Archive of Our Own

“Remember, you’ve done this hundreds of times before. Except for the part where you’re entirely on your own. That part, well, okay, that’s a little new.”

Hinata does not roll her eyes, but it’s a close thing. She does, however, hear Shino sigh through her comm device. She keeps her fingertips pressed to the miniscule apparatus in her ear, making sure the words are as clear as possible, even though she’s still in the boat. The roar of the motor is a muted hum in her mind, almost lost to her conscious awareness; not with how used to it she is.

“Thanks, Kiba-kun.”

“No problem.” There’s a smile in his voice, one that’s infectious and leaks right through their isolated line and lifts the corners of her lips. “I packed your mission apparel and left it in the usual spot. You can thank me later.”

“Alright,” she says, in lieu of thanking him now. “Do I get a hint?”

Shino cuts in with a single word: “Loud.”

Kiba snorts over the line as Hinata crouches at the lip of the stern, eyes sifting over the glistening waves of the ocean tossing all around her, catching every beam of light and reflecting it up at her like an offering. With such a brilliant proposition, how could she ever refuse? She reaches for the zipper on her chest and brings it up just beneath her chin, before pulling her hood up and over the coil of her hair, secured against her skull. The suit fits her skin snugly, leaving nothing to the imagination, and the goggles and oxygen mask that accompany the getup only add to its flare.

“Shino, you wore a Hawaiian shirt last time you were supposed to be undercover. It was bright pink. It had neon green palm trees on it. And you still wanna say this one is loud?”

“You said blend—I blended.”

“You were at an extremely affluent governor’s dinner party; you blended about as well as a cheeseburger in a basket of fruits.”

“That’s one of the best allusions I think I’ve heard you make,” Shino responds dryly, causing Kiba to growl over the line. Hinata, amused as she is, has already slipped fully into her role of infiltration agent, and as such, she finds herself interrupting their playful banter.

“Control, I’m preparing to submerge.”

Kiba’s professionalism is instantaneous. “Aye aye, operative. Switching over to mission parameters. Please advise: the target has employed underwater defensive measures around the perimeter of his property. I’ve uploaded their locations on your radar. Steer clear of them and remain undetected.”

“Understood.”

She listens intently as Kiba relays the precise coordinates of her destination, the distance between it and her, and finally, the promise of an oncoming storm.

“It’s a doozy—looks to be a few hours out, but it will definitely be crashing your party.”

Hinata eyes the encroaching clouds above her warily, notes the darkness of them, and how they seem filled to bursting. She responds with a simple, “Acknowledged.”

“She’s so professional,” Kiba suddenly laughs, and is instantly scolded by Shino’s low tone. Hinata snorts.

“Anyways. Command will be assuming radio silence until you breach the perimeter of the pickup location. Predicted reconnection—two hours and fifteen minutes…don’t be late.”

Even though Hinata’s heart fills with warmth at the last, her voice is steady when she responds. “Acknowledged, Control.”

She has a moment to allow herself to feel the pressure in her chest, the fondness for her team, for their efficiency, for how much they care about her. There’s so much respect between them, so much that they had only expressed minimal concern about her being assigned a solo mission, rather than their usual group operation. However, they are her boys. And they do worry.

Once she reaches her desired destination, the closest she can get to her target in the inconspicuous boat supplied by headquarters, the captain slows it down and cuts the motor. She pushes her Diver Propulsion Device into the choppy waves and submerges behind it in one quick drop, and it’s all too familiar for her to even pay it much attention when she activates the DPD and accesses the navigational control. In seconds, she’s propelling through the water, too deep to be anything more than a passing shadow under the surface.

She breathes deeply and slowly as she propels through the water, eyes focused and intent on her navigation system. It’ll be two hours before she reaches the safe house.

She holds on tight, lets her muscles stay loose, and she settles in for the ride.

✧

Hinata runs her fingers lightly through her bangs once more, ruffling them slightly to add the barest hint of disarray. Her hair, tucked back into a delicate, twisted chignon over her nape, is held loosely enough to express a sort of carelessness in her preparation. She doesn’t want to look too put together, too in control of her appearance. She applies nude lipstick and a blush equally as fair, and touches each row of eyelashes with mascara. Her eyelids are bare of glitter, sheen, or shine; she only added nude and rose eye shadow to each to give her an innocent glow.

The gown that Kiba had chosen is, in fact, loud—but it is also breathtakingly gorgeous, and totally her style. She’s pleased that it’s not garish, as some of Kiba’s other choices have been. There’s an abundance of fine lines in the duty of an undercover agent, and trying too hard to blend by sticking out ostentatiously only works in a few circumstances.

No, she’d much rather walk into the lion’s den in a gown such as this, a strapless sweetheart cut that emphasizes the steep tuck of her waist, in a shade of black deeper than any night sky she’s ever seen, with an overlying layer of delicate, glistening black lace.

She looks a galaxy yet undiscovered, intriguing and mysterious.

She only hopes she remains that way by the end of the night.

Swiping a nail under the fine line of her lipstick to make sure her application is seamless, she hears Kiba muttering something over the line about pizza delivery. Her stomach growls in response, and she promises herself that she’ll indulge in a few proffered appetizers once she makes the party. It won’t be long, now.

While she is in fact entirely on her own, a combination of Shino’s technological hacking skills hyping her name in just the right circles, with just enough exposure, had allotted her an invitation to one Uchiha Madara’s dinner party. Madara isn’t a man inclined to inviting people into his personal space, let alone one of his many homes, for just any old reason. He has to have a reason, and it has to be a good one, and it usually tells of something to distract the public from what he’s really doing behind the scenes.

This wouldn’t be much of an issue, if what he was hiding were anything less than biological weapons, and spending most of his time with some pretty affluent world leaders in favor of some pretty horrific things. Of course, none of this is public knowledge. In fact, this information isn’t even accessible to the majority of the military.

Hinata’s unit it incredibly specialized, covert, and efficient at what they do. They are one of a mere four teams that have access to Madara’s ideas, propositions, and those he allows into his inner circle. There’s something to be said about a man that’s outspoken about the right to bear arms, running in circles that include world leaders with the power and the capability to turn those arms on innocent people.

Not to mention the Intel that Shino was able to steal from one of Madara’s closest advisors, implicating some awfully serious breaches in public safety, as well as Madara’s own disturbed sense of morality.

Genocide, for instance. Definitely a topic that flags bright and glaring red in circles that Hinata runs in. None of them know how long he’s held ideas of genocide or any of the other atrocious possibilities that some of his personal files had hinted at, nor how prepared he is to act on said notions. But what they do know is that Uchiha Madara is a dangerous man with cruel intentions and just the right kinds of connections to be a viable threat to the safety of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world.

This is, in part, the reason that Hinata is currently on a mission to infiltrate one of his mansions during an innocuous celebratory dinner party. She’d been chosen specifically from HQ because of her degrees in psychology and sociology, as well as her inherent empathy. Undercover work is best suited to those that know how to blend, as Shino had earlier joked.

Well, if there is anyone in the business who knows how to become a fly on the wall, it’s Hyuuga Hinata.

It doesn’t hurt that she has the highest score of emotional intelligence amongst her colleagues and superiors, or that she has an almost uncanny understanding of motive and intention in complete strangers.

It just so happens, however, that Uchiha Madara has similar abilities.

He could not have gotten so far in his plans and hidden them so well without understanding those around him; those for him, and those against him. He displays an uncanny knack for understanding human desire more than all else, and it drives him to manipulate and control everyone he comes into contact with. Hinata has never seen him in person before, which is equal parts daunting and frustrating, considering that the agents of Team 7 have all seen him in person. However, she’d heard plenty of rumors about the man, enough to make her chest feel tight with tension and chills race down her spin.

They say he has eyes like voids, depthless and searing, and once caught, one can never escape them.

Hinata moves through the front door of the safe house and leans against it, breathing deep to calm her mind. Her heart races behind her ribcage, she can feel it in her throat, a rhythmic reminder of her fear.

But she tempers it with practice earned from experience, and by the time the car pulls up in front of her, she has her heart rate under control again. She walks gracefully in her heels, even on the jagged cobblestone path beaten and worn beneath her feet. She slides carefully into the car, ducking low to prevent her hair from scuffing along the heading, and closes the door behind her.

It doesn’t even faze her to see neither a driver nor another person present with her in the car. Shino’s technological abilities are second to none, and controlling a vehicle from countries away is as easy as breathing for him. She trusts him completely, doesn’t startle even as the car’s engine fires up on its own, and the wheel turns and steers her onto the road to head towards Uchiha Madara’s mansion.

She looks out the window and stares up at those baffling clouds, coiling thick and angry, and breathes.

She’s going to get through this.

Alive.

✧

“You couldn’t have parked a little closer to the place?” Kiba’s voice mutters over the channel, and Shino sighs.

Hinata saves him the explanation, hesitating to smile at someone that greets her as they pass. Once out of earshot, she presses a finger against her earpiece and says, “Any closer, Kiba-kun, and one of the guards would’ve noticed that I had no driver. It’s a little suspicious, considering.”

“Ah, well.” Kiba responds, heaving a sigh of his own.

Shino’s car does park itself a ways out from the mansion’s entrance, but there are a slew of other cars already parked with engines and cooling systems whirring. It’s as good a disguise for the distance she requires. She can hear the crackling of some motors, though most are high-end enough to be silent as the grave.

A cheery thought, she thinks, as she walks confidently up the front steps and onto the expansive wrap-around porch, made up entirely of some grand polished stone.

“Nice digs,” Kiba whistles in her ear, and she can’t help but silently agree. She knows that Kiba has the entire house, lands and beachfront all on his computer screens in front of him. He can see her, too, and the familiarity of knowing he’s watching her back makes her feel more confident.

By the time she makes it to the woman standing guard in front of the entrance, a set of massive doors elegantly crafted from what appears to be mahogany, she’s counted at least twenty members of security prowling the perimeter of the property and the house itself. The guards at the front entrance make twenty-four, and Hinata feels her stomach start to turn as she steps up to the woman and offers her a receptive expression.

“Good evening,” she greets politely, not looking away from her, even when she feels at least three others turn to her. The woman glances over her critically, as if to commit her to memory.

She asks, “Name?”

“Mei Ritsuko.”

The woman scans her electronic guest list and Hinata waits patiently for the woman to find her alias. Shino had had a hand in this, too, so there’s no need for Hinata to feel concerned.

“Don’t worry,” Shino whispers anyways, placating as always. She doesn’t react to his words in the slightest.

She glances over at one of the other guards and smiles politely at him, too, not wanting to appear overly focused on standing still. After a long moment, the woman looks up at her again and gives the slightest nod, her gaze critical. It falls behind a mask of professionalism a moment later, as she smiles and gestures inside.

“Welcome, Mei-san. Enjoy your night.”

“You as well,” she responds amiably, moving past the woman with her head held high. She doesn’t sense any sort of movement behind her and makes it into the front room without pause, so she knows that in this stage, at least, she has passed.

“Well done, Hinata.” Kiba praises, tone growing serious. “The front room is gonna be full of guppies and stargazers, but there’s a shitload of guards interspersed. Three to your left, two on the far side of the room, several over by the bar pretending to be drunk already. One of the guards from the front entrance has followed you in but he doesn’t appear overly interested in you as anyone more than a beautiful woman. Yikes. Maybe I did choose the wrong dress.”

“It’s beautiful,” Hinata tells him, pretending to glance around the even more expansive interior of Uchiha Madara’s home. Her eyes catch on the ceiling, curved quaintly in a dome touched with hand-painted artwork. The guard that had followed her in gives her a knowing look, raising his brows when she catches his gaze. She allows a smile to slip through, but casually turns away from him to make her way into the thriving room.

There are suits and dresses everywhere, each of them more intricate and expensive than the last. She’s pleased to see an abundance of black dresses interspersed, and finds that integrating herself into the swelling crowd is easier than she’d originally expected. Kiba is a constant hum in her ear, detailing where enemy agents are and what they’re doing, as well as the coordinates for Uchiha Madara’s closest advisor—her target.

Madara himself is under the radar, so to speak. Not even Shino had been able to get a lock on his position in the building, and had assumed that he had some sort of anti-tech interference module on his person. This, Shino explained, meant that he had some incredibly amped up technology, and someone with Shino’s level of tech experience on his side. Or perhaps, he admitted wryly, even more experience.

Hinata integrates herself into a conversation with two other women and one man with ease. After several minutes of convincing the group that she is in fact a wealthy up-and-comer in the business of selling and trading grandiose works of art around the world, with more than a few nosy jabs into her personal life as such, they open up to her without hesitation.

“Have you ever been to one of Uchiha-san’s parties? They’re simply marvelous.”

“I’d suggest steering clear of the security guards, though,” the man says, cupping his hand around his mouth to shield his lips. Hinata pretends at surprise, eyes widening with curiosity. At this, he continues, saying, “They’re known to be rather pernicious. It’s mostly a temper thing, I believe.”

“Certainly is,” the redhead on Hinata’s left agrees, pursing her lips. She lays a conciliatory hand on Hinata’s elbow. “They’re paranoid, dear. You understand.”

“Ah,” Hinata nods, still appealing to the wide-eyed and innocent persona she’s allotted for this group. While they have been warning her off of the guards, she’s been carefully surveying the room, seeking potential exits, corners, and spaces viable for privacy. She turns her eyes back to her newfound friends and mirrors the man’s earlier gesture, cupping her hand around her lips secretively. “Because he’s so wealthy?”

“Oh, it’s not only the wealth.” The man grins, licking his teeth. “It’s the power. Makes him a lot of enemies, it does.”

“Oh, but this is no place for such talk,” the brunette on Hinata’s right playfully chides, flapping her hand. “Tonight is a night of celebration, after all. Not only was Uchiha-san the youngest CEO with the most influence, but now he’s also the highest paid. In the world!”

“Wow,” Hinata gapes, and her eyes trail over the man’s shoulder for only a moment, quick enough to go unnoticed; yet in that moment, she sees a mysterious flash of yellow across the room. She can’t help but search for it once more, even at the risk of appearing rude to her friends as they converse around her, but the bright streak is gone. It’s pushed from her awareness a moment later when Kiba’s voice suddenly chirps in her ear, a mix of anticipatory and cautioning.

“Ten o’clock.”

Hinata pretends to tuck her bangs behind her left ear and turns with the movement, appearing to be glancing around at all of the elegantly dressed patrons within the room. She notices immediately what Kiba had been warning her about when her eyes land on a stark gaze peering over the room, as dark and unsettling as those distant storm clouds she’d stared at earlier with open apprehension.

She studies the sharp cut of the man’s cheekbones, and the wide-set shoulders that taper off into a sturdy waist beneath his perfectly tailored suit. His perch on the stairs allows him a bird’s eye view of the entire room and all of the activity within it. He doesn’t acknowledge the four others surrounding him, obviously his security detail, though Hinata knows that he rather doesn’t require much protection at all.

Not with his combat skills.

Uchiha Izuna, Madara’s own younger brother and his closest advisor.

Hinata’s target.

“Gotcha,” Kiba whispers.

Hinata turns back to her group and pretends to listen intently to their gossip. She allows her expression to rest on one of serene enjoyment, her smile a gentle slip of a thing across her jaw. Her eyes, soft and beguiling, do not glance back at Uchiha Izuna again.

She had always had better eyesight than anyone she knew, Byakugan aside, and in circumstances such as this, it never failed to come in handy. She watches Uchiha Izuna out of the corner of her eye, never once needing to look at him directly to know his movements, though his expressions remain a mystery; not much of one, however, considering that he’s an Uchiha. They’re known for many things, but facial expressiveness is not one of them.

The staircase he stands perched on leads up along the far wall of the room to the next floor, and has a twin set on the opposite side of the room as well. The sheer size of the front room allows for two staircases to be more than useful, but rather required. After a long moment, he begins to move down the stairs, and Hinata takes a moment to wonder which of the pre-planned attempts she should use to approach him, and if the timing is best now while he’s within her sight.

