Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

 You learn to hide your soulmate markings very quickly.

Most of the time, knowing someone’s soulmark means absolutely nothing – it’s predictable, it’s safe, there’s nothing to it. But. But not always. And no ninja wants to let out their secrets, so everyone hides them, aside from the powerful, aside from those who have their soulmates and stand proud and true.

After all, when your soulmark is the symbol of your soulmate’s village, it can be very, very dangerous to let others know.

The first time Kin molds her chakra, her soulmark appears. Just like clockwork.

She hasn’t met Orochimaru yet – she doesn’t know how much of a blessing that is, not yet – but she’s copying the ninja she’s seen, desperately trying to climb the side of a building to get away from the children that torment her. She sticks, she pinwheels her arms, and manages to scramble up the wall, fingers digging into any grooves she can find, so so scared and crying and gritting her teeth until-

Until she pulls herself over the edge of the roof and collapses there. She breathes heavily, in and out, waiting and hoping until there are no more voices following, until they’ve faded into the distance, and she can go.

It’s not til later, when she reaches her makeshift “home”, tucked away in an alley, that Kin realizes her soulmate marking has appeared. She’s lifting her shirt when she sees it, and she gazes it from upside down, eyes wide. It’s swirled around her navel, but even from this angle, there’s no mistaking it: a stylized leaf.

Her soulmate is from Konoha.

It’s a startling, aching thought, because Konoha is so far away from her little village that it could be in another world for all it’s relevant. There’s nothing she can do about it. Nothing at all.

(The placement of the mark makes her wonder, too. It’s supposed to mean something, according to her late father’s half-forgotten stories. Her mark, swirled around her navel – something that has no purpose, now – is that what it means? She can do nothing about it, it’s useless?

The thought hurts.)

She pushes the thoughts away. Aside from a few daydreams, when things go particularly wrong, of her strong, fierce, shining Konohan-in-armor coming to rescue her from the slums. It’s not going to happen. She’s going to live here the rest of her life, and never know what mark lies on her soulmate’s.

Kin is rescued, and it’s not by a Konohan-in-armor. It’s Orochimaru.

For one long, excruciating week, Kin wonders if it’s him. If Master Orochimaru is her soulmate, and she’s cautious around him. Unsure. Not all soulmates are romantic, she knows this, and while Orochimaru could be her soulmate, her Konohan-in-armor come to save her, it seems so baffling that she would be his. She can offer him nothing but her service, nothing but her loyalty-until-death, and he needs- No, he deserves more than that.

Those thoughts are dashed away, broken into pieces, when he explains to her Otogakure. His village, his new village of the ninjas who have been born in places where they would not have succeeded. It’s striking. It’s inspiring. Not everyone is fortunate enough to be born in a ninja village, and so many are born in poverty and their talents languish.

He will find them, he promises, and Kin feels hope and adoration and so many other things twisted into one curled in her stomach. She ties her brand new forehead protector around her head, and the future feels so bright.

She’s a Sound Ninja. That’s her mark. And maybe – maybe – she might get to meet her soulmate, now. Ninjas travel. Ninjas have exams in other villages, they have missions, there are so many different possibilities-

She just hopes she doesn’t meet him across the battlefield.

As Kin grows, the shape of her soulmate twists and turns and changes. Not the symbol – the symbol stays the same. Konoha, around her navel. She always wears a full shirt to make sure it’s covered. But no, how she… imagines her soulmate. That takes a turn.

When she was younger, she imagined a Konoha knight. A brave man, ready to carry her away and save her from the poverty she was in. Bold, strong. Once she learned what it was to be a shinobi, the shape changed. No longer did she long for a Konohan knight – but a clever shinobi, powerful and quiet and willing to leave Konoha for her sake.

Now, as she stares at Tayuya in one of the practice rooms, she realizes she’s made an error. Her soulmate is a kunoichi. (Or at least – she hopes it is.)

Across the way, Tayuya catches her staring and winks at her. Kin turns red and flees.

Still, she learns that that is Tayuya’s favorite training room. None of the Oto nin have a regular training area or a regular schedule – that’s just asking to get yourself ambushed – but she comes to this one the most frequently.

So Kin checks it regularly. Ostensibly, she tries to convince herself that it’s because Tayuya is strong. While Kin is only genin-level (talented genin-level, maybe almost-chunin, but genin nonetheless), she’d be surprised if Tayuya wasn’t upper chunin or even special jounin level. Hell, some days, she wonders if Tayuya could be a jounin.

You weren’t limited, in Oto, to the traditional shinobi levels. Orochimaru assigned you to what he felt was fitting for that particular mission, or that particular day, and you learned to slip into each role seamlessly.

