered. “My cousins’re always off on long missions to other countries. It’s only Nee-chan here now and even she’ll be off soon.”

“That’s awesome!” Naruto yelled above the sounds of the water and the construction, his tiredness forgotten for the moment. “Do you ever go on missions like that?

“Well...once. But Akamaru ‘n’ I are still training,” Kiba said, putting the hammer in the grass next to him and sparing a fond glance at the little white dog, who was snoozing in the shade of nearby tree next to their pile of coats.

“Alright!” Kiba called, hefting the half-bridge right way up.

With Hinata’s help, he carried it to the water’s edge. Kiba waded into the water and took much the same position as Naruto and Lee, holding the structure over his head. He made his way through the flowing water until he could fit the two sides of the bridge together.

Lee speedily moved out from under the bridge to retrieve the hammer and several nails from the grassy bank. Then he zipped back into the water and began to securely fasten the bellies of the two parts of the bridge from underneath.

“There had to have been a better way to do this...” Naruto muttered to himself.

When Lee was done he tossed the hammer to Hinata, who was standing on shore in her t-shirt, and then rejoined the other two in supporting the structure. Hinata, weighing the least and being the most dainty on her feet, had been elected to be the one to secure the bridge from the topside.

The three boys barely heard her footsteps as she quickly made her way to the centre of the unstable bridge.

“Aren’t you supposed to be working with Sasuke?” Kiba grunted out, his feet shifting in the water.

“He has his sharingan training with Kakashi-sensei today,” Naruto said, a little short of breath. His arms were killing him. He shot an envious look at Lee, who may as well have been relaxing with Akamaru.

“How’s uh...being married to him?” Kiba said with a tame grin.

“Not too different.”

Naruto thought of when he’d first learned of the engagement, how annoyed he’d been to be stuck with the bastard. It was one thing to have to be on the same ninja squad as him, but having to spend his life with him? He had spent hours fuming about it.

But now, it was becoming everyday--like Hinata’s facial markings, like the Uchiha fan on his shoulder, like Temari being around. Naruto was strongly reminded of how pissed off he’d been when he’d learned he was to be on Sasuke’s team. But after all...he’d gotten over that quick enough.

“F-finished!” Hinata’s voice called as she sped off the little bridge.

The three boys gingerly lowered their arms. When they were sure the bridge wasn’t going to collapse on their heads, they allowed themselves to float out from under it and pull themselves onto the grass.

Naruto flopped down in a patch of warm noon sunshine, several drops of water flying onto Akamaru, who dragged a paw over his nose and woke up with a large yawn. Kiba sprawled out on the ground too, using the three coats as a pillow, a sigh of relief escaping him. Hinata sat down on his other side, trying to act like she had unconsciously sought her husband’s side rather than Naruto’s.

Lee however, stood above them, eying the completed bridge for a minute, before bidding them goodbye.

“The group from Suna is to arrive soon and I told Gaara I’d be there to greet them with him. So farewell my hardworking companions,” the spandex-clad boy said before jogging along the dirt path through the yellow blossoms laden in the Inuzuka fields.

They all watched him go, so Hinata’s expansive vision meant she was the first to notice the figure making its way out of the dense forest on the other side of the stream. She stood and the two boys followed suit once they realised someone was approaching.

“Yo,” Sasuke called, making his way over the new bridge, his hands in his pockets nonchalantly.

Akamaru bared his teeth, a growl vibrating in his throat. Sasuke paused a few yards in front of the other three, a lightly disdainful look pointed at the dog.

Kiba frowned, tilted his nose up, and inhaled deeply. “You’re right. He’s smells...off.”

“That’s not Sasuke,” Naruto stated firmly.

Hinata, Kiba, and ‘Sasuke’ all looked at him, puzzled.

“H-how can you be sure?” Hinata asked, her eyes glancing back and forth between the two.

“Hey! What happened to your Uzumaki spiral? Huh, Sasuke?” Naruto hollered.

The split second of confusion was all it took. The three genin and the nin-dog shifted into fighting stances.