She considers this, throwing the factors around in her mind, and decides that this place is massive enough for her to lose him easily. And besides, she would much rather approach him now when he only has his security detail around him, rather than Uchiha Madara himself, who she and her team have yet to spot.

“Ah, I think I need to freshen up a little bit,” she explains to her group when the gossip lulls, and receives emphatic encouragement. These people, she thinks with a smile, aren’t really that bad at all. “Please excuse me.”

She moves away from them slowly, in no hurry to find her target for fear of startling any of the countless guards still watching with critical eyes. Simply getting to him is going to be a triumph, considering that he’s surrounded in layers by those who would prevent anyone he didn’t want near him to so much as see him.

Hinata knows how important this mission is; she values the knowledge, because it makes her even more determined to succeed. She’s used to missions like this, with so many lives potentially on the line, including her own. She’s had plenty of experience with tight situations and how to maneuver them and get out alive. Usually, she’s with her team. But this isn’t her first solo operation, and she’s confident in her own abilities.

Even so; it’s still nothing less than daunting that her target is the only brother of Uchiha Madara, who has a well-known love of vengeance and a severely skewed sense of justice. It almost sounds safer to approach him directly, rather than interfering with his beloved younger brother. And yet, this is her task. And she will fulfill it. There’s no going back to the drawing boards now, not when she’s in his house, interspersed with his people, and her target is right before her eyes.

She moves carefully around people, without haste, and loses Izuna in the crowds. Kiba is right there with his position, though, and she follows his steps while ostensibly studying the interior design choices of Madara’s home. The marble staircases are extravagant, but not more so than the massive fountain in the back center of the room, crafted completely out of glistening black marble. She may be mistaken, but it appears to have crystals interspersed throughout the marble, something she has never even heard of before.

She moves closer to the fountain even as Kiba pauses and reminds her that Izuna is in the opposite direction, and probably thinks she’s losing her mind. But the fountain interests her in a way she can’t explain, not until she gets close enough to peer into the water and sees that every bit of the decoration is stark obsidian. The water is a glistening black mass, appearing thick and vacuous; the surface shifts ominously, like poison. She steps closer and studies the marble, lips parting in curiosity. It’s difficult to see, impossible from so far away, but Hinata is close enough to touch and some of the marble has cracks in it.

Cracks—not from age or destruction, but from design.

From design.

Hinata inhales through her teeth and knows the moment her heart starts to race that her intuition is correct, that this fountain is hiding something important. It’s big enough to span more than half of the room, big enough to hold a secret door beneath the glacier pools on each tier.

Almost absentmindedly, she bends down and runs her fingertips through the surface, and the water isn’t cold like she’d thought it would be. It’s warm, almost as though it’s being heated somehow. She wonders at the practicality of heating a fountain’s water, when there’s no sign of it being used as anything other than decoration.

“Garish, isn’t it?”

Hinata startles at the voice, jerking upright. She turns over her shoulder and finds herself staring into those same piercing eyes, heavy and unblinking and so close she could reach out and touch them. She’s reminded again of the water masqueraded in black marble behind her, and how it looks so much like poison.

Uchiha Izuna glances over her features, down the length of her until his eyes pause on the droplets of water dripping from her fingertips. She doesn’t move a muscle, but she lets herself relax. She cannot give herself away, and remaining tense in this person’s company might just offer her up for what she is—suspicious. Someone that doesn’t belong in this elegant room, with all of its elegant fixtures and needless decorations, and all of these people so free of time and worry.

“Ah,” she sighs, laughing lightly. “Perhaps a little. It is quite beautiful, though.”

“Of course it is,” Izuna remarks, eyes finally slipping from her wet fingertips and back to her open expression. His lips are an unsmiling slash across his jaw, thick and attractive even while downturned. His skin is paler than she’d expected, even after having researched him enough to see him clearly behind closed eyes. She studies his expression with open wonder, as if this is the first time she’s ever seen him. “My brother doesn’t have use for things that aren’t beautiful.”

At this, she purses her lips and allows her brow to furrow. “Ah, your brother.”

“Familiar with him?”

“Not familiar,” Hinata denies, with apparent amusement. She knows an interrogation when she sees one, let alone when she’s in one, and Izuna isn’t even trying to be subtle. “I know of him, however. Difficult not to, of course.”

She does not mention that being invited to this particular event requires knowing Uchiha Madara, not only because she technically wasn’t invited by the man himself, even if she’s on the guest list, but because it has the possibility of opening up more conversation about invitations and familiarity with Madara, which she plans to avoid at every turn.

Izuna stands straight enough, but his wide set shoulders hunch ever so slightly, and it makes Hinata wonder about the difference between him and his brother. Every time she’s seen Madara on television, delivering a speech or attending some event, there has never been anything in her mind but the obvious way he declares his dominance to a room.

Uchiha Izuna looks almost…frail, in comparison. As though this party, or some unknown duties he’s responsible for, are literally pressing down on him until his shoulders hunch over. His pallid demeanor seems more a reflection of possible sickliness than genetics, now that she’s seeing him up close. Curiosity runs rampant beneath her skin, so she uses it to her advantage. She glances over Izuna’s shoulder to one of his guards, who tries valiantly to pretend he isn’t listening to every word that’s being said between she and Izuna, while periodically surveying the room. Her next glance falls on another of his guards with open surprise, and she knows that Izuna is watching the expressions flit over her features.

His stare is heavy enough she can practically feel it.

When her gaze returns to him, she allows it to appear faintly questioning, still laced with surprise. She doesn’t ask, not outright, and he doesn’t offer her anything until she gives him a polite smile and says, “To be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed in this atmosphere. I’ve been to parties before, but never anything like this. It’s certainly a change.”

Izuna hums, blinking at last, a heavy drop of his eyelids. He looks exhausted.

“We come from a family of police officers,” Izuna suddenly offers, his eyes trailing languidly across her features, almost as though he’s sensing the depth of her trustworthiness. She doesn’t know what exactly he finds, but it seems enough, as he suddenly lifts his hand and cups her elbow, gentler than anything she’d have expected.

He moves to her side and says, “Walk with me?”

And, really, there isn’t much room for anything other than compliance, not when his tone had become one of sudden authority, even while wrapped around a seemingly unimposing question.

“Okay,” she offers politely, even as she’s already walking beside him. His hand remains on her elbow, deceptively gentle, and she unconsciously goes through every possible counterattack she can think of should he make to corner or injure her.

He does neither. Instead, he removes her from the bustling room blaring with classical music and lilting conversations of money and intellect and dominion. His security detail moves around them in a pentagonal formation, and Hinata is honest enough with herself to feel mortification, wondering how she and Kiba both had missed the fifth man.

“He’s taking you towards the gardens,” Kiba whispers lowly in her ear. She can only just barely hear the clacking sounds of his fingers moving over the keys, and can imagine his eyes raking carefully over his screens.

“When you’re out there,” Shino joins in quietly, “fiddle with your clutch. There’s tech in there. Bug tech.”

“You and your weird ass bug tech,” Kiba groans. Hinata doesn’t respond to either of them, obviously, but she does fiddle with her clutch a bit as they head out into the cool air. The gardens are on the far side of the house, the complete opposite of where she’d come in, but they don’t go far. In fact, they don’t go past the porch railing. Izuna releases her elbow and his guards fan out around them, though they remain close and overtly suspicious of her. She allows herself to glance around at them nervously, before looking back to Izuna.

Her openness works like a charm, and he consoles her, saying, “They’re protective measures. Not destructive.”

“Ah, sorry,” she apologizes, lifting a hand to rub idly at one of her heated cheeks. “I’ve seen body guards on TV but never in person. Definitely a change.”

“A bad change?” Izuna asks, and Hinata feels a red flag go up in her mind. Something about his voice, all of the sudden, sounds different. Calmer, maybe. More at ease, out in the fresh air and so far away from the crowds. It sounds very nearly…interested.

Hinata takes a moment to candidly think about her response, and notices several people out in the garden, but they’re far enough away to barely even be heard, let alone seen. She turns back to Izuna and he watches her watch him; that same intimidating stare focused entirely on her, and she doesn’t have to pretend to shiver.

“Well,” she hesitates, crossing her arms and raising her shoulders against the cold. It’s dark enough outside that she knows the storm is a stone’s throw away, and that sooner rather than later it will be pouring rain. Her strapless gown offers her no warmth, and even though she’s trained to pay no mind to the changing of the elements, Mei Ritsuko is not. So she lets herself fidget, as one would when chilly, and answers Izuna’s remark.

“It’s not really bad, just new. Change is always difficult. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned.”

Izuna hums again, and after a long moment of studying her, he turns to the railing and looks out at the thunderclouds nearly overhead. There’s the first flash of lightning, then, lighting up the entirety of the sky, or so it seems. There are no mountains here, to block the light’s reach. Everything is touched by the flash of its golden flame.

“Change is…difficult.” Izuna admits, in a voice quiet enough to make Hinata’s interest grow. It also allows for her to approach him, to step a little closer, considering the roll of thunder overhead and how quiet his coming words are. “But at times, necessary.”

“Of course,” she agrees, measuring her tone to match the lowness of his out of respect. It’s clear that he doesn’t want to broadcast these words to his guards, or anyone else for that matter. She comes up beside him, but leaves plenty of room between them. She doesn’t want to appear threatening, but she doesn’t want to appear too welcoming, either. The safest bet is somewhere in the middle, where suspicion is not encouraged to arise.

“Without change, we wouldn’t grow. Nothing would improve.”

“Improvement is subjective.” Izuna remarks, and Hinata sees his jaw clench, just once. “Your sense of improvement will not always match mine.”

“No,” she agrees, and she hopes that Kiba is getting all of this. Even if they hadn’t known Madara’s brother was involved in his plans before, they’d have an inkling of thought about it now. It seems that he is conflicted about something in the future, about what constitutes the correct kind of improvement. Hinata wonders, suddenly, if his idea of improvement does not match Madara’s, and if maybe that’s the reason for his exhaustion. She files that away somewhere retraceable in her mind, and brings her clutch up to rest against the railing between her perched elbows. She fiddles with it absentmindedly, aware that for once she is not under his direct scrutiny, though that says nothing for his five or more guards outside.

“Uchiha-sama,” she pauses, hesitant now, because one wrong word spoken here could convince him she isn’t worth his time any longer. His time is something she needs desperately, as is his preferred place of stay within this mansion. The Intel she requires has been pinpointed directly to him, and she thinks that if he has some sort of private room for himself, that will be where he stores the data. She only hopes it isn’t in the fountain, which may or may not have trap doors built into it. “I don’t mean to be intrusive, or disrespectful. But if something is bothering you, perhaps the best thing to do would be to talk about it.”

The heavy way that he turns his gaze to her, and the pointed unblinking stare he pins her with, are both motivation enough for her to continue to tread lightly. She attempts a shy, encouraging quirk of her lips, saying, “It certainly doesn’t have to be with me. But I can tell there’s something troubling you. You seem like a kind person. I think you deserve someone who’ll hear you out, and help bear some of the weight.”

Izuna doesn’t respond directly to any of her suppositions. Instead, he tilts his head at her, and he smiles.

“You’re bizarrely perceptive, aren’t you?”

Hinata utilizes every second of her training and pretends that that smile had not startled her. It isn’t even an unpleasant smile, too sharp or with too much teeth; that’s not what makes it startling.

It’s that he’d even smile at all, and at her, when she had never once seen a smile in any of the Intel she had on him. That Intel is more than extensive, yet not a single smile could be found. And yet now, there is. And it’s for her. Her mind spins and her heart races, and nervousness flutters within her. She supposes this is a good thing, something she can use, because there’s a possibility that he’s trying to flirt with her.

Hinata has had stranger things happen to her, but in this moment, she can’t remember any of them.

“Not really,” she demurs affably, tucking a few flyaways behind her ear. “I do have eyes, though. And I can see that you need a good night’s sleep. Or maybe a whole week.”

Izuna doesn’t laugh, but then, she doesn’t really expect him to. His smile remains, and grows, though, and it’s still as startling as the first time she’d seen it. She’s thankful for Kiba’s and Shino’s radio silence in her ear, because she’s not certain that having them in her head right now would do anything but make her misstep. Not when Izuna is so analytical, when his gaze misses nothing, and he seems to like to gaze at her frequently.

Baffling, she thinks.

“Perhaps,” Izuna allows, turning away from her to smile out over the gardens. He sighs, then, a heavy thing that gets those drooped shoulders to rise, if only for a moment, before they fall right back down. A sudden breeze pushes through the porch space, smelling of impending rain and heavy with the tension of thunder. Hinata shivers appropriately in response, just to keep up her untrained façade, but this time it captures and holds Izuna’s notice. He straightens and shrugs out of his suit coat, and refuses to take no for an answer when she politely balks.

“Wear it,” he says, tone brooking for no more argument. “I’ve been insensitive. Would you like to head back inside?”

Hinata pauses as he helps her slip into the arms of his coat, the wide shoulders falling down onto the tops of her biceps. He doesn’t appear to be that big, and she’s not a small woman, either, but the coat dwarfs her. She wraps it around her and offers him the first fully honest smile of the night, because even if he’s a part of something truly awful, he has been nothing if not courteous to her all night. Not behavior deserving of awards and undying devotion, obviously, but enough to warrant the barest flicker of honest appreciation.

She thinks about what might happen if she says she wants to go back inside, especially now that she has his coat. If they go back inside, will he leave her? Even if she has his coat? Will he take his coat back, the moment they get inside? It seems likely, but then, if they remain outside, how will she manage to find his private room? There’s the chance of growing the already attained foundational intimacy between them, if they remain outside, and that’s certainly something that would encourage him to trust her.

But if they remain outside, something urgent may occur and he might have to leave her for good, coat and all. She runs through her possibilities and wishes suddenly that Kiba would pipe up, but all of her thoughts grind to a halt when a voice almost perfectly similar to Izuna’s permeates through the cold night air. It’s so similar, in fact, that at first Hinata doesn’t even realize it’s not Izuna that has spoken, not until she sees him turn to the door and watches his smile fall.

One plan that she had not—yet—accounted for, was the possibility of encountering Uchiha Madara.

“Oh, fuck.” Kiba curses in her ear, echoing her thoughts.

“You did well with the clutch, Hinata.” Shino advises, “The bugs are in the air. We’re getting full scale audio and visual of the place. Hang tight.”

Adrenaline courses through her system, and she turns, her façade of curiosity claiming Madara as its next target. Her eyes widen after a moment, surprise manifesting. His stare, so like his brother’s but with far more blatant malice, barbed and edged with steadfast confidence, slides through her. Just as she’d always experienced by means of the Intel they had on Uchiha Madara, everything about his body language displays an inherent sense of supremacy—his resting stance is set wide, with his powerful arms crossed over his chest. He stands straight and tall, with shoulders thrown back in utter confidence.

His likeness to his brother is eerie, except for the slightly darker pigmentation of his skin, and the natural bags under his eyes. Izuna has those, too, but Madara’s appear genetic, whereas Izuna’s are clearly borne of exhaustion.

“G-good evening, Uchiha-sama.”

Madara doesn’t remove his piercing stare from her face, not for a second. His voice, when he responds, drags over his returned welcome in overt suspicion. It makes the baby hairs on Hinata’s nape stand on end.

“Good evening.” He doesn’t turn away from her yet, even as he addresses Izuna. “I’ve been looking for you, Izuna.”

“Was I really so difficult to find?” Izuna remarks, and his tone isn’t exactly scornful, but it edges right up to the border of it. Hinata’s earlier assumption that some sort of disagreement or strife is occurring between the brothers is looking more and more plausible now, as she stands in front of them and witnesses their mannerisms firsthand.