Power-wise, though, Tayuya is far above Kin. She’s just watching her to learn, she tries to tell herself. They’re both genjutsu users, even though their techniques are very different, and she definitely can learn something from the stronger shinobi.

So when Tayuya speaks to her, Kin tries to pretend that she hasn’t desperately wanted this for so, so long. The redhead’s eyes gleam. “Hey, Tsuchi – do you want to fight me or something?”

Kin swallows sharply, and tries not to blush. “If you want your ass kicked, sure.”

It’s bravado, and they both know it. There’s no way that Kin could beat Tayuya, even if she was fighting for her life. It’s just almost… obligatory, to not automatically scrape and bow, to immediately go head-to-head and pretend like you stand a chance.

It doesn’t stop Tayuya from kicking her ass in return, though.

They spend more time together, and Kin knows Orochimaru is watching. It’s fine, though – she trusts him. If Kin and Tayuya weren’t allowed to be together, he would stop them.

As it is, they train together, they eat together, they spend their off-mission time together. (Which isn’t a lot, granted, but still.) Kin has never… felt wanted by another person like this, before. The only time she’s ever been wanted is with Orochimaru, and that’s a different kind of wanted. This, with Tayuya…

She thinks they’re friends. Kin has never had a friend before.

She’s never had someone she’s wanted to spend time with, that she’s wanted to be around, that she’s wanted to be with like this…

Kin lets her hand drift to her stomach as she stares at herself in the mirror. She wishes she didn’t have the Konoha leaf around her navel. She wishes she had a music note.

It would be nice if Tayuya was her soulmate, instead. Kin thinks she wants that more than friendship.

Despite the amount of blood on her hands, despite the amount of times she has viciously murdered another human being on Orochimaru’s orders and not felt a hint of shame or regret, Kin grew up a little sheltered. Well – not necessarily sheltered. Ignorant was maybe a better word.

Particularly when it came to “matters of the heart”.

Which is why she's completely caught off guard when Tayuya asks her one day, casually as can be: “Do you want to go out with me?”

Kin stares at her. “Bwuh?”

Tayuya flushes, and wow, okay, that looks cute on her. “We just… hang out a lot. And I like. Well. Both guys and girls. Never mind, fuck it, this was a stupid idea.”

She goes to march off, and Kin almost lets her before, abruptly, her mind comes back and she snags Tayuya’s arm. “Wait, wait!” The redhead stops. “You just caught me off-guard.”

Kin looks at her, half-pleading, and Tayuya looks back at her. It’s… vulnerable. They’re vulnerable. It’s more than Kin has felt with another human being in a long time (she has her doubts that Orochimaru is a human being – he feels more like a force of nature and a messiah wrapped up in one to be human), and she bites her lip. “I just… you’re not my soulmate.”

Tayuya scoffs at that, tossing her head. “I don’t care. My soulmate’s from Taki.” Kin gapes at the way she says it so openly. “I’m not hunting them down. Why would I?”

That’s not a question that Kin has ever thought about it. When she was younger, the image of her soulmate was the one thing that kept her going, the idea that one day she’d be saved. And then- then Orochimaru came and saved her. He has given her a purpose, he has given her everything she needs, and now she has Tayuya who wants to be with her. Why does she need a soulmate aside from stories from a pathetically dead father who beat her half the time anyway?

She doesn’t. That line of thinking is naïve, and she’s ashamed that she hadn’t questioned it before now. It had always been, and Orochimaru had never challenged it, that Kin didn’t take the time to think about it.

Didn’t take the time to think about it because Orochimaru didn’t say anything? Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Kin shakes her head. “You’re right. Fuck, you’re right.” She reaches out to take Tayuya’s hand, and the thirteen-year-old squeezes back, giving her a fierce smirk. “Yeah, let’s do this. Me and you.”

It becomes that way. She’s rarely Kin Tsuchi when not on missions. Tayuya isn’t just Tayuya. They’re Kin and Tayuya, and everyone knows where one is, you can find the other. When Kin finishes her debriefing on a child her team saved, Tayuya is the one to greet her, the one to laugh at the way she describes how she caved in the father’s head, how the mother had screamed and the child had smiled. When Tayuya breaks Kin’s nose in practice, they don’t track down a healer until long after Kin’s gotten her back, ripped her earlobe and half and left their blood mixed all over the training room floor.

They chase each other in the hallway and bowl over unsuspecting shinobi – serves them right for not paying attention – they sleep in the same bed, wrapped around each other, better protection better comfort better sleep, and walk everywhere holding hands, squeezing so tight that sometimes they break skin and then they laugh and laugh. Kin always smears her blood on Zaku’s face and Tayuya cackles at the faces he makes and it’s glorious.