The imitation had been perfect except for that one detail: the Uzumaki emblem missing from the left sleeve. ‘Sasuke’ appeared surprised at being found out so quickly, but then a vicious smirk spread over his face. And it wasn’t the smirk Naruto knew.

“You’ve gotten better, Naruto-kun,” a chillingly familiar voice drawled.

“Orochimaru...” Naruto seethed as a blast of grey smoke swallowed up the impostor.

It then cleared to reveal the snake sannin standing before them with a horrendous smile on his face. Hinata eyed the bandages encasing both his arms. Though they were a clear indication of a grotesque injury, they didn’t make him any less frightening. She wished she was wearing her coat but didn’t dare reach down to pick it up.

“You’re not getting Sasuke, you bastard!” Naruto snarled, raising a kunai.

“Naruto-kun,” Orochimaru mocked, taking a few steps forward. “You should know that’s not how it works. The time isn’t right for Sasuke-kun...But he will come to me, I guarantee it.”

“Hah. What do you know?” Naruto crowed with more bravado than he felt.

The kunai hurled at the sannin’s face was easily dodged. And then he shot forward like a snake lunging at prey.

A few quick hand seals transformed Akamaru into Kiba’s beastly twin. The two stood side by side, their teeth and claws bared, ready for a fight. They stepped forward and a double gatsuuga spiralled in a helix towards Orochimaru’s lithe form as he flew toward them, low to the ground.

The sannin snapped his fiendishly long tongue out of his mouth. It wrapped around the ankle of one of the half-beasts in mid-attack and effortlessly hurled it into its lookalike. The two were flung backwards onto the ground in a heap. Akamaru returned to his regular form with a pop and a yip of pain. Kiba sat up with a growl.

“Taijuu Kage Bunshin no Jutsu!”

The riverbanks were suddenly very crowded and Orochimaru eyed the hundred blonde clones with mild amusement. They all attacked at once and the sannin opened his mouth wide to reveal the hissing snake lurking there. The snake in turn coughed up a glinting sword and Orochimaru spun, slicing and kicking clones until the air was filled with smoke from their dissipation.

Another drilling gatsuuga raced towards him and at the same time, a cry of “Rasengan!” came from behind. Orochimaru smirked around the sword sticking out of his mouth and swung his head around, slashing through Naruto’s arm.

The rasengan spiralled out as it lost chakra, merely becoming a breeze, and Naruto grunted, clutching at the wound, which had begun to bleed a great deal. With a kick, Orochimaru sent the blonde to the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him and make lights flash in front of his eyes. An equally vicious kick struck Kiba across the face and took him out of the fight.

Hinata gasped, hands flying to her mouth. Naruto unsteadily climbed to his feet, still cradling his badly slashed arm and glancing at Kiba’s crumpled body. He raised the good arm and sprinted to meet Orochimaru head on as the older ninja raced towards Kiba.

Naruto barely managed to dodge the stab at his chest, instead landing another would-be-fatal wound to his side but managing to leave a nasty claw mark across the sannin’s face. Naruto didn’t have time to wonder at what point in the fight he’d started accessing Kyuubi’s chakra.

Orochimaru hissed and then, without warning, zipped around the surprised Naruto and made a beeline for Hinata.

Her eyes widened in fear and she remained frozen until the last second, when her training kicked in. She quickly raised her arms with the intention of attacking the tenketsu but it was too late. Orochimaru deftly avoided her hands and swiftly sank his fangs into her neck.

“Hinata!” Naruto yelled.

He suddenly fell to his knees. The copious blood loss from the two major wounds was making the world tilt nauseatingly. He collapsed to the ground in a dizzy whirl and watched helplessly as Orochimaru pulled back. His heart constricted as Hinata started howling in pain.

A dark seal bubbled up to mar the pale skin above her t-shirt collar, and she clutched at it mindlessly, blinded by the pain sending daggers through her entire body. She couldn’t think. She knew there was an enemy but she was in too much agony to care. Tears streamed out of her eyes. She opened her mouth and screamed again.

Orochimaru turned from her as she fell to the ground, writhing and crying. Kabuto moved out of the forest to meet him.

“Are we going to take her with us now?” He asked dispassionately.