At Izuna’s tone, Madara finally glances away from Hinata and over to his little brother, and Hinata feels like she can breathe properly for the first time in ages. She has never, in her entire life, encountered such an intimidating stare—not even in her career as an international spy. It’s double the preview of Izuna’s earlier glare, which had left her with the impression of cold, cruel efficiency and determination. Madara holds none of it back, doesn’t offer a mere preview but plunges forward with reaching, crushing force, all in a single look.

“No,” Madara admits, before flicking his gaze over Izuna’s shoulder and back to Hinata, if only for a moment. A flash of lightning illuminates the sky, and thunder follows soon after, telling of the storm’s closeness. She shivers again, and this time, it has nothing to do with the cold. “Not so difficult to find. It is a little difficult, however, to reconcile the fact that you’re not alone out here.”

Kiba sighs in Hinata’s ear. “Not good.”

Hinata wonders if she channels the thought tell me something I don’t know hard enough, that it might get to Kiba.

Hinata glances over to Izuna with wide, unsuspecting eyes, hoping that her innocence will take her far. When she meets Izuna’s gaze again, though, she’s struck with another shock of surprise when she finds him blushing. Her first instinct is to confirm that yes, he had been flirting with her in some strange roundabout way, and second, that he’s embarrassed that his big brother has caught them.

“Ah,” Izuna sighs, sounding more exhausted than ever. “I don’t even know your name.”

Hinata wonders how many times she’s going to misjudge Uchiha Izuna tonight—the feeling of being wrong about so many things relating to emotional intelligence, all in one night, does not fail to make her frustrated. She had not thought to suspect that his blush wasn’t a result of either of her assumptions, but rather in response to the simple fact that he hadn’t asked her for her name. Hinata starts to think that even if she had an endless, gratuitous amount of time to study these brothers, she would still make mistakes in assuming their thought processes. The realization, or the very potential of it, is novel.

She doesn’t like it.

“It’s okay,” she smiles, not looking at Madara. “I’m Mei Ritsuko. If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t ask for your name, either.”

“You didn’t need to.” Madara remarks, before Izuna can get a word in. The latter Uchiha looks even more frustrated than before, but he casts a glance Hinata’s way that almost seems self-deprecating. “He’s an Uchiha.”

“Ah,” she hums, smiling politely at the older of the two. “It’s true. I apologize if I was being too forward.”

“You weren’t,” Izuna promises, before shooting a disdainful glare his brother’s way. “You don’t need to apologize.”

Madara completely ignores his brother’s glare, and Hinata notices for the first time that Madara has no security detail around him. The nape of her neck suddenly feels like a hotspot target, with several eyes out in the darkness honing in on it. How could she have been so foolish? How did she not immediately notice how strange it is that Madara is traveling without protection, but his brother has a full unit? The longer she spends time with them, the more the differences between them begin to become a clearer picture for her.

Madara suddenly tilts his head at her, asking, “Mei Ritsuko, you said?”

“Yes, Uchiha-sama.” She doesn’t flinch, even under his daunting stare, equally as unblinking as Izuna’s had been, with ten times the punch. She forces herself not to swallow, either. She simply glances back and forth between the two of them, as any curious third-party bystander might when experiencing a strangely palpable rift between brothers in powerful positions.

“It’s funny,” Madara observes, sounding anything but amused. “But I don’t recognize your name.”

Hinata has a heart-stopping moment of fear trickle through her, one that she hides skillfully, before all of her back up plans roll behind her eyes. She hasn’t exactly been found out, but that ever intimidating suspicion she’d been trying her best to avoid is finally here, raising its threatening head. And it’s not coming from just anyone, but from Uchiha Madara himself. Because of course it is.

She can hear Kiba muttering the same back up plans she’s already thinking on her own, and some more that she hadn’t considered, when Izuna’s sudden remark sinks through the air.

“What? You don’t recognize her?” The words come out like a whip, nearly cracking in the air with obvious disdain.

Madara, for his part, seems unaffected by his little brother’s impertinence. “Not the name, no.”

Izuna glances over at her and, knowing how precarious her position is right now, she offers him a self-deprecating smile of her own. It seems to say, I’m nothing special; what can you do.

Izuna doesn’t seem to appreciate it. He turns to Madara with a sneer, snarling, “You invited her.”

Madara’s attention finally shifts entirely to Izuna, as though he’s only just deemed his brother’s temper worthy of his focus. He snorts derisively and says, “Brother, if I recognized every single person I allowed Obito to put on my guest list, I wouldn’t have time to make actual progress in this world.”

“That’s a good excuse,” Izuna snaps, but Madara is on him in an instant.

“Watch your tone, Izuna.” Madara’s glare coupled with the rolling of thunder overhead and the slow beginning of rainfall around them is enough to make Hinata shiver within Izuna’s coat. “You didn’t even know this woman’s name until a moment ago, at my insistence. Relax.”

This, it seems, is enough to calm Izuna’s storm. He deflates visibly, shoulders back to hunching, head hung low. Hinata frowns after him, and doesn’t notice the way Madara surveys her expression with curiosity and the faintest trail of suspicion. He moves towards his brother and chucks him lightly under his chin, lifting his head up until he’s forced to stand a little taller. Hinata knows for certain that this isn’t really supposed to be for her eyes, so she turns and watches the lightning, now increasingly more present in the sky, set the world on fire. The rain grows more prevalent a force, and soon enough, it starts coming down heavily in sheets. The fine material of Izuna’s coat sticks to her skin, and water drops from her hair, down under the collar.

She can only just barely hear Madara’s words over the downpour; whispers that his gravely voice carry a bit too far. “Stand tall, Izuna. Uchiha bow to no one.”

“Ah,” Izuna responds, but there isn’t much energy to it. After a long moment, Hinata hears footsteps approach and turns to find Madara a step away from her, eyeing the coat around her shoulders. She flushes, but doesn’t allow her expression to turn sheepish. The last thing she wants is for Uchiha Madara to think she’s trying to work his brother, rather than simply get to know him. She stares back up at him without anything more than a skewed kind of resiliency, and it seems to pass whatever test he’s giving her. She remains as cool as she can, with her mission at the forefront of her mind; she knows now more than ever, that each step makes a difference. She has to remain on Izuna’s good side, but she can’t upset Madara, either. It’s clear, after all, that he’s the one that’s truly in charge, even if Izuna shares his name.

“It’s cold out here, Izuna. It’s about time for you to take Mei-chan back inside.” Hinata thinks that will be the end of it, as he moves past her and starts heading down the porch steps and into the garden. But then he pauses on the second step, and he shoots a grin back at Izuna, eyes flicking between him and Hinata. “Be a good host. Keep her warm.”

Hinata’s cheeks flare with heat and Madara moves off into the shadows with ease; she hears Izuna sigh from behind her. Before she turns away completely, she thinks she sees several shadows out in the night start to move, flickering before following after Madara. Adrenaline is a constant companion, pulsing through her. She’d been a specimen under the watchful gazes of several highly skilled covert operatives, for who knows how long, and somehow she’d managed to convince them she wasn’t a threat to their masters.

Izuna’s steps aren’t as pointed as Madara’s, but by the time he gets to her she’s already moving towards him, following the guidance of his hand on her elbow as they head back inside. The warmth of the house is jarring, compared to the chilly night air, but even soaking wet, Hinata eventually finds a comfortable balance as Izuna’s guards reassert their formation around them. Hinata follows Izuna’s lead, even when he doesn’t say a word to her.

He doesn’t really have to—she thinks she knows exactly where he’s taking her. Kiba’s excited chattering in her ear is confirmation enough that they’re heading up the stairs to the second floor, where there are countless undocumented rooms Kiba suspects might hold the mission’s Intel.

They make it through an elaborate hallway until they reach an even more elaborate door. Izuna and Hinata are both dripping on the hardwood flooring, but Izuna doesn’t seem to mind. He pushes the door open and gestures for her to precede him inside. She does, expecting him to follow, but when she turns back he’s still in the hallway.

“I’m going to get you a towel, to dry off,” he says, and then, almost as an afterthought, “Sorry about my brother.”

He’s gone before she can think of something to say in response. She peers back through the door and down the corridor, watching his long strides as he and his security detail make their way to one of the farthest rooms down the opposite end of the hallway—what she assumes is either the laundry room, or a bathroom.

She eyes his guards, now that they aren’t focused on her. Five of them, all wearing tailored suits; they move with coiled grace, stealthy and watchful like great cats lurking. One of them, the spearhead of their formation, has hair the shade of the brightest red horizon, and she moves easily to open the door to Izuna’s room. Hinata waits as she thoroughly searches the place before allowing Izuna to enter. The rest of his guards chart their surroundings, eyes roving restlessly, fingers twitching at their sides. The tallest guard, with a shock of scars over his face and throat, keeps his eyes on the people just below; he somehow manages to remain in the shadows while still peering over the banister.

The other guards are less striking in that they have deep shades of hair and no visible proof of past trauma, but they move with the same level of eerie purpose, no hesitation in any of their actions. Hinata pretends to glance away when the guard with the sharp eyes and the perpetual sneer turns her way, a cursory glance she doesn’t trust for the life of her. She knows better than to think it perfunctory—knows that he’s watching every move she makes even when he’s not glancing her way. So she remains as visibly unaffected as she can, all the while she watches him from the corner of her eyes, as well.

Izuna and his guards disappear into the room shortly after, and she’s free to breathe out and deflate back to her natural state. She finds that the room Izuna had led her to is close enough to the stairs that when she walks away from it she can see all of the people down below, dancing and laughing and drinking. She watches them carefully, her hair dripping chilly water droplets down her spin, under Izuna’s coat.

“I sure hope you’re getting all of this,” she whispers, knowing Kiba will hear her and respond.

Sure enough, she hears the chime of his laughter. “Sure am!”

She’s about to say something else, something amusing maybe to lighten the tension she feels all the way in her bones, when she sees a familiar streak of yellow down below. Curiosity effectively rekindled, she tries in vain to locate and track the flash before she loses it again to the crowd. Frustration makes her frown, even as Izuna comes back to her and peers idly at her shift in expression. His guards fan out around him, spread wide to give him the impression of privacy, but close enough for her to feel the tension in every line of them. She takes the towel from Izuna’s hands and thanks him, waiting for him to rub his hair dry, too.

Instead, he hands her the second towel and points back to the room he’d left her in, and which she’d wandered out from.

“Hang out in there for a while. I’d like to talk with you some more, Mei-san, but I have to go find my brother.”

Hinata pauses, knowing this is her chance. She hesitates before saying, “Are you not going to towel off?”

Izuna doesn’t exactly smile, but there’s something cunning about his expression that shifts and lightens, like shadows cast from a candle’s flame. “No. I’d only just get wet again. Madara…he likes to spend time in the garden.”

“Ah,” Hinata hums, pressing the towel gently to her cheeks. “Got it.”

Izuna stares after her for a long moment, contemplating something, and then that subtle smile rises back over his lips. He huffs out the quietest excuse for a laugh, and says, “Would you be terribly offended, Mei-san, if I asked for my coat back? I’d rather not soak through to the bone searching for my brother in the rain.”

“Oh!” Hinata gasps, and her cheeks spill pink. She shrugs from his coat easily enough; suddenly glad for the warmth in the house. Her gown is only minimally wet, nothing too uncomfortable. She watches Izuna slip back into his coat, smiling at her all the while. When his last button is done, he pauses, surveying her curiously, and then seems to come to some significant conclusion that results in him lifting his fingertips to trail lightly over her cheekbone. She hears Kiba inhale in her ear and wishes she could do the same, but her breath is trapped in her throat, startled and blocked by surprise.

“See you later,” he says, and then he and his entourage are heading down the hallway, then the stairs, and she watches him all the way until he moves out of sight, never once looking back at her.

“The dress worked too well, Kiba-kun,” she groans, leaning back against the wall. She puts her face in the towel for only a moment, not wanting to smear her makeup. Kiba chortles in her ear, and she thinks she even hears Shino’s quiet laughter.

“I do have great taste,” Kiba laughs, and she can imagine him shaking his head. “But let’s not act like it was the dress that he was interested in. Leave it to Hinata to seduce the baby brother of our number one enemy target!”

“Kiba-kun!” Hinata hisses, pushing herself away from the wall and heading back into the room Izuna had left her in. She tosses the towels on the bed and moves immediately through the room, searching for any sign of transmitting technology.

She knows Izuna was lying about finding Madara in the garden, and she knows exactly where he’s going instead; just past the gardens, down the beachside front, where Madara has a private, underground bunker. It just so happens that he prefers to hold covert meetings there, and what better cover to hold them than at a house party full of guests? All of which would probably lie and fawn about how they saw the great Uchiha Madara all night.

Shino had warned her about this—had told her clearly that if she saw him make a move towards that bunker, it would be the optimum time to obtain her data. He won’t leave that bunker for at least twenty minutes, so the clock would be ticking every step he takes towards it. The added bonus of Izuna following after him makes her move with even more haste; one doesn’t just get lucky like this, not in Hinata’s profession.

Kiba seems to be of the same mind. “Okay, all joking aside. You need to find a laptop, Izuna’s personal laptop.”

Hinata doesn’t answer him for the sake of any recording devices that could be stored in the room. This is Uchiha Madara’s house, after all. She wouldn’t put it past him.

She turns the room over and finds nothing, so she moves on to the next. She moves through four more and knows the clock is ticking, that her time is running out. She heads past the stairs as stealthily as she can manage, but something catches her eyes, this time having nothing to do with a golden blur.

No, this is much, much worse.

Time’s up, she thinks, and a second later Kiba confirms.

“Mission critical. You’ve got movement on the ground floor, guards searching and disrupting the guests. A full squadron is coming from the North, where Madara and Izuna headed through the gardens. You’ve got five minutes to locate the data, Hinata.”

Hinata bites her lip and throws herself into the search, muttering a quick, “Acknowledged.”

She has to break into the next room, which had been the second of five to be locked, and when she crosses the threshold she very nearly sighs in relief. There, across the room, is an open laptop. She throws herself into the seat and removes the tech Shino had packed in her clutch, a data chip drive that Shino himself will control, just as he had controlled her drive over. She sits impatiently as he hacks into Izuna’s computer and then into his files, each one requiring an extensive sixteen-digit code. Shino curses a few times under his breath, surprising coming from him, but eventually he gives her the go-ahead.

“Remove the drive, Hinata.”

“And get the hell out of there!” Kiba demands, urgency laced in every syllable. Hinata takes the drive and fastens it securely in her clutch, moving swiftly to the entrance of her room. She peers down the hallway and sees an elite squadron tearing through the room Izuna had left her in, as well as the room across from it. From what she can see, none of them are spreading her way or even looking in her direction. She frowns, wondering at this and the fact that they seem openly disappointed that they had not found her where Izuna had left her.

Shock and dread coils through her when she catches sight of a long tail of red hair, and a familiar face full of scars racing up the stairs and into the horde of black-clad agents, barking out orders and inquiries.

“Where is she?” Hinata hears the redhead snarl, tone low but cutting; she tears through the door to the room Hinata had been left in and pushes her way inside. The man with the scars is far more stoic, but the strain in his neck makes for an incredibly threatening posture. He turns to an agent and poses a question, or at least that’s what Hinata thinks she sees, and the agent shrivels under his tone.

Not good, Hinata thinks, frustrated that she’s been found out so easily. It’s clear, now, that not only Madara knows that she’s an agent, but that Izuna does, as well. Izuna’s hand-chosen squad wouldn’t be ordered away from his person for anything less than an act of sedition against their master.

“Two…straight ahead! Co-…the …airs,” Kiba’s voice suddenly warns, but something’s wrong with their connection and his voice becomes a crackling over their combined channel that soon disappears completely. Hinata doesn’t have the time to worry about losing contact with her team, and she has no choice but to flit into the room across from her before the guards coming up the stairs find her. She makes sure to lock Izuna’s room from the inside out and shuts the door behind her, before even stepping foot into the other room. Once there, she seals the door behind her as quietly as she can and locks it, too.