It’s also no wonder that Orochimaru asks her about it.

Kin isn’t called in to see her Kage alone very often – actually, she can count on her fingers the number of times it’s happened – and she prostrates herself before him. It’s not required, but she… she feels it’s right. She owes him this.

And besides – it makes him chuckle, laughing quietly as he tells her to rise. The genin scrambles to her feet, and Orochimaru’s eyes glitter as he looks her over top to bottom. “So,” he says, and he draws it out as she tries not to tense. “You and Tayuya, Kin?”

She relaxes, just a fraction. If this is all it’s about, this is easy. She nods. “Yes, sir.”

He continues to watch her, not blinking. “If you had to choose between Tayuya and I, who would you choose?”

There’s not even a moment of hesitation. “You.” The thought of betraying Orochimaru, of defying the one who gave her so much, who saved her from the scraps and gave her power and purpose and meaning and-

Why? Why would she ever?

Besides, she knows it’s a hypothetical question, a scenario she shouldn’t have to ever face, especially from the way her kage’s lips spread into a smile. He reaches forward, cupping her chin with slender fingers, and she stares up at him, unafraid. “Good. Remember this.” She gives the tiniest nods, not wanting to disturb his hand, and he chuckles again, tracing his fingers up her jaw and smoothing over her hair. “Enjoy your time with Tayuya. But do not forget who you have pledged your loyalty to, hm?”

“Never,” she breathes, knees trembling, as he gives her hair one last stroke and pulls away. “I will never, my kage.”

There’s a buzz around the base, an infectious feeling in the air that leaves Kin feeling deeply curious. While her missions have decreased lately, that’s the only noticeable change around her. There’s information that she’s not privy to, here, floating throughout the base; she goes to Tayuya.

Her girlfriend grimaces. “Sorry, Kin. Confidential. You’ll know if you need to know.”

Kin sighs. She had hoped for something different, but that’s just the way it is. “Alright.” She tries not to feel bitter about the fact that Tayuya knows – her girlfriend is stronger, much stronger than her, it makes sense that she’d be privy to more, but it still stings.

Tayuya seems to sense it, and she scowls, thumping her first down on Kin’s head. “It’s not a big deal, dumbass. Come on, fight me.”

The genin scowls right back at her. “Fine!”

It ends in blood, they make Zaku scream like a civilian, and life’s back to ‘not so bad’.

Kin’s bitterness over the situation quickly vanishes a few days later, though, when she’s called in to meet Orochimaru with Dosu and Zaku. They have a mission – a special mission, the vanguards of Orochimaru’s real plan, and Kin has never felt such excitement pump through her.

Orochimaru’s planning on invasion. An invasion! They’re going to bring down Konoha from the inside out, and her team – well, okay, Dosu’s team – will be the first ones in. They’re going to infiltrate the chunin exams, take down Sasuke Uchiha, and then help the sound nin kick the Konohans’ ass.

This? This is going to be fun.

She greets Tayuya with a grin on her face and a skip in her step after her debriefing, lifting the redhead and twirling her around. They laugh, and Tayuya squeezes her as she’s set down. “He told you about the plan?”

Kin nods. “Yes. I’m part of it – but I can’t tell you what.”

Tayuya accepts that with a nod. She’s always been better about not knowing than Kin has. (Not knowing kind of drives Kin insane.) “When do you leave?”

The genin… hesitates. “Tomorrow.” It’s a big mission. Bigger than any she’s ever done before. Kin isn’t usually the type to infiltrate, and when the stakes are this high? It’s the first time it really means something, to leave Tayuya and the base behind and go forward.

Her girlfriend picks up on her somber mood, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze. “You’ll do fine,” she says, and Kin squeezes back.

They don’t spar – Kin needs to be on her toes for tomorrow – and they instead go back to their room. It’s quiet. Kin packs, and Tayuya watches. They go eat a quiet dinner together, enjoying their yakisoba, and even finish off with a round of dango.

It’s not until it’s night, until it’s time to sleep, that they really talk. They’ve both stripped down to their sleepwear, tank tops and boxer shorts, when Tayuya slips her hand underneath Kin’s top to rest over her navel. “Will you look?”

Kin shifts, turning in her girlfriend’s arms. “Why would I look for my soulmate?” she says, echoing Tayuya’s words from months ago. She lifts her own hand, pressing it to Tayuya’s shoulder, where the stylized arrow that marks her soulmate as one of Taki’s rests. “I have you. There’s no need for anyone else.”