“We have the time to wait. I feel this will only work if the girl comes to me of her own volition. And, like Sasuke-kun, she will without a doubt.”

Kabuto nodded and as Orochimaru melted into the ground, he calmly ran through a series of seals and vanished in a puff of smoke, leaving the prone bodies of three genin behind.

Akamaru was panting harshly from where he’d landed. He pulled himself up, wheezing, and loped towards the unmoving Kiba. He made it within a few feet of the boy before lying down with a whimper. Sniffing the air, Akamaru’s tail gave a small wag when he found him to be alive.

Naruto too was struggling to move. Though he could feel the thick gashes in his side and arm already beginning to heal, he was still bleeding heavily. Nevertheless, he managed to crawl towards Hinata. Her sudden silence was frightening him and she was lying still and cold like a corpse, her white eyes unseeing.

He made it to her side, gasping air into his battered body. He hovered over Hinata’s small frame and noted the deep bite mark oozing a steady trickle of blood. He pressed two bloody fingers to her neck and found her pulse jolting erratically. He eyed the thick black tomoe emblazoned in the centre of her chest, morosely thought of Sasuke’s, and passed out in a heap next to the girl apparently mesmerized by the sky.

- - - - -

Naruto didn’t have to open his eyes to know he was at the hospital. The smell alone was as distinct as you could get. Not to mention the constant dull hum of the fluorescent lights.

He burrowed into the hospital bed’s white sheets, squeezing his eyes shut further. The curtain sectioning his bed off from the rest of the floor ruffled but he pretended to be asleep. He heard the person take a position standing against the window and felt eyes on him.

Sasuke folded his arms. He knew the blonde was awake. But he knew better than anyone what it felt like to not want to talk. He’d let Naruto have his silence.

Naruto peeked through the covers and met Sasuke’s dark eyes. An immense feeling of guilt and powerlessness swept through him. He couldn’t protect Hinata...If it had been Sasuke instead...If Orochimaru had wanted Sasuke, he could have just taken him. Naruto wouldn’t have been able to do anything at all.

Naruto clenched his fists and wet his dry lips. He looked at Sasuke questioningly. “Hinata?” He asked in a croak.

Sasuke looked out the window stiffly.

“She’s here. She’s got Orochimaru’s seal on her though.”

Naruto sat up slowly, noting that Kyuubi hadn’t fully healed his arm or his side yet and that his torso was liberally looped with bandages. He stared at Sasuke, who was staring moodily out the window at the darkening shapes of Konoha.

“You’re jealous,” Naruto concluded dully.

Sasuke’s jaw tightened but he was freed from answering when Sakura appeared at the foot of Naruto’s bed in a rush.

She was a vision in her beautiful deep magenta kimono. Her obi was a delicate pink and the kimono itself was embroidered with pale lavender flowers. Her hair was exquisitely pinned up with white roses and small strings of pearls. Her eyes were red from tears that, from the looks of it, were still coming.

“Sakura-chan...” Naruto said, surprised.

She took a deep breath as she took in his bandaged state. Both boys waited for the hysterics.

“You...lied,” she said at last, with a swipe at her damp cheeks to push away the sobs. In the back of her mind, she was thankful she hadn’t already put on her make-up; she really would’ve looked a mess then. She put her hands on her hips and looked at the blonde defiantly.

“You said you’d definitely be coming to my wedding. And here you are, just lying in the hospital like you had no intention of going at all.”

She tried to glare but her mock anger dissipated as a fresh wave of tears welled up in her eyes. She glanced at Sasuke and then covered her face with her hands.

“God, when I heard it was Orochimaru...” She broke off.

On the other side of the curtain, Kiba listened impassively and stared at the ceiling. His fists clenched above the blankets. What kind of husband was he that he couldn’t even protect his wife? Not only that, he’d gotten knocked out before Naruto. Of all people, in front of Hinata...He scowled disgustedly at the ceiling, considering what Hinata must think of him, and what she must be going through now. Tsunade had said that seal was something like poison. If Hinata couldn’t take it...if he lost her...

Kiba sucked in a few panicky breaths and hurriedly sat up. He climbed out of his bed, wincing at the bandages around his head and his middle, and loped tiredly to the door to his room.