She takes in as many details of the room as she can in a few short glances. The most obvious detail is the massive four-poster bed tucked up against the far left wall, with its fair sheer curtains and lush wooden frame. Every inch of the bed is covered in black silk sheets, with far too many pillows than is strictly necessary. It is undeniably the most extravagant piece of the room, but not by much. Hinata goggles at the ivory walls overridden with miniscule yet chic designs, the stark white crown molding, and the stylishly crafted details on every piece of wooden furniture present. The floor itself is the finest, glossiest mahogany she has ever seen, and there isn’t a scuff on it.

Beyond the overwhelming extravagance of the place is the sheer size of it. The room itself is massive, with enough space for an entire family to reside comfortably. She wonders if this is in fact Izuna’s room in Madara’s mansion, and if she had accidentally stumbled quite literally into a lion’s den.

Heart racing in her throat, she takes a few steadying breaths, head resting back against the door behind her. She can hear the guards further down the hallway, their communication constant and detailed. They move swiftly through doors she can hear banging against walls, and she knows that once they realize she’s not in any part of that wing of the house, where Izuna had told her to stay, that she has only a few minutes before her door is next.

Eventually, they will spread out. And she is as good as cornered.

But she has a job to do, and it’s not finished. Retrieving Izuna’s data had been the easy part—all she’d been tasked to do was blend, seek, find, and retrieve.

Now, she has to download the Intel on a secure drive hand-crafted by Shino himself, but without any of his assistance. The loss of her comm channel is devastating, but she isn’t named elite for nothing. She had trained for this, planned for this.

Hinata is going to make it out alive, with the data.

She moves into the room, strides long and sure as she opens her clutch and removes the compact computer Shino had left her. She’s familiar with the tech; it isn’t a stretch to say that it was made for her. Shino had designed it specifically with her in mind, knowing how often she’s required to wear varying uniforms to blend and assume the role of an undercover agent. It’s not always conducive to have a bag big enough to carry around a normal laptop, so instead, Shino spent over two years figuring out how to make the same level of technology, while slightly less efficient, able to be carried in smaller packaging.

Hinata carefully unfolds the flexible tech, locking the screen upright and into place and allowing the keys to align magnetically in place. The process only takes a few seconds before the pseudo-laptop, no larger than a sheet of paper, is fully operational. She plugs her thumb drive in, watches the data load, and lets her heart rate keep track of the seconds passing her by.

“Control,” she whispers, testing her comm device. “Control, respond.”

Silence greets her, and she doesn’t have the luxury of waiting any longer.

The commotion outside her door grows louder, the guards presumably closer, and her fingertips fly over the keys. She is not without technological training, far from it, but Shino’s technology is something of a monumental challenge all its own. She doesn’t know the exact logistics, even after having had it explained to her, but she does know that creating technology that can do what Shino’s pocket computer can do, in such a short time period, with minimal hardware, is incredible.

It is also incredibly difficult to navigate.

Hinata finds herself cursing under her breath, fingers flying even quicker over the keys as she tries to hack into the downloadable content. Shino had warned her about this—had explained that any Intel of Uchiha Madara’s would be guarded by the most advanced protective measures known to humankind. She had accepted that before beginning the mission, but she hadn’t really thought she’d be up against such measures on her own.

As it is, Hinata does not unlock the downloaded data file until there are steps right outside her door. Her fingers tremble as she finally sends the information directly to headquarters, on a channel more secure than the president’s, and gasps in relief. Her comm device is still decidedly silent, without any of the crackling to show for a connection attempting to even be made. Hinata removes the thumb drive and hastily folds the computer tech back up and into her clutch, sealing it and moving swiftly to the door. Her gown flutters around her, makes a midnight wraith of her haste.

She presses her ear to the door for a moment, just long enough to hear the room across from her being broken into and the harrowing voice of the redhead demanding they be quick about it. She backs away from the door, mind racing as she turns to survey the room with a clearer eye. There are no other doors and just a single window; there’s a slight alcove where she assumes a bathroom is attached.

The only weapons that Hinata has are her hands, and they’re skilled weapons indeed.

Going against a full squadron, with the element of surprise on her side, she might be able to take out four of them. The redhead and the man with the scars will be a different matter altogether, with higher-level training, more experience, and more to fight for.

She does not want to have to fight, not with so many circumstances working against her. She rests her head against the solid wood, plans unrolling behind her eyes like movie reels fast-forwarded into a blur of possibilities. They’re so close, she can almost feel the heat of the closest guard through the door, but they haven’t turned their attention to her room just yet. She has a few seconds, at least, to try to come up with a plan before she’s forced to fight.

Her eyes snap open when she hears the doorknob to her room jingle, nothing more than the weight of a hand on the other side grasping the knob. In the same second, the floor beneath her quakes, and an explosion goes off in what sounds like the direction of the main hall. The first explosion is followed by another, and then two more. They sound sporadic, unaligned. They don’t all come from the same place, and Hinata doesn’t even know what to think of them—she certainly hadn’t been the one to set them.

Regardless of who set them and why, she’s grateful for them. They are flawless distractions, far more immediate sources of danger and suspicion than a silent door with a presumably empty room behind it.

The doorknob clangs one last time as the guard on the other side of the door lets go of it and turns to pursue the explosions. Hinata can hear the redhead calling out formations and priorities, and knows with certainty that she is Izuna’s chief guard.

Hinata waits a few seconds longer, barely breathing. After a long, tense moment, she allows herself sigh in relief, and sags against the door. She brings her hand up to the seam, which allows the faintest trails of light to bleed through the door and into the room, and runs her fingertips over it. When she’s confident that all of the guards have left, she tries one last time to reestablish a connection with Kiba at headquarters.

Her hand is in the process of lifting to her earpiece when an arm as thick as a steel cable and just as strong wraps around her from behind, and another curls around the column of her throat. Her assailant drags her swiftly and far too easily into the alcove leading to what she had earlier predicted to be the bathroom, before she manages to stomp down on his instep with crushing force. She hears his resulting hiss immediately beside her and attempts to thrash and twist in his arms, but his hold is too tight, he’s too close, and she can’t do anything more than squirm.

She’s in the process of throwing her head backwards for what would certainly be a painful headbutt for the both of them when his voice grounds her to a halt.

“Hey!” he whispers, lips just touching the shell of her ear. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay? I’m on your side today.”

Hinata doesn’t trust him or believe him for a second, even when her gut twists in response to his voice. Something about it is familiar, a certain kind of husky inflection that wraps around her heart and makes her chest feel tight in response. Usually, Hinata trusts her intuition. She’s crafted and developed it enough in her lifetime to know that it is almost always right, and in the most dire of circumstances—but she also knows that a man’s voice is never something one should just trust, especially in her line of business, and especially in the home of monsters.

She thrashes against him, nails clutching and attempting to bite deep through his coat sleeves. He has her arms pinned to her sides, and her throat is in a precarious position with his muscled arm wrapped around it. He’s not exerting any sort of threatening pressure, though, which makes her pause. He’s not even attempting to be intimidating, even when she’d been struggling; instead, she finds that he’s holding her rather gently, considering.

The solid well of his chest against her back is threatening enough, she thinks wryly, considering how strong it feels. He’s taller than her and it was almost too easy for him to restrain her. Definitely an agent; though he had claimed to be on her side, she still finds distrust the prominent feeling flickering under the surface of her heated expression.

But then he clears his throat and says, “Hinata,” and she does know that voice.

Her heart starts racing for completely different reasons, now, and none of them have a thing to do with fear. Somewhere in the back of her mind she thinks, cover blown, but it gets overlain by even more pressing concerns, most of which are rooted in confusion.

“I’m going to loosen my hold, but I’m not going to let you go. Not yet. Okay?”

She nods against his arm, the fight leaving her completely. There’s no need for it anymore. There isn’t even a need for suspicion or distrust, no need to worry that her compliance might lead her to devastation—it’s something they’re taught in the beginning of their training. Never trust anyone but your Top and your team; not even those in the same agency as you. Just because you share the same boss, doesn’t mean he won’t send another team on a mission that interferes with your own. Mostly, Top prevents such occurrences from happening, given he’s far too efficient to make such mistakes.

But he’s also an incredibly powerful man that hates being bored, and it doesn’t help that he has a penchant for meddling.

Hinata’s current situation could be the result of any number of mistakes, accidents, or deliberately underhanded mechanisms at work. None of this is of utmost importance now, though. What’s important is that she’s still on an unfinished mission that has now been interrupted by another agent from the Hidden Leaf, one who is presumably on a mission of his own—finished or unfinished, she has no way of knowing. She still needs to escape, get out alive, and ensure from the safe house that the data she had stolen had been properly transmitted to HQ.

Hinata’s body relaxes in his hold, confident that she is no longer in immediate danger, but her mind races around the possibilities of how this could have happened, and what it all means. It’s not often that two agents from the same agency are found on the same mission site, unless they’re teammates. It’s actually almost unheard of.

But then, the agent cautiously loosening his hold from around her throat and waist isn’t any ordinary agent.

Uzumaki Naruto, the most elite of the elite.

Long time undisclosed love of her life.

Also, coincidentally, the bane of her professional existence.

“What are you doing here?” she demands, mind and heart still racing. She knows that he can feel her trembling, a side effect of the waves of adrenaline that have been coursing through her. There isn’t a doubt in her mind that if her comm channel had been operational, Kiba and Shino both would be making the most embarrassing assumptions right now.

“Ah, Hinata,” Naruto chides softly by her ear, breath playing against her throat and making her shiver. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Hinata acknowledges to herself that she had in fact walked right into that one. Her nerves are stretched thin, however, and at the time it had been more a rhetorical exclamation of surprise than anything else. Naruto probably knows it, too.

But he so enjoys teasing her.

“You look beautiful,” he suddenly says, almost offhandedly. Heat flares uncontrollably into her cheeks, making her temperature rise.

“Naruto-kun,” she whispers, lifting a hand up to touch the hand he has on her shoulder, keeping her facing away from him. Without his arm bound around her waist, she regains movement of her arms and feels marginally safer. She doesn’t even deny that his presence alone is a kind of protection, one that constitutes a feeling of comfort and confidence in her. It’s so like him, she thinks, to just stroll into her mission parameters and shake up everything she’d been so certain of.

This thought, more than anything prior, is what puts together a puzzle she hadn’t known she’d needed to assemble; she thinks of those stressful moments against the door, with Izuna’s guards outside, and the almost perfectly timed distraction of the explosions in the front room.

“The explosions,” she breathes, “Those were you?”

Naruto leans his face against her hair, presses his smile against her throat. She doesn’t know how to explain it, but the gesture itself almost feels fond. It isn’t a kiss, but it’s close, and that baffles her.

Naruto laughs lowly, says, “You know how I love to go out with a bang.”

“Go out?” Hinata inquires, catching the implication easily. Naruto takes a moment where Hinata thinks he may be nuzzling into her hair, she’s too anxious to really make certain of it, before he straightens back up and steps away from her. With his presence utterly removed from her person, she’s able to turn around and finally see him, and the first thing that catches her eye is the shock of his blond hair.

“Downstairs—it was you, then, too!”

“Uh,” Naruto gives her a confused look, reaching up to rub idly at the back of his neck. “What?”

“Downstairs,” Hinata repeats, then lets her eyes fall over his outfit. He’s dressed like a host, in a finely tailored suit; just the same as all the other hosts she’d seen when she first entered Madara’s mansion. She pictures the yellow flash through the crowds, and the trailing coattails before she’d inevitably lose sight of him, and she knows that all along it had been Naruto. “I saw you a couple of times. Well. I caught sight of you a few times.”

Realization shifts Naruto’s expression into something sly and amused, as though he had known exactly what she’d been talking about but had wanted to make certain of it. She doesn’t remember him being this proficient at mind games, and the realization that he’s grown even stronger makes her feel equal parts curious and overwhelmed.

Naruto’s team, the infamous Team 7 of the Hidden Leaf, are known for their destructive force. They come and go as quickly and as powerfully as a natural disaster; they’re known predominantly as a force of decimation. However, Naruto himself has the least amount of recorded kills in the entire agency, right behind Hinata’s own. As for the rest of his team, well. Suffice to say that they have no such reservations. Team 7 is only called in on the most secretive, dangerous missions, when death is more a promise than a possibility.

Hinata supposes that it makes sense, then, for Naruto to be learning different aspects of the job he’s never before showed proficiency at—what couldn’t he, the most elite, do?

She hears sudden shouting, louder than the uproar of the chaotic crowd just below, and it sets her back into motion. She starts planning, thoughts swirling vividly through her mind.

“What’re you thinking about?” he asks nonsensically, as she clicks her tongue.

“Escape, Naruto-kun.”

He hums, and some part of it sounds amused—at her expense. She ignores it entirely, until he breaks her concentration once more to add, “What’s your plan?”

Hinata only takes a moment to wonder if she should share it with him—he isn’t on her team, and as such, he’s not entirely trustworthy. But she’s been separated from her team and he’s all she’s got, and the only plan she’s been able to come up with isn’t great. So she sighs, some of the tension in her seeping out.

“I’m going to find a room with a window facing the cliff side, and I’m going to scale it down to the river. It’s dark and raining, so I’ll be well hidden. Even if they see me, I’ll be a difficult target to mark. The riverside should provide some sort of cover as well, with the rock face bordering the mansion.”

Naruto seems to be following the same train of thought; idly, he muses, “There’s a bridge not far from here.”

Hinata nods. “It’s heavily structured, and there’s an alcove tucked under the East side.”

She doesn’t add that the alcove is the perfect place to wait the search out, tucked away in a tiny cavity of rock, albeit balanced precariously on a mountainside that ends in jagged stone and a rapidly racing river. The latter facts are semantics, after all, and Naruto understands the unspoken sentiment just as well.

Hinata turns from him and reaches up behind her, fingers finding the zipper of her gown and pulling down. Shyness curls through her like tufts of smoke as she steps out of the dress, left in nothing more than a sculpting, strapless catsuit. She bundles the fine material up as best as she can, and walks past a blatantly staring Naruto as she tucks the gown into the bathroom trash. She brings the trash over and sets it in front of the only window in the room, which slides open easily enough under her muscle. Rain and wind blow in immediately, whipping past the curtains.

She kneels beside it and opens her clutch, scrapping through it briefly before finding a striker and a match, and two tiny yet durable slips of hardened fabric. The latter, an enduring pair of flats far more resilient than they appear, had been specially crafted for her by her mentor, Yuuhi Kurenai. The material she uses is both flexible and solid; nearly immune to the dangers wrought in rough terrain, and small enough to fold into a pocket. They’re still in the prototype stage, and Hinata had agreed long ago to be her guinea pig. She hopes that they’ll stand the test of this most dire of times.

She snaps her heels in half and adds them to the flames, knowing they’ll take precious time to burn completely—time she and Naruto might not have. Still, she waits with a patience long-since learned. She watches them and the gown burn completely to ash, the smoke funneling out into the stormy night, before carefully putting the fire out. She leaves no discernable evidence behind, nothing that could lead a trail back to her true identity. Not even fabric.

She seals her clutch once again and fastens it to the magnetic patch of her catsuit, snug against her waist. Every part of her outfit had been crafted specifically for an operative, while also maintaining an ordinary appearance to the naked eye. There are still more tools yet to be found within her clutch, though she has no need of much more than wire, now. She’ll retrieve that when she finds a window facing the cliff side—her most promising escape route.

Naruto clears his throat, apparently past the shock of watching her undress in front of him. He offers, almost offhandedly, “You sure you don’t wanna storm the front doors? Take ‘em head on? We could do it. The two of us.”

Her expression shows exactly what she thinks of that ridiculous plan; however, hidden from him as it is, she manages an incredulous huff as she closes the window. She turns back to him and studies the strong lines of him, coiled and poised for action.

“Yeah, okay. Your plan sounds good,” he says, and he unfolds his arms from across his chest, his smile something dangerous enough to welcome the chaos awaiting them.

He looks over at her, and his eyes are bright with something akin to weakness.