They’re eye-to-eye, Kin only being maybe an inch taller, and they stare at each other for a long moment before Kin leans in. She presses her lips to Tayuya’s, and the redhead’s eyes flutter shut. Her lips taste like blood – she bit them recently. Kin’s are a little chapped.

She lingers there for a few moments more, before pulling back and giving her girlfriend a small smile. Tayuya opens her eyes and returns it. They’re red, blushing, all of fourteen years old and-

Kin knows they can take on the world.

Scratch it, maybe she can take on the world with Tayuya, but this much exposure to Dosu and Zaku has Kin feeling really fucking homicidal. She wants to bash their heads together and leave them in the dust – but she can’t, because you need three genin to enter the chunin exams.

It’s incredibly frustrating.

Fortunately, the way isn’t far – and the moment she steps in Konoha, despite what she said to Tayuya, she’s… a bit distracted. It feels like every eye is on her. She knows it isn’t. Even if people are staring at her teammates, Dosu is the one who comes off the most threatening. They’d be staring at him.

And she can’t help but examine every single kunoichi that walks by. True, her soulmate is probably around the same age as her (not necessarily, but most likely), so it means she could be any of the ones in the exams. She could also be too young to have graduated yet, a year younger – maybe she’s a little older, or already a chunin. Kin has no idea.

She tries not to think about it.

It’s not- not like she’d ever leave Tayuya. The things she feels about the redhead she’s far too embarrassed to voice aloud, far too wary to let herself feel that vulnerable, but it doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel them. She’d never leave her.

Kin’s just… just curious, that’s all. What’s wrong with a little curiosity?

God, if her soulmate is the pink-haired bitch, Kin’s going to murder god himself. Or the blonde-haired bitch – that girl got in her HEAD and god, that’s like the one fucking place she has to herself anymore. At least… At least Kin didn’t have to fight Uchiha, though.

It’s the first huge time that Kin’s really questioned what Orochimaru’s thinking. He had a curse seal – a curse seal! As if she wouldn’t know what that was from all her time spent with Tayuya! – and he defeated them. Beat down Zaku so soundly even she felt bad for the idiot.

And not only that-

Not only that, but she’s the only one who makes it through the preliminaries. She defeats the fat dumbass who she’s paired up with easy, but Zaku falls to bug boy (yuck) and Dosu finds himself outsmarted by the Nara. It’s just her, moving on. Just her, who has a chance to defeat Uchiha.

She’s terrified. She wants Tayuya.

Zaku’s still getting looked at in the Konoha hospital, and it’s just Kin, perched on the roof of the apartment they’re staying in – well, just Kin, and Dosu creeping up behind like the creepy creeper he is. He sits next to her, their legs dangling side by side.

It’s quiet for a moment, and then he speaks. “You know we’re nothing now, right?”

She nods.

“You’re the only one that really has any hope, feh. If you can beat Uchiha…”

She shakes her head. “No.”

Dosu tips his head sideways, his one visible eye squinting at her. “No?”

“Orochimaru never meant for us to beat him.” Kin reaches up to rub at her neck. “Do you know what those markings on him were from?”

He shrugs. “I assumed some sort of Uchiha jutsu.”

“Nope. That’s one of Orochimaru’s inventions. A curse seal. Tayuya, um, has one. They give you extra power and stuff.”

They’re both quiet for a moment, absorbing that. It breaks Kin’s heart, a little. That her kage would put her on this mission… How had she fucked up? What had she screwed up so badly that he would dispose of her in such a way?

Or maybe- maybe it was a test of her, too, to see if she could survive the Uchiha? She liked that explanation a little more, the cold clamp around her heart lessening just a bit, but it-

It felt off. (Well, she’d know at the end of the mission if she survived, right?)

Dosu sighs. “Fuck.”

“Fuck is fucking right.”

Dosu suggests going after one of the other opponents so she can fight Uchiha sooner, but Kin thinks that’s pointless. As well as possibly suicidal. Sabaku no Gaara is… a terrifying force of nature, and will probably murder the shit out of the Uchiha FOR her.

If he doesn’t, and Uchiha wins? Then he’ll probably be extremely worn down from that fight, and she’ll be able to take him down easier. If Gaara wins? Uchiha will be dead, Orochimaru will be pissed but Kin will probably have a second chance because she survived (and her kage is intelligent – why waste people if you can reuse them? There’s no sense in that), and then she’ll forfeit the moment she has to fight Gaara.

God. Just thinking about fighting him sends chills down her spine.

She spends the next month training, instead, and – and touring Konoha. Enjoying herself when her body is too exhausted to do anything more (because pushing your body beyond its limits can actually cause HARM, dumbasses!), because… if everything goes wrong, this could be her last month.