“Kiba-kun...?” Sakura’s worried voice followed him into the hallway but he ignored it.

He clutched at his painful ribs and put a hand on the wall to steady himself. He continued forwards, around a corner, and directly into the Shizune.

“Kiba-kun!” She exclaimed. “What are you doing out of bed?”

“Where’s Hinata?” He said, slightly short of breath.

Shizune hesitated.

“Please,” he wheezed out, his teeth grit against his body’s protests.

Shizune looked at him for a minute and then nodded.

“This way.”

She put an arm around his shoulders and then encouraged him to hold onto her waist as means of support. Together they made it to a secluded room on the hospital’s top floor. The dark-haired medic nin reached out and opened the door.

Kiba swallowed when he saw the various monitors hooked up to the single, lonely bed in the middle of the room. Hinata lay on top of the starched white sheets, groaning and sweating. She was unconscious but regardless, her body was trapped in restlessness. Her small hands fisted and unclenched, her head swung back and forth, her toes dug into the mattress, her pale face grimaced, her mouth gasped in air like a fish.

Shizune gingerly released Kiba and then rushed to the girl’s side, double checking the medical kanji inscribed on the white strips hung like bridges from the monitors to the goosebump-covered skin of Hinata’s arms and legs. Kiba was frozen, his own physical pain forgotten. His legs felt like dead weight and his mind was blank. He felt helpless and guilty because of it.

Shizune gasped as the seal, ugly and dark above Hinata’s t-shirt collar, started to leak wisps of vicious purple chakra. At the sight of it, panic seized Kiba’s chest again.

“Hinata?! Hinata!”

- - - - -

Glowing. Everything was glowing. Glowing white. Hyuuga white.

/Where am I?/

Hinata squinted at the bright surroundings and a faint sound reached her ears. She turned and noticed a younger girl crying softly into her hands, curled into a tight foetal position about ten paces from her.

/Who...? Me. Younger me./ Hinata noted, bewildered.

“I’ll...never amount to anything. I’ll...die just like my weak mother...” the little girl sobbed harshly, trying to stifle the tears with her little hands as she repeated her father’s words from a day Hinata had tried desperately to forget numerous times.

Hinata’s eyes widened in an abject bolt of fear as she suddenly found herself in the shadowed memory of the Hyuuga dojo. The girl, a minute ago curled in blank space was now huddled on the hard wooden floor, her father standing over her, intimidating, disgusted with her and her tears. The shame and terror of that day, the last day her father trained with her, washed over her as bitter as it had the first time, and every time she thought of it.

“...because I didn’t have enough power,” Hinata’s younger self whimpered as Hiashi walked steadily out of the dojo without looking back.

“If you don’t have power, you can’t do anything! Because I didn’t have power, Father turned his back on me...No...”

The young Hinata’s voice hardened as she slowly lifted herself into a crouch, her fingers digging into the floor. Hinata watched and listened, her eyes glimmering with fright

“No...you let him turn your back on you...” The little girl accused, glaring up at her older self from the floor. “You just cried like a weakling...”

Hinata trembled as the girl’s voice suddenly shifted into a dark hiss. Her eyes glowed an inhuman yellow in the dark shadows of the memory.

“If only you had power...” Her younger self offered in a slithering voice quite unlike her own.

“Power...” Hinata’s trembling stopped as she mumbled the word absently to herself.

She thought of how Kiba would be burdened with protecting her until he undoubtedly got himself killed, how Naruto would never even recognize her existence until she proved her worth, how her father’s pride was so out of her reach unless something drastic occurred.

The word ‘power’ slunk through her mind with its usual attributes of ‘unattainable’ but then...suddenly it wasn’t...Suddenly...

- - - - -

Shizune’s eyes widened as the purple chakra started to escape out of Hinata’s tenketsus like plumes of smoke. Then the wisps suddenly darkened and twisted around the girl’s form like snakes until her entire body was engulfed in them.

Suddenly, the poisonous chakra erupted out of her in a spiralling column that scorched the ceiling, cocooning Hinata in its thick, shadowed centre. Shizune flung her arms up in a protective cross in front of her and backed away until she found herself next to Kiba, who was gaping at the scene in horror.