“Lead the way,” he says.

And she does.

✧

“Holy shit,” Naruto yowls, somersaulting over a barrage of blades only to land inches from a tripwire. He makes another high-pitched noise in the base of his throat, dancing back from the underground weapon and swallowing audibly as Hinata twirls around another onslaught of loosed shuriken. Both of them are bleeding from several places, but there just isn’t enough time to slow down and see from where.

“Who booby traps an entire riverside?” Naruto hisses when the seemingly endless array of attacks quiet and fall still. They’re both panting from the journey; Hinata’s plan had been solid until they’d been halfway down the cliff side and discovered just how monumentally they’d underestimated Uchiha Madara’s distaste for uninvited visitors. Hinata finds herself cursing, low and quick under her breath.

They pause for only a moment, the rain heavy and oppressive, drowning out the sounds of wild life and pursuers. There is only thunder and the intermittent flash of lightning overhead; equal parts cover and guidance. Hinata surveys the tears in her catsuit, then glances over to see similar streaks of torn fabric in Naruto’s ensemble. She gets a glimpse of shapely abdominals before she feels herself swallowing and turning away, facing the distant shadow of the bridge up ahead.

“It’s not far,” she says, trying to retain some semblance of optimism. Naruto snorts beside her, clearly having seen through it.

“Maybe,” he allows, picking at the material of his suit. The rain has made both of them sodden, and their clothes stick to them like sap. “But not far means nothing when every foot of this valley is a new trap.”

Hinata purses her lips, but she can’t deny him that. Thunder cracks the sky open right overhead, and it’s almost perfectly timed to disguise the unmistakable shriek of metal being pulled from a sheath. Hinata’s temples burn, cheeks heating, and suddenly she can match the sight of the blade to the sound of it, just a few kilometers away.

While the specifics of her Byakugan vision are classified, the fact of her having the ability is not. This is the reason that she feels comfortable enough activating it in front of Naruto, who has, to her knowledge, never seen her use it before now. She can feel him staring, but her focus remains honed in on the figure moving rapidly towards them, a trail of dust picking up behind him as he flies in their direction. His movements are swift and sharp like a bolt of lightning, and even if Hinata’s vision had not just exposed him, she’d have known that notorious speed anyways.

Izuna, she thinks, but she’s already turning, fingers grasping the cuff of Naruto’s sleeve. She runs quicker than she’s ever run before, Naruto’s sleeve in her hand as she encourages him to keep pace, and wonders if they’ll have enough energy to face two of the strongest men known to humankind without any of their weapons. She can’t see Madara, even with her Byakugan still activated, but where there’s one there will undoubtedly be the other.

Naruto doesn’t question her haste; he picks up her pace and overcomes it easily, until he’s reaching back for the hand she’d held onto him with, until they’re fingers are interlaced.

“Can’t be good,” she hears him mutter under his breath as they continue to scale the jagged terrain of the riverside, darting away from an endless torrent of hidden attacks that come from every angle. She runs with her eyes both in front of her and behind, watching her footholds a second before she finds them, and never taking her enhanced sight off of Izuna’s charging figure in the distance.

By the time they manage to get beneath the bridge, several hundred feet overhead, Izuna has lost track of them. It’s some measure of luck, or skill, or both, that Hinata thinks they’d been able to scatter their trail. The storm was a successful cover, though the way they’d set off traps had almost been like a constant stream of exclamations, calling out their positions to anyone overhead. Yet, towards the end there, Naruto had revealed a few hidden explosives still on his person, and used them for decoys.

Heart racing and lungs heaving, Hinata leans against the mountainside and scans the area around them with temples burning and head aching. She lifts two fingers to massage her right temple, wishing to physically soothe the pain of the headache that’s only just beginning. She’d used her Byakugan for the entire run to the bridge, knowing that if she lost sight of Izuna they both could’ve been killed.

“He’s gone,” she pants, and the relief in her tone is unabashedly clear.

“Madara?” Naruto asks breathily, hunched over his knees.

Hinata shakes her head. “Izuna.”

Naruto casts a look her way, one she sees out of the corner of her eye, and it interests her enough to have her turning her attention fully towards him. She watches as he gasps for air, hands on his thighs and head tilted up so he can gaze at her. His eyes trail over the raised veins beside her eyes, and the extended transparency of her irises, and Hinata waits for any sign of shock or repulsion.

She finds only interest, and curiosity.

“Fascinating,” he says, loud enough for her to hear. She feels her cheeks flush, and tries to keep her expression blank. “I’m going to ask you about that later.”

“I’m not going to tell you about it,” she says, standing firm. Her heart’s not really in it, though; some part of her is fairly certain Naruto can get just about anything out of her. He’d be a particularly sharp interrogation tool against her, and he doesn’t even seem to know it. She swallows, resting her head back into the dirt behind her. She closes her eyes but it’s pointless, her Byakugan is still enhanced and she can see the energy of everything, even with her eyes closed.

“I think we’re okay,” Naruto says, sudden and brash. Hinata opens her eyes and tilts her head to gauge his expression and his meaning, watching as he stands back to his full height with an expression that almost looks concerned. He gestures vaguely to his own eyes, saying, “You can, you know. Deactivate.”

It startles a laugh out of her, which works magnificently to distract her from the sudden stinging ache of her muscles. It’s been a while since she’d put them to such a test.

“I’m not a robot,” she says, though she can’t help but grin. Naruto cringes, laughing at himself.

“I know! I know,” he repeats, and lifts a hand to rub at the back of his neck. “I don’t know how it works, so I don’t know what the right word is.”

Hinata spares him by saying, “Deactivate will work. For now.”

It makes Naruto smile, and she thinks that makes it worth it all the more. They gaze at each other for a few moments, drenched and shivering, and fire streaks across the sky. It makes it easier to see one another, easier for Hinata to see that Naruto has a gash across his abdomen that needs attention, and a pant leg covered in blood. It reminds her of her own wounds, too; the forgotten pain across her left shoulder blade, and the jarring ache of her hips.

One of those traps had been a series of explosions she’d found herself caught between, and the force of them had sent her crashing over rough terrain. When she looks back to Naruto, she gets caught on his steady gaze, and it distracts her from her pain. Concern is clear, now, across his features, and she wonders at the depth of it. His eyes trail over her in just the same way that hers had over him, but it feels entirely more intimate. The urge to fidget arises, and Hinata barely has time to resent it when Naruto breaks their eye contact.

He glances up, and up far more, until his eyes land on the underside of the great wooden bridge overhead. It’s too high to shield them from the onslaught of the storm, as the rain comes down in sheets at an angle, every drop sharp as pinpricks. He blinks warily at the climb they’re going to have to make, and glances back to her with a shaky grin.

“It’s a long climb,” he says, before glancing around them at the abundance of jagged stones that make up the riverside. “Not a pretty landing, either.” He doesn’t say if we fall, but she hears it loud and clear.

She swallows, pushing herself away from the wall only to turn back to it. She takes a deep breath and finds steady purchase with her fingers, and then her toes. On a normal day with clear skies and bright lighting, this mountainside would be a dangerous climb.

With rain pouring over them in sheets and a sky only lit by periodic lightning, the mountainside becomes nothing less than deadly. And yet it’s their only chance of escaping the lethal warriors in pursuit of them, and Hinata is determined. She is not going to be captured, or killed, and she’s not going to let anything happen to Naruto, either.

She takes her time to find safe holds for her fingers and her toes, limbs shaking with exertion and tension both; she climbs a few feet more and pauses to glance over her shoulder, finding Naruto gazing up at her with barefaced pride.

She takes a deep breath and says, “No risk, no reward.”

Naruto’s expression shifts into something wholly appreciative and indulgent before he steps up to the mountainside and finds his own holds in the rock and dirt. Hinata turns back to the mountain with cheeks stained rose petal pink, and continues up on higher.

Several times they have to pause, fingertips quivering and bodies molding to the mountainside. Her muscles—there has to be an explanation stronger and more painful than an ache—quiver under her skin, but she breathes carefully until she can press higher once more. Sometime during their climb, Naruto matches her pace and manages to get alongside her, but she can see the strain in his expression, and the choppy rhythm of his breathing.

“Close,” she whispers, and his eyes rise bright and devastatingly blue to find hers. He smiles, a shaky shift.

“Right.”

And they are; Hinata’s fingertips find the alcove’s edge first, and she does not rush. Patience is what got her here; patience is what prevented her from slipping to her death. She’s careful with every last hold, until she’s managed to get her entire body onto the flat surface of the alcove, tucked deep under the East side of the bridge. She doesn’t rest, even now, because Naruto is still climbing.

She peers carefully over the cliff’s edge, making certain that the foundation beneath her is steady before leaning her weight on it. She extends her hand when Naruto’s in reach, and he offers his gladly in response. She uses the last of her energy to pull when he pushes up, and gets an armful of Naruto on top of her for her efforts.

Any other time, she’d be appreciative of this. But now, with every part of her burning and aching and screaming to be soothed, she whimpers under the weight of him, and he immediately pushes himself off of her.

“Sorry,” he pants, and Hinata doesn’t even have the strength to respond. She lays on her back, staring blearily up at the hard-paced dirt dome overhead, and wonders not for the first time how she’s ever going to get out of this mission alive. She knows it isn’t safe to be this close to the edge, especially with her eyelids drooping and exhaustion tucking her into the recesses of unconsciousness, but she honestly can’t move a single muscle on her own right now. Everything hurts when she moves, and stillness is a heavenly balm to her aches and pains.

She tries to stay awake, to remind herself that a single wrong move could send her right off the cliff’s edge, but her eyelids feel as heavy as the rest of her and it’s a fight she can’t win. 

Just as her eyelids slip shut and darkness settles in, she feels rough hands sliding around her, pulling her away from the edge and into a warmth that finally, finally coaxes her into unconsciousness.

✧

Hinata wakes up shivering, goose bumps appearing over her skin. She makes a small discomfited sound, shifting slightly, and a hand slides through her hair, just above her neck. It pulls, so gently, until her nose and lips are tucked back against a niche of warmth. She sighs, nuzzling in close to the source, and she feels a steady, slow rhythm pulsing against her lips.

The sensation is strange enough to stir her until she’s blinking warily, vision clearing. The warmth under her cheek jolts slightly, almost a flinch, and startles her enough to focus. She looks up and finds Naruto’s jawline at the edge of her vision, and the realization of their closeness sets her heart racing.

The only sign that Naruto isn’t still asleep is the slow, careless circles his fingertips trace along the exposed skin of her shoulder. Her nose is still touching his neck, where before her lips had been against his pulse, and she feels herself stiffen in his hold. She blinks rapidly, and he jolts again. He sighs, his breath stirring her bangs.

“Your eyelashes,” he grunts lowly, “They’re tickling me.”

Hinata is fully awake now, and fully aware of the fact that they were—are—cuddling, and have been for the greater part of the night. Naruto’s coat is over them as a makeshift blanket, though it’s not doing much for either of them. Naruto himself is flat on his back with one arm around her, hand on her shoulder, and the other tucked up close on his chest. She lays sprawled over his chest, nose tucked against his throat, and she’s hyperaware of the way that there’s almost no space between them. She tries to breathe easy, to hide the fact that she may be freaking out, but something still manages to stir Naruto awake.

He shifts until he’s blinking down at her, and he doesn’t appear to be surprised or unsettled at their position. Hinata had been worried, for a striking moment, that she’d been the one to initiate this contact—but in the light of that expression on his face, it seems that even if she had been, Naruto doesn’t object.

He moves as if to get a better look at her expression, and a hiss of pain slides through his teeth. It’s an unpleasant but necessary reminder that they’re both still wounded, and in enemy territory. It baffles Hinata that she’d been able to sleep for so long, considering their reality. They really had been tested, at least physically, and it had been enough to knock them out.

Hinata pushes herself up and ignores her own shiver when the cold air hits her bare skin. The hem of her pant legs, originally cut off just below her knees, are ripped and torn up on her thighs. She pushes gently on Naruto’s shoulder when he makes a move to sit up, silently demanding that he remain down. He watches her carefully, eyes bright, and obeys.

Swallowing, Hinata pulls up the hem of his shirt, careful of the material matted to his skin where his blood had dried sometime during the night. The gash itself isn’t as large as she remembers it being, which is as much a relief as it is a mystery. When she glances back over to Naruto, he appears almost sheepish, but he keeps his thoughts to himself. Her fingertips trail around the raw skin, careful not to touch the wound itself, and she’s grateful that it’s not bad. Even if she’d been certain last night that it was.

“This will need a few butterfly stitches,” she explains, glancing back up at him with a soft smile. “Looks like you’re coming to the safe house with me.”

Naruto grins, self-assured and brash. She thinks he intends it to be a joke when he says, “I knew you wouldn’t leave me here, Hinata,” but he says it with unquestionable sincerity, and she wonders if he had actually entertained the thought that she might choose her job over his safety. It’s even clearer to her now, that they still have a lot to learn about each other.

Hinata slides his shirt back down over the wound with some care, and ignores the sharp definition of his muscled abdomen. He leans up, then, taking advantage of her apparent distraction and his fingers trail over her bare shoulder.

The touch shocks her back into awareness, her eyes shooting over to his to find him studying her skin with a focused stare. He flicks his gaze to her only once, biting his lip.

“Your shoulder blade,” he says, and the area in question stings as though called upon. It’s funny, Hinata thinks, how focus can emphasize pain. “It’s cut. Can I see it?”

Hinata nods without even really worrying about what Naruto will find; it hadn’t, and doesn’t, feel like anything too serious. It’s probably less of a cut than the one he has on his stomach.

Naruto’s touch negates her thoughts, and makes her think maybe it’s worse than she’d imagined. He’s just so careful with her, fingertips trailing feather-light and broadly along her back. He shifts until he’s kneeling behind her, and she lets him.

She barely flinches when both of his hands move over her, more exploratory than anxious, until the tip of one of his fingers trails the border of the wound and she clenches her teeth. He must have felt it, because he and his fingers back off immediately. She thinks the exploration over with, expects him to lie back down at her side. She hopes that maybe he’ll even initiate more cuddling, with an excuse for warmth, or something.

The last thing she expects is the soft touch of his lips on her shoulder blade, just above the wound, right over her heart.

“Naruto-kun,” she gasps, flinching in surprise. He’s undeterred, his lips moving achingly slowly over the smooth skin of her back. Her hair is a tangled mess of frizz and curl, and he coaxes it over her shoulder to make room for more skin to reach. Hinata’s distracted vision blurs on the stone under her knee and every part of her focuses in on the subtle touch of Naruto’s lips, and the realization that he’s kissing his way up to her nape.

His lips find the smooth stretch of skin between shoulder and neck, press down light enough to leave her wanting, and he finally asks, “okay?”

Hinata can’t look at him, she’s so embarrassed. She nods, though, because there’s no way she’s going to ask him to stop. She’s afraid that if she looks at him she’ll ask him for more, and she doesn’t want to push him, and she’s not unaware that they’re still on a mission.

Still, she’d never considered that Naruto might feel anything more for her than professional curiosity, and maybe a bit of unprofessional admiration. She’s seen the interest in his eyes when he looks at her—and he seems to like to look at her.

It had just never occurred to her that he might want her. Even with his lips on her nape, sucking what she is certain is going to be a hickey right into her neck, she can’t quite believe that he does.

“Hey,” he breathes, lips grazing over her earlobe, and Hinata could not have guessed were her life on the line what was going on in his mind. She wonders if she’s dreaming, still unconscious on the side of the cliff, so close to falling. But then Naruto says, “We’re safe,” and Hinata knows that she’s awake.

Because we’re safe makes it seem like he’s just feeling the residual adrenaline from fleeing a dangerous enemy, and that sounds like the kind of startlingly painful reality Hinata expects of her life. She feels her heart lurch, a tug in her chest, and she leans away from his touch.

She turns at last over her shoulder, finding his eyes—so bright and guileless, so clear and direct, and thinks maybe—maybe she’d misunderstood.