Kin is going to try her absolute hardest to make sure that doesn’t happen, of course, because like hell is she going down without a fight, but it was better to be prepared for the worst case scenario rather than be an arrogant bitch – which, okay, she’s absolutely had a problem with in the past. But not now!

No. Now, she’s going to enjoy herself when she’s not busting her ass off, and then she’ll beat that Nara to kingdom come.

He takes her down so hard she gets knocked the fuck out.

The invasion happens while she’s asleep. Dosu and Zaku are killed while she’s asleep. She’s transferred to T&I, locked up, and the key is thrown away while she’s asleep.

Everything, everything is stripped from her.

“Orochimaru was going to kill you.”

“You were nothing but a pawn.”

“We can help you.”

“No one will come for you.”

“You should cooperate.”

They force their words through her skull, rattle them around in her brain, and she wants to SCREAM.

Her captors talk about how Orochimaru abandoned her. They talk about how she should join them, how she should talk to them, how they’ll treat her well. Over and over and over again and god she knows she’s been trained to resist this, trained to defy everything they try to coax her into believing, that yes okay maybe they’re treating her well but they’re still trying to get information out of her, she’s still NECESSARY, and she can’t listen because once she tells them she’ll be nothing but something to be disposed of-

It’s so hard when you know they’re right, she realizes in one rare moment of lucidity.

Orochimaru will never come back for her. She doesn’t know if they’re telling the truth about Zaku and Dosu, but she still knows Orochimaru will never return for her. She knows her kage has written her off, probably (hopefully) thinks she’s dead, and if she ever tries to return to him, she’ll be killed as a liability. How does he know what she’s told them? How compromised she is, if she’s a sleeper agent, what?

But- She also knows she has nothing to lose by dealing with Konoha.

No. No. She does have one thing that she can lose – she can lose Tayuya.

Orochimaru once asked who she would choose, between him and Tayuya. She had said him, of course, her kage, her savior. And yet… Yet… Orochimaru would kill her for being a liability, and he would be right to. She doesn’t dispute that.

But Tayuya wouldn’t kill her.

If Tayuya gets her… if Tayuya can save her, maybe they can run away together. It’ll hurt, and it’ll be a betrayal, but Kin realizes that she does want to live, wants to live after all and be with Tayuya.

So Kin bites her tongue, and she waits.

“Kin,” Anko says, the woman with the Curse Mark who had forsaken their kage. “Can you identify these bodies for us?”

She can.

She does.

Kimimaro has fallen – and that’s terrifying, that something could fell him, but she remembers hearing about him getting sick from Tayuya (who was very pissed she hadn’t landed the leader position), so maybe it was just that.

Those absolute freaks, Sakon and Ukon, are full of fucking holes and it’s fucking horrifying but it’s still them, still those fucking freaks, and Tayuya is so glad to move onto the next body, even as a sinking feeling starts to grow in her gut.

Jirobo is next, the fucking fatty bastard, and it looks like someone crushed his heart. Weren’t… weren’t Konohans supposed to be the nice ones? What the hell?

Kidomaru, like Kimimaro, looks like he could literally just be asleep – it’s kind of. Scary, really, because both of them are really intimidating and could feed Kin her own arm for breakfast if they wanted to, and she really doesn’t want to linger.

Or, well.

She wishes she had when she hits the last one.

It’s Tayuya.

It’s her Tayuya, dead on the table – she doesn’t even look like she could be asleep, no, the entire lower part of her body crushed and Kin stops and stares at her, wide-eyed.

“Kin?” prompts Anko, and at that jolt of reality Kin bursts into tears and throws herself onto Tayuya’s body.

“No, no, please-“

She weeps and she thrashes when someone touches her and she lashes out and throws a punch and then all she feels is the pinch of a needle and absolute blackness.

When Kin wakes, she doesn’t move. Doesn’t sit up, doesn’t do anything, is completely still but for the rise and fall of her chest. When someone comes by with food, she doesn’t acknowledge them and she doesn’t eat. When Anko comes by in the evening to take the cold food away, Kin does nothing, and she feels the gentle press of the mattress when Anko sits next to her.

“…Your soulmate?” she asks quietly, after a moment, and that’s what rouses Kin into awareness.

“Fuck, no!” Kin yells, sitting up and glaring fiercely at the older ninja. “Tayuya was better than that! My fucking soulmate is a fucking Konoha ninja, one of you fucking shitheads that killed my fucking girlfriend!” She hurls the bowl of rice that would have been her breakfast at Anko, but the wide-eyed special jounin catches it easily. “Fuck you and fuck your village and I hope you all rot!”