Her dark form seemed to flicker on, as though small light bulbs had been cast across her body, as the seal spread to cover her face, neck, shoulders, and upper arms. It burned itself into her skin like glowing embers as she slowly stood.

Her feet hit the ground and Kiba hunkered down as the toxic chakra flew around the hospital room in a whirlwind, slamming the monitors to the floor and scattering bandages everywhere.

Shizune approached her patient again, trying to convince her to lie back down in a calming voice. As she got closer to the girl, Shizune saw that her Byakugen had been activated and the curse seal patterning her upper body was a sinister black. It was splashed across her face, overlaying the Inuzuka fangs.

“Lie down? Why? I feel...strong,” she said, tilting her head to take in the print on the skin of her arms above the elbow. A very un-Hinata-like smirk graced her countenance.

“I understand now,” she continued, her soft voice steady. “I won’t be weak anymore. With this power, I don’t need to be.”

Then Hinata knew with terrible certainty that she’d do anything to keep this power, to not be the weakling everyone knew her as.

Kiba stared. This wasn’t Hinata. This wasn’t his team mate, his wife. This wasn’t the girl he loved.

Shizune stealthily slid a syringe into the girl’s shoulder. She managed to inject most of the dosage but before Hinata succumbed to it, she shrieked in shock and a blast of chakra knocked Shizune back into a wall. Then the dark-haired girl fell to her knees. Kiba raced forward and caught her before she hit the floor face-first. He gazed at her worriedly, watching the seal retreat to its place on the pale skin between her collar bones.

“This isn’t good. Her chakra is completely different from before,” Shizune panted, coming to stand next to him. But she didn’t have to tell Kiba that. His enhanced sense of smell had already informed him.

- - - - -

Sakura twiddled her fingers as Naruto sat on his bed next to the pile of recently removed ace bandage, gingerly bending over to pull on his shoes. Sasuke hadn’t moved from his position by the open window.

“I was just kidding,” Sakura said anxiously. “Naruto, you’re wounded. I’m not making you come to my wedding wounded.”

“Nonsense,” Naruto said happily as he stood up. “I dare you to find a wound on me.”

He held out his arms and spun in a circle. Sakura frowned slightly--Naruto was right. There weren’t any signs of injury on his body at all, not a bruise or scratch. But those bandages hadn’t been there for nothing. She eyed the stains on them with confusion but decided to dismiss it for now. She had seen stranger things than a fast healer after all.

“Are you going to Gaara and Lee’s wedding tomorrow?” She asked, looking between the Uchiha-Uzumakis.

Sasuke shrugged. “Probably.”

“It’ll be awesome to see what happens when Lee’s crazy old grandfather meets Kankurou and his stern bodyguards,” Naruto said gleefully, tugging on his jacket.

“Oi, Naruto,” a voice suddenly called from the window.

Sasuke started at Jiraiya’s sudden appearance behind him and moved out of the sannin’s way so the white-haired man could sit down heavily on the window sill.

“Ero-sennin?!” Naruto screeched.

“Naruto...” The sannin started seriously. “I came to talk to you about an important matter. From here on out, you’re officially my apprentice. I’ll be training you one-on-one for three years.”

“Three years?” Naruto asked, puzzled at the specificity of the number.

“When I was investigating Orochimaru’s immortality jutsu, information concerning Akatsuki came to light.”

“Information?” Naruto prompted, the memory of Itachi and Kisame at the door to their hotel room loomed in his mind. He looked to the sannin to continue but Jiraiya shot a glance at the other two

“They can stay,” Naruto stated evenly, meeting Jiraiya’s grave gaze.

“Naruto...” The hermit warned.

“They can STAY.”

Jiraiya glared at him but Naruto wouldn’t budge. Sakura frowned, smart enough to know she wasn’t being told something. Sasuke had already guessed (correctly) at the reason for the apprehension. Eventually the old ninja sighed in defeat.

“The Akatsuki won’t be after you for at least three or four years.”