It becomes overwhelmingly clear that she had, when Naruto smiles easily at her and says, “We’re safe, so. Can I maybe kiss you? I know we have to be careful still, I’m not dumb, but I’d really like to kiss you.”

Hinata knows her makeup must be smeared from the rain and her hair is a rat’s nest of tangles and debris, that her catsuit is torn to shreds and barely hanging on to the frame of her, and yet as he gazes over at her, she feels more beautiful than ever.

“You want to?” she asks, genuinely surprised, and Naruto’s eyes grow heavy.

He says, “Yes.”

And Hinata leans towards him, turning to find a more comfortable angle, and hesitates a breath from his lips, eyes searching. He tips forward and smiles into the kiss, his hands coming up to her cheeks, and her heart gives another heavy lurch. It’s the same kind of startling tightness in her chest as a painful discovery; only this time there is a complete absence of pain replaced only, entirely, by joy. It’s sharp and sudden and it bleeds through her, coursing through her veins, and—

She’s a professional. She knows the dangers of the job. She knows, too, that people in this line of work are untrustworthy more often than not, and that it would be so easy to be deceived.

But Naruto is heartfelt and pure, and he hinders the kiss a little because he can’t stop smiling against her lips and breathing her name through her teeth and she believes him. She believes him.

She lets Naruto kiss her, and she reaches for as much of him as she can find; her fingers grow greedy far sooner than his do, until they’re pressing up against bare skin. It’s only when she accidentally nudges against his wound and causes him to flinch that she realizes her actions, and feels the responding embarrassment for them.

Naruto catches sight of her blush and laughs, wholehearted and pure.

“No, don’t do that,” he says, reaching forward to trail his thumb along one of her rosy cheeks. And then, with that utter lack of self-consciousness that had initially drawn her to him, he brazenly admits, “I want you to touch me. I’m just a little beat up right now, though. Not the best for performance.”

“Performance?” Hinata gasps, and her cheeks flash right through sullen pinks to ruddy reds. “We’re on a mission!”

Naruto laughs, and then moves to tuck a tuft of her tangled hair behind her ear, expression fond.

“If I wasn’t beat up to hell,” he begins jauntily, leaning back to grin at her with his kiss-swollen lips. “I’d tell you to live a little, Hinata, and show you how I mean it.”

Hinata knows two hundred different thoughts to distract her enough to keep her expression unchanged, and her breathing regular. She’d been trained from a young age to reject responses to interrogation tactics, including those that might knock her off balance. In this moment, with his words sliding through her as heated and spirited as the sun’s own rays, she forgets every one of them.

“As it seems, though,” he continues, as if he hadn’t just wrecked her. “We should probably start making our way to the safe house. We both need stitches, believe it.”

“Right, yeah,” she replies breathlessly, “the safe house.”

Naruto smirks. He gets carefully to his feet, stretching a little to loosen the tension in his tight, aching muscles, and offers her a hand up. She takes it distractedly, allowing him to help her to her feet. She stretches too, her mind a blur of remembered mission parameters and unprofessional hopes about she and Naruto and what they could do together in the protection of the safe house.

Blushing furiously, Hinata turns away from Naruto until she’s at the edge of the alcove, peering out. The rain has ceased for the moment, but the angry black of the clouds overhead says that the reprieve won’t be for long. Hinata’s sight enhances, temples flaring with heat, and her head aches again with the fresh pain of it. She gives a cursory glance to their surroundings, leaving no energy-infused stone unturned, and nods satisfactorily when she finds no enemies close by.

There are, however, units patrolling the grounds several kilometers back that concern her. She and Naruto won’t be able to move as freely towards the safe house as she’d wanted to, but at least they have the distraction of her vehicle, left at Madara’s house and undoubtedly confiscated by his guards. They’d want to tear it apart, searching it piece by piece for clues of her identity.

She turns back to Naruto just as her vision settles back to normal, and the stinging ache becomes more of an irritating hum in the back of her head. She nods in the direction of the safe house, and her damned cheeks are still heated. It’s the way he looks at her, so openly and unflinchingly interested, that gets to her.

“There are some units patrolling nearby. We’ll have to be careful.”

Naruto slips his arms back into his coat, shrugging it carefully over his wide shoulders. When he’s settled the material, he puffs his chest out brazenly and proclaims, “Careful is my middle name!”

Hinata rolls her eyes, laughing under her breath. 

“You came here armed to the teeth with explosives,” she says, watching the way he grins cheekily at her and only shrugs in response. She shakes her head, unable to stop smiling, and together they start making their way back up to flat ground, and eventually, the safe house.

✧

The first thing Hinata does when they get to the safe house is slip out of her flats.

She takes a long moment of relief to flex her toes, and then she cares for Naruto’s wounds—most notably the gash on his abdomen. She studies it with a sharp eye for far longer than might be necessary, but she could’ve sworn it was either shrinking before her eyes, or healing at a truly incredible rate. Both, perhaps, but the bizarre nature of it just continues to baffle her.

Either way, it holds her attention steadfastly while she tends to it and the other gashes Naruto reluctantly reveals to her.

She checks for breaks and fractures and finds no signs of either, though he’s got some seriously concerning patches of bruising around his knees that concern her. He doesn’t let her fuss, however, and by the time she’s finished her full assessment of him, he insists on tending to her slashed shoulder blade. When Hinata turns her back to him, she almost expects to feel his lips ghosting over her skin once more. She hopes for it.

Instead, Naruto goes to work on her injury with a seriousness that’s both endearing and surprising. He assures her that he’s stitched other people’s wounds before, but his technique is lacking just enough that she has to doubt his sincerity on that fact. Once she tells him to slow down and just breathe through it, however, he manages just fine.

Before long, both of them are patched up and left with their hands free, and Hinata starts thinking and wishes she’d stop. She knows what she should be doing: trying to re-establish a communication channel with Kiba and Shino, so that she can inform them of the data retrieval and her current status and position. She knows, too, that Naruto must have similar matters to attend to.

But she can’t stop thinking about what had almost been, back in that alcove, and what that kiss means for them now.

The first time she met Naruto, he’d been playing with a pack of kids in HQ, teaching them how to defend themselves against punches. He laughed with them, and spoke quietly into their ears, and hugged them like they were his own. Hinata had loved him instantly.

They’ve worked in close circles their entire lives, since that initial day. He with his team, and she with hers; it was their jobs they lived for, and the paired rush and challenge of being an operative of the Hidden Leaf that kept them busy. So busy, in fact, that they rarely saw each other at all.

The only times she can remember running into him had been in the hallways of HQ, with one of them always heading for Top’s office to debrief, and another heading back out to their team. Even still, he’d always stopped to make conversation with her, to learn more about her. At first, she’d suspected that was just a part of getting an edge on the competition—get to know them, and you’ll eventually get to know their weaknesses, too.

But Naruto isn’t like that, he never had been. Elite agent or not, he was candid to a fault, and breathtakingly straightforward. Hinata has never known him to lie or pretend to be anything other than what he is, and that has always fascinated her. She’d often stay up late, lying in bed and staring out at the stars, wondering what kind of stuff Naruto is made of.

Because he’s special. He’s different—from everyone she’s ever met before.

And yet, he understands her. He has the same depth of compassion and empathy that she does, but he works with them differently, so brash and heated and emotional. Whereas her strength lies in her controlled composure, his power comes from a complete lack of control over himself. They’re two sides of the same coin, and sometimes, she thinks maybe they’re made from the same kind of magic.

It’s no secret in their organization that he is the hero, the poster boy for success and innovation. He brokers unthinkable negotiations and turns the tides in seemingly unchangeable situations; there has never been a situation that could be classified as predictable, where Naruto is concerned.

In the very beginning, when her feelings were still new and interesting, she’d wondered if she’d mistaken her feelings for him. She’d admired everything about him, to the extent that for a while, she wondered if it was really love at all, or if it was simple, tenacious appreciation.

But when he finally said yes to a woman in their division that had been interested in him for months, Hinata knew that what she felt wasn’t simple at all. It wasn’t just admiration. There had been so much pain, during that time, and confusion. But there had also been joy, an indescribable joy that she knew could only be felt when you loved someone, and wanted them to be happy.

If Naruto had found happiness in loving someone that wasn’t her, then she would support him. Because love is a selfless creature, and it bloomed inside of her chest whenever she thought about Naruto’s smile, his laughter, and his potential to be good and happy.

Kiba and Shino were pillars of support for her, back then. They held her up when the pain overcame the joy and she fell down, and they walked with her through the confusion of her feelings for him. When Naruto became single once more, they were there for her, open to her choices but encouraging of possibilities that could only be explored if she was brave enough to admit her feelings for Naruto, to Naruto.

Admitting to her feelings was one thing, but admitting them to Naruto was something else entirely. She hadn’t been ready, then. She hadn’t thought she’d ever really be ready.

And time flew by, with new missions around every corner. She didn’t see Naruto for months at a time, sometimes even longer, and her feelings settled low and deep in her chest, left only to arise in Naruto’s wake, like golden dust kicked up behind his every passing step.

And then she accepted this mission; saw Naruto for the first time in months, and he’d kissed her.

He’d kissed her.

All of those years she’d spent wondering, hoping that he might feel something for her, and maybe he had. Maybe he’d been in a similar situation, unknowing of how to approach her, short on time and freedom and unsure of how she’d respond. Maybe, like that well-known fairytale, they’d been intertwined this whole time by invisible threads stained red, and they hadn’t even known it.

She takes a deep breath, and puts all of that worry and doubt behind her. It’s tension that slips right out of her shoulders, soothes the raw clutch of her heart. In this moment, she decides that she isn’t going to hold anything back. She can practically hear Kiba’s voice in her ear, telling her this exact thing so many times over the years, with Shino nodding supportively just over his shoulder. They’ve been right all along, and she’s known it, but she hadn’t been strong enough.

Not until now. She chooses to be brave, with Naruto so close to her and danger so far. She opens her eyes and the world seems brighter, fairer, and less of a challenge to face.

Naruto hovers just over her shoulder, and finishes stitching her wound together. She can feel his breath on her shoulder for just a moment, before he moves back over to the table where they’d left the first aid kit, and tucks away the medical tools they’d needed. He turns to look at her, and there’s something about his focus that knocks her off-balance.

He searches her expression, more contemplative than she’s ever seen him, and it makes her feel breathless. She’d be lying if she denied how quickly her heart is racing, swift as a hummingbird’s wings, tinged in nerves. Hope settles high and tight in her chest, nearly choking her amid the unanswered anticipation laced through the air, and Naruto moves first.

He breathes her name across the space between them, an empty gulf of only a few feet, but which feels worlds away. He reaches across the gap, knuckles grazing her cheekbone, and she’s swept immediately into the tide of his physicality.

She doesn’t question any of her feelings, or his.

She goes to him easily, feet moving swiftly over wood, and his arms pull her into the valley of his chest. He kisses her like he’s going to lose her, and it turns her inside out. She responds in kind, unable to do much but wonder if he’s felt this way about her for as long as she’s felt about him.

His callused hands scrape over the silk of her skin and she bites at the edge of his jaw, reminding him that she’s anything but breakable. He takes the hint in the slow curl of his fingers around her hips, digging subtly into her skin. The force of his grip makes her gasp, in the most delighted of ways, and she keens softly against his lips when he lifts her.

Everything happens so fast, afterwards.

Her legs fold sloppily around his waist and her cheeks stain rose when she feels his erection against her. He holds her to his chest, lips pressing against her throat, sucking a trail down to the curve of her collarbone. He walks them to the only bed in the place, an inelegant mattress on a handmade wooden frame, and settles her against the ashen sheets like an artist brandishing over his masterpiece. She’s enamored, captivated, and there’s no room for doubt in her mind.

There are no grounds for it, either, not when she looks up and sees the brightness of his stare, and the way his hands shake.

He leans in to breathe her name over the skin of her collarbone, licking into the hollow just above it. Her head falls back as her fingers delve into his hair, long enough to get a good hold—she doesn’t pull, yet. She lets her fingers settle amidst the coarse strands, carding soothingly as he continues to mouth at her chest.

“Naruto-kun,” she breathes, and it’s praise and criticism both. Naruto doesn’t have to understand it to know that she wants more, though, and when he leans back and presses what’s almost a chaste kiss compared to those before it to her lips, she waits patiently for whatever it is he has planned.

She’s rewarded duly, when he slides down the length of her, hands and mouth trailing languidly over skin and fabric both. His fingers drag all the way down her legs, encircle her ankles, and slide back up the supple curves of her calves. He brings a hand back to her left ankle and lifts it enough to press a kiss to the hollow there, before he gazes back at her and cautiously trails his fingertips back up her body, until they’re curled just into the hem of her catsuit, right over her breasts.

Hinata’s heart races anew at the implication of that gaze matched with that gesture, and she feels herself gasp in response. The sincerity of her reactions makes him smile, a slow and dangerous thing, and Hinata can barely keep herself from moaning aloud at just a look he sends her way.

He begins the slow drag of the fabric down her body, and she throws an arm over her face to hide her gaze from the heavy-lidded interest in his own, as he slowly peels the catsuit from her body. She hears him inhale, a sharp gasp as her breasts are fully exposed, and his thumbs slide experimentally over her nipples, almost curiously.

She bites down on her lip and the moan that results, too shy to expose her expression to him when she’s the only one being undressed.

“Hey,” he whispers, and she feels his lips press down against the soft skin of her breast. The kiss makes her shake, and she thinks she makes some sort of answering noise, though she isn’t entirely sure. Naruto reaches up and gently grasps her wrist, fingers snug over her skin. He pulls her arm away and kisses her inner wrist, eyes heavy but bright with something she can’t even put into words, but which makes her heart race all the quicker.

He smiles, and it’s soft around the edges and cuts right through her, for how utterly sincere it is in showing his joy.

“Don’t hide, please,” he says, tone just loud enough to hear. “I want to see you.”

Hinata’s heart breaks for how careful he is with her, like he’s afraid if he makes one wrong move he’ll scare her away. She can’t find her voice—isn’t even certain if she could get a single word out at all, so she just nods her head, cheeks hot to the touch. His resulting smile is slow and beautiful, and he hooks his fingers into back into the hem of her suit, tugging lightly.

“Lift your hips for me,” he whispers, and Hinata does just that. He slides her suit down the length of her legs and right off, before tossing it across the room. She can’t help but laugh, especially when he seems surprised to hear it. It’s just so typical him to carelessly throw her clothes across the room, when he could’ve just dropped them by the bed. She sees his startled expression, his cheeks a little pink, and she laughs so hard her eyes slip closed.

She stops laughing abruptly when she feels him press his lips to the inset of her right knee, laving his tongue lightly over the soft skin there. Hinata has to grip the sheets by her hips to keep herself from undulating under his teasing ministrations. And he is teasing; every single flick of his tongue and drag of his fingers over her skin is accompanied by bright eyes gleaming in the dark, and the soft twist of the corner of his lips.

Hinata hears the warning roll of thunder overhead, and a moment later, the first sprinkling notes of rain against the roof and windows. The rain follows Naruto’s lead; it starts devastatingly slowly, barely audible over Hinata’s panting breaths and just-barely repressed cries as Naruto’s finger slides under the fabric of her panties. Thunder cracks overhead once more, then recoils, and Naruto’s fingers dance over the heat of her.

“Please,” she finally begs, uncaring of how desperate she sounds, especially when Naruto’s response is a throaty groan and answering pressure. The rain starts to fall more heavily, in sheets, and Naruto slips Hinata’s panties down the length of her legs before settling his shoulders between her thighs, hands pressing down on her hips.

The first time she feels his mouth on her, she wants to cry.

She had shared this kind of intimacy with men and women before, but she had never felt this kind of awakening. She feels overheated and needy, squirming under the touch of his hands and his mouth and his tongue; her heart is a piston drumming against her ribcage, begging to be soothed. Her lips part around Naruto’s name countless times, cresting on keening cries and curving low on the slopes of moans she can’t withhold.