She hurls herself down on her bed, and refuses to move, and Anko carefully picks up the tray of cold food and leaves.

Good fucking riddance.

They mostly leave her alone for the next few days, but they keep bringing her food, and after the first day of starving herself Kin caves and eats. She doesn’t want to. The food sticks in her throat and sticks in her stomach and she can’t taste anything but ashes, ashes and the blood from biting the inside of her mouth, but she keeps forcing it down anyway.

On the fourth day after seeing Tayuya, Kin reaches out and snags Anko’s sleeve before the woman leaves. “Hey,” she says. “Do you have questions? Because I’ll tell you everything.”

And she does.

She pours out the location of every single hideout she knows of. She gives details of every single sound ninja she’s ever worked with, every single one she’s familiar with and knows, even the experiments she’s aware of. Kin tells them all the information Tayuya’s ever told her about the curse seal (which isn’t a lot, granted). She tells them about every single mission she’s ever participated in, every single one she’s known OF even if she doesn’t have all the details, and she even tells them about how she met Orochimaru and got brought into Otogakure.

Kin feels wrung out, when she’s done. Empty. Empty of words and just everything and then she waits for death. She’s told Konoha every single thing she can. She’s let every single scrap of Oto info she’s EVER had pass by her lips, and she’s no longer anything of use to them. There’s nothing she can give them. It’s time for them to kill her.

They don’t.

Kin spends two days in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop and waiting for them to kill her (god, please, when will they kill her, when will they end her life for good), when Anko stops by in the middle of the day.

That’s unusual. Maybe Anko’s going to be the one to kill her, and Anko is kind, so Kin’s sure it’ll be fast and not too painful and she can get her sorrowful, pathetic fuckup of a life over with.

Anko is not here to kill her.

Instead, Anko steps aside, and lets another girl into the small room that is Kin’s cell for the time being. Kin vaguely remembers seeing her at the chunin exams, at that time that seems so long ago. She’s got short dark hair, and a Byakugan that marks her as part of the Hyuuga clan – right, right, this was the chick that almost got straight up murdered by her family member.

God, clans are fucked up.

“Who the fuck are you,” Kin asks, flat as can be.

The other girl reaches up, very carefully, and pulls off her headband. There’s a music note, emblazoned smack dab in the middle of her forehead, and Kin gapes at her.

“M-My name…” She inhales, exhales. “My n-name is Hyuuga Hinata,” she says. “And I, um, I think I’m your soulmate.”

…

“The absolute fuck,” says Kin.

Chapter Text

When Hinata is five years old, she molds chakra for the first time. For most of her classmates, she knows, chakra is something offhandedly mentioned in class, a “big kid” thing that they’ll learn later on. But for her – the Hyuuga heiress – she has to start earlier. Learn faster.

It’s why her father has her sticking leaves to her palm (trying to, at least) and she’s desperate to not disappoint him. He had told her Mother was very good with her chakra, very good, and there’s nothing Hinata wants more than to be like her mother.

So when she finally manages it, the small leaf gluing itself to her tiny palm, Hinata looks up with a gap-toothed grin. She’s sure Father will be pleased. She has finally done it!

What she doesn’t expect is for him to pale, staring at her with unadulterated fear.

“F… Father?” she questions timidly, confused, only for him to lunge at her. Hinata tries to dodge, tries to push herself to her feet and to scramble away, but he’s too fast for her. He grabs her by the shoulder, fingers digging in so tight that she cries out, and drags the fingers of his other hand at her forehead, pulling and tugging the skin and it hurts and she can’t help it – she cries.

Father ignores her.

Hinata has her forehead wrapped firmly in bandages and she’s sent to her room to stay there in isolation. No one’s supposed to bother her – no one’s supposed to come in. She’s supposed to stay there until Father comes back and tells her she can see people again.

But Neji-nii comes in anyway.

“What happened?” he asks, and his face pales as his eyes hit her forehead and see the bandages there. He swallows, sharply, hollow and horrified. “Did… did he?”

Hinata doesn’t care that Neji-nii doesn’t like her and has almost never talked to her, she bursts into more tears and flings herself at her cousin. “I d-don’t-“ she stammers out through sobs, trying so hard to tell him and not knowing what to tell him but still wanting to tell Neji-nii and have him explain it or help her or-

He activates his Byakugan and stares at her forehead like he’s never seen it before.

“What?” she asks quietly, because she wants to know so badly, and she wipes at her eyes and sniffles, swallowing down another sob. “What… what is it?”

“Your soulmark,” he says quietly, and he deactivates it, meeting her eyes.