Naruto thought for a minute. “That doesn’t matter. We have to go after Orochimaru before he comes after anyone else!”

Jiraiya chuckled. “I already know why he wants Sasuke and now the Hyuuga girl.”

“Inuzuka,” Sakura corrected quietly.

“You know?” Naruto asked, blue eyes big and expectant.

Sasuke tensed.

“Like I said, I was investigating Orochimaru’s immortality jutsu. He can’t transfer to another body for three years or so. And he got impatient while waiting for Sasuke, so he just transferred recently. So for three years it’s alright. We have time.”

“Really?” Naruto said gleefully, oblivious to the shadowed, pensive look in Sasuke’s dark eyes.

“Though I’d forget about attacking Orochimaru. Akatsuki is your main opponent,” Jiraiya said sternly.

Sakura bit her lip, wondering if she should ask what she didn’t know. But she was getting the sneaking suspicion that she specifically wasn’t supposed to know something.

“What? No way!” Naruto exclaimed. “I’m going after that creepy snake as soon as I get a little stronger. Hinata deserves justice. Sasuke deserves justice!”

“Baka,” Sasuke muttered, irritated the blonde thought himself something of the dark haired boy’s avenger.

“What if Orochimaru had captured you today? And used you to bargain with Akatsuki?” Jiraiya snapped angrily. His white hair seemed to bristle with his attitude.

Naruto blinked. “Bargained for what?”

“...me,” Sasuke supplied broodingly.

A small gasp escaped Sakura and Naruto jolted, surprised. That hadn’t even crossed his mind.

“Think about it, you little brat,” Jiraiya continued. “Even though they’re on bad terms, the Akatsuki would happily kidnap Sasuke to trade him to Orochimaru for you. You’d play right into their hands. If you want to help Hinata and Sasuke, you’ve got to keep away from Orochimaru as well as the Akatsuki.”

Sasuke’s hands fisted. He did NOT need help.

“But after my wedding right?” Sakura said in a small voice, nervously twisting her hands together, not daring to ask why the Akatsuki wanted her blonde team mate. Though if she had to guess, she’d assume it was because of the oddly large stores of chakra inside him. She spared a short glance at the pool of bandages still on the bed.

Jiraiya and Naruto turned to look at her. Though standing in her wedding outfit, Sakura had never seemed more like a little girl at that moment.

Both offered her a reassuring smile.

“When you leave the hospital, get ready,” Jiraiya said in parting, and then left the same way he entered, through the window, onto the back of a giant toad.

- - - - -

Hinata woke up curled on her side, the curse seal quiet and deceptively harmless. Her eyes opened and closed, but even her bloodline limit wasn’t helping her comprehend sight at this point. She knew there was someone sitting on her bed. And behind the figure was a sheer white curtain with several shadows muttering on the other side of it.

Tsunade’s low voice seemed to be querying a panel of people. Hinata could barely hear the questions she was pressing to Sasuke, Anko, and Sakura--if her ears weren’t wrong--who each then answered, providing some further detail about Orochimaru’s ‘gift’.

Vivid images of what took place before she had been knocked out sprung into her mind in full colour. She felt the snake’s seal weigh heavy on her chest and her eyes filled with tears.

“What was I...?” She whispered in a small, frightened voice.

A warm hand slid into her own and she found Kiba looking down at her worriedly. She gripped back and the tears came a little faster. She didn’t deserve the blatant affection in his eyes.

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” he said, softly.

She shook her head, refusing to be comforted, and bit her lip to stifle the tears. He sidled closer to her, drawing her head into his lap, and cradling her against him. She clung to him.

“Y-you shouldn’t have to take care of me, Kiba. I’m a ninja too. I shouldn’t be so much of a burden,” she mumbled, pressing her wet cheek into his leg.

“So we’ll train more. You’ll get stronger and then you’ll be the one protecting me,” he said with a short laugh.

She gave him a sad smile and squeezed her eyes shut, hugging him a little tighter. He tucked a dark strand of hair behind her ear and knew that, as back up he’d make himself stronger too. Kiba had overheard about the three year period of relative peace they’d have. By the end of it, he decided, he would be powerful enough to destroy Orochimaru.

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