When the first strike of lightning flashes, lighting up the interior of the safe house in its minimal entirety, Naruto pulls away. The loss of pressure, of wet heat against her, nearly brings frustrated tears to her eyes. She glances down her body and finds him heavy-lidded and approving as he looks up at her.

He says, “I’ve wanted you for a long time, you know?”

Hinata hadn’t known. She had barely even allowed herself to hope.

It’s the candor of his tone, however, that bolsters her courage and enables her to admit, at last, “I’ve wanted you longer.”

Naruto’s eyes catch fire, and maybe it’s the way the next flare of lightning comes through the window and reflects off the walls to catch in the pools of his eyes, or maybe it’s just the inherent luster of his stunning spirit. Either way, Hinata is captivated.

Naruto lavishes her with attention, and spends time getting her used to the stretch of one finger before he slowly adds another. Her hips threaten to come away from the mattress, but his left hand holds her down easily, and he hums in pleased disapproval. It should probably embarrass her, how incredibly breathtaking she finds his strength—that he can hold her down so easily with his non-dominant hand—it sets fire to her nerves.

Naruto curls his fingers and continues to thrust them, his tongue rubbing circles over her clitoris, and the sensation builds so suddenly and so powerfully that Hinata’s orgasm takes her completely by surprise. Fire races through her and Naruto’s name is something sacred and promised that she can do nothing but try to breathe around.

She settles back into the sheets, panting and smiling, and Naruto continues to press doting kisses against her supple thighs. When she manages to catch her breath, she reaches for him. She pulls a little, encouraging him to leave her thigh with only the hickey he’d just managed to leave behind, until she can find his lips and taste herself there. She kisses him happily, lavishly, and smiles against his swollen mouth.

Naruto allows her to tease him for a few minutes, lips pulling and teeth gently biting at his own, before his impatience gets the better of him. He slides a hand underneath her and uses his strength to turn them over, until she’s sitting astride his erection and he’s tilting his head back with a low groan. She studies the exposed column of his strong neck and leans forward to kiss it, paying special attention to the spot she can best feel his pulse. She sucks until the skin there darkens enough for her to be pleased with herself, and for Naruto to be gazing up at her in wonder.

He pushes his hips up against her, and she’s still so sensitive, the sudden friction of his pants against her bare skin makes her shudder. Her hands come to his shoulders to stabilize herself, and she laughs a little when she opens her eyes again to see him grinning knowingly at her.

“Quit it,” she mutters, unable to keep a straight face.

“You quit it,” he retorts playfully. “You’re teasing.”

“Perhaps,” she whispers as she presses her hips down in a grinding arc, hissing at the contact once again. It’s worth it to see Naruto shudder beneath her, though. She gazes down at him, unashamed that she’s probably projecting the love she’d been hiding for so long. There’s something in his eyes that she recognizes, something that looks like how she feels when she thinks about him and it makes her brave. It makes her unafraid to love him.

When she sees him start to bite at his lip, she finally moves down his legs. She gets her hands on the button and zipper of his pants, straining around his erection, and she nearly forgets how to breathe.

Her cheeks flare with heat and she can’t tear her eyes away from the slow reveal of his cock as she pushes his pants and boxer briefs down, even when she feels him staring at her.

“Oh,” she breathes, and it’s embarrassing and he’ll probably never let her live it down but she’s never wanted to get her hands or her mouth on someone more, so she just doesn’t care. She wraps her fingers around the base of him, and the hard heat of it is a stark reminder that this is real, and this time, it’s easy to believe.

She gives a few experimental pumps before gathering the courage to glance back up at his expression, only to be left breathless at the way he’s so obviously wrecked by her attention. He watches her hand and breathes her name through his teeth, shifting his hips to push more of his cock into her hands. She slides her free hand up and down his muscled thigh, massaging and scraping periodically, just to drag his focus back and away from the way she’s pumping him.

She doesn’t last long before she finds herself sliding further back and deeper, until she’s pressing the head of his cock to her lips, a cursory taste of the precome beading at the tip. His responding groan sounds nearly pious, and it’s more than enough encouragement for her to wrap her lips around him and start a long, wet slide.

Her passion and determination for making him feel good seem to be a lethal combination, as he doesn’t last much longer afterwards. His fingers find a way into her hair and offer a subtle guidance, a push and a pull to direct her rhythm, and then a stronger and more insistent pull that she welcomes. When he comes, it’s her name that slips through his clenched teeth. She swallows as best as she can, but she’s still new to this, and some of his come finds its way down her chin.

Her initial reaction is embarrassment, until she sees the way he’s looking at her. It’s a look that says if she hadn’t just gotten him off a moment ago, he’d be ready for another round. That look makes her feel braver than she might’ve felt otherwise, and as such, she wipes the wet trail from her chin and sucks it off of her finger. He watches her with a pained expression, and it makes her laugh a little around her thumb.

She drops her hands back to the bed, just along his thighs, and it’s then that her fingers encounter something distracting. She glances to his pocket and feels the small, hard shape there, before looking back at him with a raised brow. He seems just as confused as she is, until she reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tiny mechanical device. Eyes wide, she points at the device and huffs, “It was you?”

He blinks. “I totally forgot about that thing.”

Hinata rolls her eyes, shaking her head. She nearly laughs, because of course it’d been Naruto who had communication-interference technology on him. Of course. She flips the device in her palm and flicks the power switch, and instantly hears the crackling of her comm device in her ear. It startles her into jolting, and Naruto watches on with brows raised and an apologetic grin. Hinata focuses in on reconnecting with the control room and forgets entirely how bare she is, sitting over him with breasts exposed and chest tinged pink with a light, sated flush.

The channel is all static until Hinata presses a finger against her ear bud. With some finagling, she finally gets a clear stream and easily hears Kiba’s frantic voice.

“Hinata? Do you copy? Are you there?”

“Kiba-kun,” she sighs, relieved. “I’m here.”

“Hell,” Kiba curses, and she can hear the furious dance of his fingers over his keyboard, as he locks on to her new position. “I thought something horrible happened! What happened? Nothing horrible happened, right?”

“Kiba,” Shino’s voice suddenly dials in, with his usual calm amusement. “Slow down.”

“Don’t act like you weren’t pacing over there in Rain, and then calling me every five minutes to ask if I got a secure connection!”

“Kiba-kun,” Hinata laughs, “Shino-kun. We’re at the safe house, and I have the data.”

She eyes Naruto warily, unwilling to sacrifice the integrity of her mission, even to him. The names of her team are common knowledge, amidst the teams permitted in her division, so there’s no secrets spilled there. He seems to understand, though he simply rests with hands interlaced behind his head and watches her with a charmed grin. His eyes wander, and she turns away, cheeks heating.

There’s a long moment of silence over the channel, and then Shino and Kiba, in perfect synchronicity, say, “What do you mean, ‘we?’”

Hinata blinks, her stomach turning. She hadn’t meant to mention Naruto yet—or at all. All she was going to get in response was a serious ribbing from her two best friends, and possibly a lecture. She’d wanted to avoid doing this over the channel, and especially in front of Naruto, who is still blissfully exposed and lying out in front of her.

“Uh,” she blunders, and Naruto’s grin grows even wider. “I ran into another Leaf operative. I’m still with him. Um.”

“Who?” Shino inquires, just as Kiba snarls, “I’ll find him, and I’ll kill him.”

Hinata lifts a hand to cover her laughter, eyes crinkling with fondness for her two boys. She eyes Naruto again and, if only to herself, thinks, three. Her three boys. She removes her finger from the mic in her ear and directs her question to Naruto.

“Am I allowed to disclose your identity?”

Naruto shrugs, still grinning. “Top’s gonna be pissed, but you know what? He needs a little excitement in his life, too. He sits at a desk all day, after all.”

Hinata frowns at him, pursing her lips. Eventually, she just sighs and goes with it, even when she knows how Shino and Kiba will undoubtedly respond.

“Uzumaki Naruto,” she admits, and the static that comes over the channel has nothing to do with connections, and everything to do with Kiba’s guttural laughter.

“Lover boy?” he asks, once he’s got himself relatively under control. “You ran into the elite fucking Leaf hero, that you just so happen to be in love with?”

Hinata doesn’t think that she’s ever going to be able to stop blushing. Kiba’s voice is so loud she wonders if Naruto can hear him, and really, really hopes that he cannot.

“Yes him,” she hisses, eyebrows pursed and frowning.

Shino sounds sincere when he says, “What luck.”

“Tell me about it,” Kiba cuts in. “Good thing I chose the most kickass gown!”

Hinata can practically hear Shino rolling his eyes.

“Ah, about the gown,” Hinata begins, cringing a little when Kiba sighs dejectedly, already expecting trouble.

“The weather is stormy over there,” he says, “I was expecting a little fraying at the edges?”

“Ashes,” Hinata admits blithely. “The heels as well.”

“You had to ditch it entirely?” Kiba groans. “Hell. Hell.”

“It’s not like you can’t get her another one, equally as elegant.” Shino advises, and Kiba’s so distraught he doesn’t even hear the compliment in it. Which Hinata thinks may have been Shino’s plan all along.

“You can’t just replace perfection,” Kiba snarls, and Hinata can picture him shaking his head. Well, it’d be easier to picture if she wasn’t trying so hard not to stare at Naruto, who apparently has no intention of covering himself. She tries to gesture for him to un-tuck the blanket from under his hips and throw it over him, but he only smiles wider at her. He gestures right back to her, with far less judgment and a lot more appreciation and it’s then, and only then, that she realizes she’s been sitting up in front of him without a stitch on. She wraps an arm over her breasts self-consciously, and turns slightly so her legs are in the way. She glares at him.

“And whatever, it’s not like it’s the dress that’s even important right now. If you had to ditch it—burn it—then you were in trouble. What happened? Do you have the data secured?”

“The data is secure.” Hinata responds, ignoring his former worries. She can explain the specifics to Kiba and Shino later. He must expect that, because instead of repeating himself, he asks, “So what are you and lover boy doing?”

If she’d been standing, rather than kneeling between Naruto’s legs, her stomach may have fallen right through her feet. Instead, her throat simply closes up and Naruto, seeing her doomed expression, barks out a sudden laugh.

“Hinata?” Kiba calls, “Did you copy that last?”

“I c-copy,” she responds, lifting her free hand to cover her eyes.

“Don’t you want to be sending me evac transportation?” she says hopefully, trying to distract him.

There’s a moment of silence, and then she hears Kiba whisper something unintelligible to Shino, who simply responds in a low voice she clearly wasn’t supposed to hear, “Probably something lewd.”

Another moment of silences passes, before Kiba clears his throat and says, “We are so talking about this when you get back. But yeah, I’ve already got evac on its way for you. Should your captain be expecting company? Friendly or otherwise?”

Hinata directs the sentiment Naruto’s way, and for the first time his expression shifts into something resembling solemnity.

“No,” he says. “I’ve got more to do here.”

Hinata blinks at him, confused. “More? Did you just leave because of the chaos I caused?”

“I mean, that was part of it.” He shrugs, before looking over at her with open fondness. “Mostly, I just wanted to spend time with you.”

Hinata makes a noise of protest in her throat. “But you were injured! You could’ve been killed, trying to escape with me!”

“No risk,” he repeats her earlier words, squinting at her in challenge. “No reward.”

Hinata cannot respond to that at all. She speaks back into her ear mic, directing her words to Kiba and Shino.

“Just me.”

“We’re definitely talking about this later.”

“Fine, fine,” Hinata sighs. “I have to go now, Control. I’ll report back to you when the captain arrives.”

“Stay safe,” Shino offers.

“Go be gross,” Kiba adds, and Hinata blushes anew, because they know. She deactivates the mic, but keeps the ear bud in, just in case there’s an emergency. She glances back to Naruto and he simply curls his fingers at her, saying, “Come over here.”

And it’s all too easy, really, to follow that command. But first, she replaces his deactivated communication interference device and yanks the blanket out from under him, before moving under it and crawling up his body until she’s able to slide up against him, resting her head against his shoulder, one arm slung over his chest. He wraps his arm around her shoulders, the same position they’d been in while tucked away in that alcove, and it’s comfortable. It’s right.

“You’re leaving soon?”

“Soon,” Hinata nods, nuzzling into the warmth of his skin. Naruto leans over and presses a kiss into her hair, hand sliding over her shoulder to keep her warm. They fall into a comfortable silence, then, just lying together and listening to the rain and thunder outside. Lightning flashes and Hinata closes her eyes against Naruto’s chest, pulling herself closer. He rubs his jaw against her head, catching some of her hair in his scruff. 

They lie together waiting for the boat that’s on its way for her to arrive, and the world slows around them.

✧

When Hinata returns to HQ, there’s a muted kind of chaos laced through the air. It makes the hairs on her nape stand on end, and her nerves bunch tight. There’s no sign of panic, or of concern. But the air—it’s so heavy, and Hinata can barely stand under it.

“Kiba-kun,” she calls, moving down the steps to the lower deck. There are desks covered in computers and wires and various kinds of technological advancements to make her head spin, but her focus remains strung tight on the tense line of Kiba’s shoulders. He turns just slightly over his shoulder in greeting, giving her a strained look that speaks volumes.

His fingers fly over the keys, and she watches over his shoulder as the feed shows a fuzzy Shino moving swiftly through the shadows. She doesn’t know what kind of mission he’s on, though she does know that he was only recently sent out; he’s only been gone a few days. Hinata stands silently over the screen as Kiba walks him through a mangled route of felled trees and tangled vines. She frowns, watching the way Shino’s hand opens and closes, as if releasing his tracker bots. It’s not her place to ask, but she’s still curious.

When he’s as safe as Kiba feels comfortable, he turns away from the screens and offers a tired smile.

“Welcome back,” he says. “You debriefed already?”

It’s more of a surprised realization than a question, but Hinata answers it all the same.

“This morning,” she says with a nod. Then, after a brief moment of consideration, she offers an amused yet tired grin. “Top was not pleased.”

Kiba snorts. “Understatement of the year. He ‘wasn’t pleased’ with me losing track of the communication signal. You ran into another agent in the field, brought him back to your safe house, and spoke about your objective in front of him. Not to mention the other things you did with said agent.”

Hinata’s neck and cheeks feel hot, and she knows Kiba can see her blushing, but she doesn’t care. Naruto still hasn’t returned from his mission, so she hasn’t been able to contact him, but even still, she’s still glowing from their last meeting. She’s not worried about how they’ll be when he returns—no one has ever touched her the way Naruto had. People don’t touch like that unless they’re coveting, unless they want more.

Hinata isn’t worried. She’s excited. The future has a lot in store for the both of them.

One powerful figure in that future, she thinks wryly, is their Top. She isn’t permitted to divulge anything that had occurred within the room when she’d debriefed, so there’s no way to let Kiba know that the legendary Hatake Kakashi has a sense of humor that is far, far more unhinged than they’d ever contemplated.

She’d known him to be absurd, and quirky; she’d tucked the information away for later review, however, in light of how dangerously efficient he is at his job. As a competent agent, she’d researched him as best as she could, without looking suspicious. He seemed rather plain, after much study, and actually…quite boring. Perhaps that’s why he’s so partial to meddling in his own subordinates’ affairs, she muses. Regardless, the frankly lackluster lifestyle he leads outside of the office is incentive enough for him to seek the most extravagant and potentially dangerous amusement in his professional life.

As it seems, she had been just another victim caught in the crosshairs of his most elusive, yet somehow equally renowned hobby of interference. The man sure does enjoy throwing obstacles into already complicated situations, just to see how his employees will respond to them. Hinata had known all of this before agreeing to work for the man, but seeing as she had never been his target before now, well. It had been easy to dismiss his proclivity for the extraordinarily troublesome act of meddling—and in the top-tier military units, no less—until she became the target.