She feels pain, sharp in her stomach out of fear, because to have one on her forehead… And from father’s reaction it must… it must not be Konoha…

“Where… where’s it from?” she asks, because maybe it’s Suna at least, cause… cause they’re friends with Suna, right?

“I don’t know,” Neji-nii says, and how- how can he not know, he’s, he’s Neji-nii! “It’s not one I know.”

That sets off another bout of tears, another well of sobs, and Neji-nii holds her throughout them all.

When Father returns from the Hokage, his face is grim. His voice is harsh. He has no words of encouragement for Hinata, no explanations when she asks, and he doesn’t reprimand Neji-nii for coming in.

He says nothing more about Hinata being the heiress.

From then on, Hinata must wear a headband – just like the one that Neji-nii does, and all the other Branch Members that are not accomplished enough to have a forehead protector. She wears a purple headband that she slips underneath her bangs and the Main Family doesn’t speak to her.

Hinata cries, more often than she’d like to admit, going to class with red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks, and she has no friends. No one who wants to talk to her, no one who wants to be with her, no one no one no one.

The only companion she ever has, now, is Neji-nii. He drops her off at her classroom every day and picks her up at the end – he’s the one who trains her after school, the one who walks her through every single step, because Father doesn’t train her anymore, Father doesn’t even look at her, and Neji-nii’s eyes soften whenever he meets hers.

When she’s seven, she learns about the seals on the members of the Branch Family. Neji-nii sits her down and tells her all about them and she’s so horrified she feels like throwing up. “I’m so… so sorry,” she tells him, and she wants to reach out and hug him but she doesn’t know if he wants her to touch him. “I didn’t- I didn’t know, I’m sorry, I’m-“

He hugs her and she cries into his chest and he cries, just a little bit, into her shoulder. “It’s not your fault,” he says. “You’re… one of us now, almost.”

And Hinata knows that he’s right.

Maybe she doesn’t have a seal on her forehead – maybe she can’t, because she has the soulmark there, maybe they can’t do a seal on top of a mark – but she does have a mark there and she has to keep it covered and she’ll never, ever be a part of the Main Family, not anymore.

Not with a mysterious mark to a strange village that no one knows, and not when it’s flat on her forehead. She’ll never be a part of that.

It’s… It’s okay, she guesses. It’s not like she had wanted to be the head of the Hyuuga family anyway.

She grows and so do her classmates around her, and people start using chakra and getting their soulmarks. Ino proudly shows off the Konoha symbol that appears on her shoulder, and wears shirts that show it off whenever she can. All the girls who get Konoha ones are excited – so many of them like Sasuke, which Hinata doesn’t get at all, because he’s not mean but he’s not really nice, either – but you can tell when people get one that isn’t Konoha because they don’t mention it and they don’t show it off.

No one thinks Hinata has one that’s not Konoha, because even if she did have one from Konoha she wouldn’t be showing it off, so at least that’s… that’s something.

The boys aren’t as excited about them as the girls are, and Hinata wonders, wonders so much.

Sasuke never mentions his, much to the disappointment and excitement of many of her classmates. Naruto doesn’t ever mention his, either, and Hinata tells herself to not be disappointed by that, that it doesn’t matter what his soulmark is because Naruto isn’t her soulmate.

She’s tied to the music note on her forehead.

When Haruno Sakura’s soulmark comes, though, Hinata happens to be watching. She sees the girl finally, finally manage to get a leaf stick to her palm when they’re supposed to be collecting flowers, sees her face light up and then look at her hands and abruptly fall. “Byakugan,” Hinata whispers, activating it and seeing right through her and-

And-

There’s a music note on her wrist.

Hinata stiffens, staring from her distance, and watches as Sakura tugs her sleeve down a bit more so it covers the mark fully and says absolutely nothing to Ino, who’s sitting right next to her and hasn’t noticed. Sakura has the same mark. Sakura has the same mark.

She deactivates her Byakugan and tries to breathe.

When Neji-nii comes to pick her up after class that day, she doesn’t leave with him, right away. “Wait,” she tells him, and Neji-nii sighs like it’s a huge favor but waits, and Hinata approaches Sakura at her desk. Ino’s talking to some other girls and Sakura’s all scrunched up quiet in her seat and Hinata whispers. “Sakura,” she says so quietly as she stops next to her desk, and the pink-haired girl’s head snaps up, eyes wide in surprise that Hinata is talking to her. “I saw your… your mark. C-Can…” She’s so nervous, so terribly nervous, but her need to talk overrides all of that. “C-Can you c-come with… with me?”

Sakura bites her lip, considering, takes a glance back at Ino and then nods. “Okay,” she says, and she follows.