Now, however, she remembers the wicked gleam in his one visible eye and the almost teasing way he’d danced around the topic of Naruto interfering with her mission—and how, through a series of cryptic leads he’d just as soon drop as he would offer, he’d just barely, barely hinted that Naruto’s interference had been orchestrated by his own hand. His mind games give her a headache to rival that of using the Byakugan too long, a poor reward for impressing him, and it also has her checking her original opinion of him.

And she had impressed him. It was there in the brightness of his gaze and the quirked corner of his lips when she’d reported her mission a triumph, with the data properly retrieved, her identity successfully withheld, and a nearly seamless escape. The aches of her body had protested that last, but they were hidden under her uniform; she’s not entirely certain that he hadn’t seen them through the fabric, though. His stare is far too sharp to miss anything so transparent.

Hinata sighs, lifting her hands to rub idly at her temples again. Kiba’s grinning at her like he knows exactly what she’d been thinking, and she simply shakes her head.

“Like I’m going to bring that up in front of Top,” she replies, frowning down at him. The sudden realization that Top might actually already know, somehow, in that mysterious way that he has of knowing everything, makes her wince. Kiba understands the gesture just as well without her having voiced it.

“He totally knows,” he says, smirking. He turns back to the screen and interrupts Shino’s quiet mumbling to say, “Your other left, Shino.”

There’s a moment of silence and stillness on the screen, before Shino diverts in the proper direction. His voice, almost inaudible, comes through the line sounding a little defensive.

“It’s dark,” he explains, nearly in a huff. Kiba snorts through the channel. The lightness of their conversation is a welcome distraction from the tension over the room, but too soon, it falls silent and all Hinata can hear are the unspoken words of trepidation.

“Kiba-kun,” Hinata says again, low and soft. He barely glances at her. “What’s happened since I’ve returned?”

Kiba usually speaks first and asks questions later, but now he hesitates, and his pointed control disquiets her. He taps his fingers against the desk, idly, without rhythm, and sighs.

“Well,” he begins, his hesitation setting alarm bells chiming in her mind, “Right after you returned, we—”

“Oh dear,” a voice suddenly chimes in, lilting across the room. Kiba doesn’t turn to it, mostly because he’s still watching Shino, ensuring his safety and directing him towards his intended destination. Hinata turns, though, and finds herself glancing up at Kakashi and his two head advisors. Kakashi’s posture is lax and dispassionate, hunched where Iruka’s beside him is tall and straight. Yamato is a blended mix of the two on Kakashi’s right, tall and hunched and almost weary, though Hinata could just as easily attribute having to deal with Kakashi all day as having to deal with worldwide criminal antics.

“Did I forget to mention that in the debriefing session?” Kakashi asks, but it’s really not a question at all. Iruka sighs, and Yamato turns to him with a critical look.

Hinata straightens her posture, turning fully to face him. “Mention what, Top?”

Kakashi blinks at her, considering. Then, without a change in his bored inflection, he says, “Uchiha Madara authorized the bombing of a fairly populated region in Sand.”

Hinata’s heart lurches heavily, painfully against her ribs. She feels the breath knocked out of her, Kakashi’s words, so carelessly given, powerful enough to do more damage than a physical attack.

“When?” she whispers, and Iruka, with heavy eyes and what Hinata already knows to be a heavier heart, replies, “Just this morning. Right after—”

“I returned.” Hinata finishes, and she has to reach out to grasp at the edge of Kiba’s desk to keep herself from crumbling. Kiba’s hand slides over to hers, inconspicuous and hidden from their superiors’ view, and his touch is a welcome avenue of support.

“How many?” she asks, when she’s able to find her voice again. Kakashi watches her carefully, unblinking and so quiet it sends chills racing down her spine. She wonders what he’s thinking, about the attacks and about her mission and how the two might—no, definitely coincide. It’s Yamato that answers, his voice stronger than Iruka’s in tone, but with far less emotion.

“We are still receiving reports,” he begins, and Hinata sees Iruka’s eyes slide shut. “But somewhere near five thousand. Several thousand are wounded or ill from the blast radius.”

Hinata’s knees shake, and she crosses them to hide the fact. Kakashi’s gaze is sharp, and these are her superiors. She’s a professional.

She’s also human, though, so she doesn’t think she can really be blamed for the way she bows her head.

Yamato continues on, this time far more carefully. “Your mission and this event are undoubtedly connected.”

It’s not like Hinata hadn’t already known this and accepted it, the moment she’d heard the news. But hearing it hits Hinata hard, and she finds that she can’t prevent her hands from shaking.

“Monster,” she whispers, and she’s not even certain if it was loud enough for her superiors to hear. She thinks of the arrogant smile on Madara’s face, and the resonant boom of his presence when he’d stepped in front of her. The sheer dominion carved into every line of him, so supercilious, so unfeeling.

It’s Kakashi’s voice that comes next, and heeds her to meet his gaze.

“Now would be the right time to divulge anything you may have…forgotten, in your routine debriefing session.”

Hinata and Iruka, both, are up in arms immediately.

“She would never,” Iruka hisses, just as Hinata throws her shoulders back and squares them, gaze unflinching. There has to be a reason that Kakashi didn’t mention this news during her debriefing session earlier that morning; part of her thinks that he’d wanted to break it to her with other people present, but even then, it doesn’t really make sense. Hinata would follow the train of thought further if she thought it would lead her to anything other than more confusion. This was undoubtedly another one of Kakashi’s tests.

“I have nothing to hide,” she says, and it’s then that she notices how tense Kiba’s shoulders are, and how his hand is squeezing hers too tight to be comfortable.

Kakashi studies her wearily, the first sign of exhaustion breaking through the mask of his apathy. Because that’s what it is—a mask. Kakashi is masks on top of masks on top of masks, but sometimes his true self breaks through. She can almost see the way his fury starts to show, in the wild brightness of his exposed eye, and the sharp line of his still-hunched shoulders. Every angle of him seems barbed and dangerous, even in such a lazy posture. He doesn’t blink, not for a long time, and when he finally does, the rage boils anew.

“So tense,” he says, before he casts an amused glance Iruka’s way for having come to her immediate defense, even if it meant talking back to their Top. “I believe you.”

“So tell me,” he continues after a brief pause, gesturing to include his advisors. “What do you think this means? What is his intention? My advisors have ideas about messages being sent, and Madara seeking a certain kind of answer.”

Hinata chews on this thought for a long moment, her heart still racing from the terrible news. She’s going to have trouble sleeping tonight, or any night for the foreseeable future. This she knows with certainty.

“I think they’d be right to think so,” she finally says.

“You do,” Kakashi edges, drawing more from her.

“If he struck at Sand and,” here she swallows, the heaviness in her chest rising to stick in her throat at her next words. “And killed five thousand instead of tens of thousands, it means he was aiming somewhere specific, and somewhere not densely populated. Showing off his power, maybe.”

“Interesting,” Kakashi replies, as if this thought had never occurred to him. As if it hadn’t been the first option his advisors had offered him. “Well, message received. Now what?”

Hinata sighs. “Now, he’ll want to see how we respond. If we go after him directly, or if we go after any of his contacts.”

“Hinata,” Iruka suddenly says, sounding apologetic. “The data you retrieved. You’re aware of what it entailed?”

Before this inquiry, Hinata had been. “Yes.”

Kakashi doesn’t take his eye from her, not even to blink.

Iruka flinches, only barely, and asks, “Did you also know that it was tampered with post-recovery?”

Hinata blinks, and her heart thunders. “No. Sir.”

“The data you retrieved was bugged and traced,” Kakashi says stolidly. “There was no intent, however, to destroy or steal any data. The only bug left behind was a timecard. Can you imagine what it matched?”

Hinata doesn’t need to. “The detonation—the bombs.”

“The bombs,” Kakashi nods, and the rage is there, rippling just under the surface once more.

“Izuna,” Hinata whispers, and the name is torn out of her. Yamato nods his head, cementing the fact of it, and Hinata feels played in every way she could’ve been. For a moment, her wrecked mind wonders if Naruto would betray her, too, but the thought is washed away instantly, because he wouldn’t. He won’t. And it’s comforting to recognize the solidity of this fact—that Naruto’s loyalty cannot be bought or swayed by anything less than honestly peaceful intentions.

“Uchiha Madara’s younger brother is a far more advanced tech expert than our Intel showed.” Kakashi agrees, tilting his head.

“We have to decide how to move forward,” Iruka jumps in, and he lifts his arms to cross over his chest, only it looks more like he’s trying to hold himself together, rather than display a defensive stance. Hinata can barely believe her eyes when Kakashi leans into him a moment later, allowing Iruka to rest against him. It’s so intimate, and so surprising, she has to turn away.

“Of course,” Kakashi agrees, and Yamato frowns, concentrating. “That’s why we’re here.”

“Top?” Hinata questions, and Kiba finally turns to face their superiors. She hadn’t even noticed when he’d removed his hand from hers, or the quiet chatter of him directing Shino through his mission. He tilts his mic away from his face and eyes Kakashi warily, albeit respectfully, and both of them await their orders.

“Shino-kun will be returning shortly,” Kakashi divulges.

“And when he does, Team 8 is going to pay Uchiha Izuna a visit. Then you’re going to bring him back.” Yamato concludes, nodding in solidarity.

Iruka purses his lips as Kakashi adds, “A flock of little birdies told us he likes to spend time up high. As it turns out, he owns property quite high.”

“On a mountaintop,” Iruka adds disdainfully, rolling his eyes.

“In the North,” Yamato throws in, and Hinata and Kiba both understand immediately. A mission to a place at that altitude in the coldest part of their region, during winter, is essentially a suicide mission. So of course Kakashi is sending them on it. Of course.

Before either of them can say a word about it, Kakashi lifts a hand and his eye gleams with sudden, unmistakable mischief. The play in his emotions unsettles Hinata, as it always has, but this time he merely flaps a hand and pins her with his unflinching stare.

“Don’t look so put out,” he says glibly, “you won’t be going alone.”

And Hinata knows exactly what he’s going to say, exactly who’s going to be going with them, even before he says the words, just by the way that he’s looking at her.

“Team 7,” he says gladly, smiling enough to make his eye crease shut. “My own tiny badseeds, will be accompanying you.”

And then it’s like he’d summoned them, because that’s Sakura walking through the door and Sasuke a step behind her, neither of them looking happy to see anyone in the room. Hinata’s heart races, and her eyes jolt to the door, expecting Naruto, but no one else follows.

“The idiot is still on a mission,” Sakura explains, after having noticed Hinata’s admittedly obvious expression.

“He’ll be back tonight.” Sasuke says, surprising several in the room by adding his opinion. He scowls at them like he knows exactly what they’re thinking. Sakura glares over her shoulder at him, though, and it becomes clear that he’d only spoken because they’ve been arguing over this when she says, “Tomorrow morning.”

He pins her with a bored stare that she barely even responds to, but has Hinata reaching idly for a hidden blade. She hears Kiba sigh as he turns back to his screens to relay the information to Shino, and it almost makes her smile.

“I can’t wait to beat the shit out of both of them, stupid fucking Uchiha.” Sakura snaps, punching into her open palm. Sasuke sighs behind her, like this, too, is an argument they’ve already been at. Sakura shrugs, barely looking at him when she crosses her arms and says, “They’re your blood.”

Sasuke doesn’t say anything to that, and Kakashi shoots them both a pained look. Before he can say anything, however, Yamato rolls his eyes at him and says, “Don’t pretend like you’re any less exhausting than their bickering, sempai.”

Kakashi is aghast for a moment but then Iruka laughs into his hand and says, “Incredibly true.” And that seems enough to cow Kakashi into another pained and quiet expression of internal suffering.

“I’m not nearly as bad,” he tries, after a while. Iruka laughs out loud, and Yamato says, “You’re a menace.”

“Anyways,” Kakashi says, decidedly turning away from his smirking advisors and students and back to Hinata. “You’re all leaving tomorrow evening. Mission parameters will be delivered tomorrow morning via the usual portal. Have fun!”

Hinata doesn’t have time to pose any questions or even verbally accept this new responsibility, before she blinks and Kakashi and Yamato are suddenly gone. Iruka sighs, truly put-upon. He looks heavenward with a shake of his head and then in a puff of smoke, he disappears in just the same way.

“Kakashi-sensei’s so right,” Sakura says cheerily, turning to Hinata with bright, excited eyes. She cracks her knuckles and Sasuke shifts behind her. “This is going to be fun.”

Hinata tries to give her best impersonation of a smile, but mostly her head is still spinning from the news of the bomb in Sand. She knows that Team 7 would have been informed as well, and she wonders again how they’re handling such devastating news so well. Even Kiba seems more subdued than usual, the typical strong tilt of his shoulders wilting under the strain of so many lives taken.

But Hinata understands her position, better than most, and she knows that professional determination is the only appropriate response to this situation. As a private, elite agent of her government, it’s her duty and her pleasure to put monsters like Uchiha Madara and his equally criminal younger brother somewhere they can no longer harm anyone, ever again.

So even though she’s exhausted, fresh from a wild mission of her own and now buried under the weight of thousands of lives taken due to the technology her mission necessitated, she prepares for what’s to come. She rests a heavy hand on Kiba’s shoulder for a moment, before heading back towards her room. The stark and barren hallways are quiet except for the rhythmic tap of her steps and her relentless thoughts.

She thinks about those people in Sand, and their families, so unsuspecting and confused. She thinks about Shino, still on his mission, preparing to come home to something monumentally more dangerous, and Naruto being in the same boat.

Thinking about Naruto means thinking about what the future has in store for them, and just this morning, she’d been excited about that. But now, with this mission looming on the horizon, just a day away, she wonders if they’re going to have a future at all.

Not because of anything she’d contemplated before—Naruto changing his mind, deciding he might not want her for whatever reason, or their relationship falling to pieces over the distance their careers would put them at—but because of a mission that might change so much more than that.

What if she doesn’t survive this mission? What if he doesn’t? These are real questions she finds herself mulling over with a heavy, conflicted heart. This isn’t a mission to joke over, as Sakura had; Uchiha Madara and Uchiha Izuna are the most dangerous people that Hinata’s organization knows, and they’re going to try to sneak into the latter’s private home, atop a mountain in the freezing cold, and capture him. Without being detected, without being attacked, without being killed.

This isn’t a laughing matter.

And Hinata has a lot to think about.

She finds her way into her room and shuts the door soundly behind her, leaning back against it and allowing the tears she’d forced herself to hold in to flow freely now. So many lives lost today; it weighs on her, so heavy, unbearably heavy. She lets herself cry for a few moments, silently in the respite of her personal quarters, and when her cheeks are dry, she goes to lie down in her bed.

This is what she knows: her team combined with Team 7 will be the most powerful force their agency has ever loosed, but Uchiha Izuna will be ready. He’ll be expectant. She remembers the careful storm of his eyes, looming and threatening to break at any given impulse, and she knows that she’s at the center of it all. She remembers the way Madara had pressed his forehead against Izuna’s, spoken to him low and close, and how easily he’d rebuilt the fallen empire of Izuna’s carefully crafted confidence, with only a few words.

She remembers that power and knows that where Izuna strikes, Madara’s thunder will follow, and even here, hidden so far away and tucked safely into her own room, Hinata trembles.

She knows this in the same way she knows that Naruto is going to lead their teams with a strength and a hopeful vigilance they’re going to need.

And that’s what’s important, now. That they have a leader that will believe in them, that will get them through this as best as they possibly can, obstacles be damned, and that even if this is her last stand, she’ll get to be there with Naruto for it.

This is what she knows: nothing about this mission is going to be easy, or fair, or painless. They’re going to walk into a trap and face the flash and quake of the most deadly brothers known to humankind, and they’re not even going to have the advantage of being on home turf.

But she can’t get stuck on that, not now and certainly not later. Right now, she needs to plan. She needs to go over every possible scenario so that she and her team and Naruto’s can be prepared, and have even the slimmest chance of succeeding.

This is what she needs: a smooth capture and a swift escape.

This is what she hopes for: surviving the storm.