Hinata tells Neji-nii they need to talk somewhere private and while he glances between the two of them curiously, he doesn’t ask – at least, not yet – and he instead leads them to a training ground that’s not super far from the school. He activates his Byakugan, takes a quick sweep around, and then nods at Hinata. “No one’s watching,” he tells her, and she sags in relief.

She honestly has no idea how to broach this topic, how to explain, so instead Hinata goes for the easy thing that prevents her from saying any words: she unties her headband from her forehead and lets it drop, and Sakura’s eyes go huge.

“That’s-“ She holds out her wrist, pulling up her sleeve so her music note is bared to the world while Neji-nii sucks in air harshly between his teeth. “That’s the same as me!” Her eyes are so intense, fixed on Hinata’s forehead. “Where is it from? What village?”

Hinata quails a bit, uncertain, and glances at Neji-nii for help – he meets her eyes and with a small sigh and a shake of his head, he steps up. “We don’t know,” he tells Sakura, whose gaze snaps over to meet his. “There’s no village with that symbol.”

Sakura deflates – not the answer she had been hoping for. “So what… what does it mean?” she asks quietly, rubbing her thumb over the mark as her sudden bravado deserts her.

“It… I think m-maybe it… it m-means it doesn’t exist… y-yet,” Hinata quietly offers up, because that’s her currently running idea and she doesn’t want to drop it. Either that, or it’s so tiny and obscure they wouldn’t know it.

The other girl nods slowly, taking that in, and when her gaze meets Hinata’s again, there’s a bit of spark, a bit of hope. “You… you think?”

“Yes,” Hinata says, even though she’s not sure about anything except for Neji-nii’s support nowadays, and she nods. “It’s… It’s gotta be.”

Sakura always wears a wristband after that.

She covers up her mark and doesn’t say a word about it to anyone – Hinata knows this because she and Ino get in a huge, explosive fight about soulmarks about a week later and stop speaking to each other. Instead, Sakura spends time with Hinata, and she finally has a friend.

It’s her and Sakura at school, eating lunch together and being partners whenever you need one and practicing together, and Neji-nii always takes them to training grounds after school and sometimes Hinata goes over to Sakura’s house and sometimes Neji-nii does too and Father never ever asks where she’s going.

“What do you think your soulmate’s like?” Sakura asks Hinata quietly when they’re in her room, one day. “I hope mine’s handsome, like Sasuke, and really smart and strong.”

Hinata thinks. “Happy,” she says softly, cheeks burning as she stares at the ground. “Never… ever gives up and always keeps going.”

Sakura laughs and nudges Hinata’s shoulder. “Like Naruto?” she questions, wiggling her eyebrows, and Hinata’s face turns even darker and she buries her face in her hands.

Like you, too, Hinata doesn’t say, because they’re both bound to the music notes and no amount of wishing or wanting to hold hands with her best friend will change that.

When she’s ten, Father speaks to her again. “I will be retrieving you from school tomorrow,” he tells her one evening, appearing in her doorway like he’s always been there.

Hinata has a minor panic attack, trying not to shake, but she nods and the moment she acknowledges him Father is gone, just like that. What? What what what?

She tells Neji-nii the next morning, when he takes her to school, and he frowns. “Be careful,” he says, and if there’s anything that Hinata’s grateful has come out of this whole mess, it’s her Neji-nii. “Don’t… trust him, okay?”

It’s so strange, so strange and kind of scary to be told to not trust her own parent, but Hinata knows that he’s correct so she nods.

She’s off, today, getting answers wrong on their quiz and hands shaking so hard her kunai go wide and Sakura looks over with such wide-eyed, gentle concern. “Hinata?” she asks, taking the other girl’s hands in her own. “Are you okay?”

Hinata is not okay, not in the slightest, but she can’t really say that because that would lead to explaining about her Father so she just nods and squeezes Sakura’s hands so tightly it must hurt, but her friend doesn’t say anything, just squeezes back.

And at the end of the day, Father is waiting outside the building.

“This way,” he says, and he sets off towards the Hokage’s tower. Hinata stares after him for a second, caught off guard, before she hurries to keep up. His legs are so much longer than hers, and while he is walking, it’s a fast-paced walk that leaves her struggling to keep up. She can feel his gaze upon her head, can feel what he thinks even if she doesn’t look up.

Failure, failure, failure.

They’re ushered in the Hokage’s office as if they are expected (and they probably are), and the Hokage is sitting at his desk. “Lord Hiashi,” he greets her Father, and Hinata keeps her eyes trained on her feet. “Lady Hinata.”

His voice is warm, and she hesitantly peeks up – his face is crinkled in a smile, eyes fond, and she slowly relaxes. “Lady Hinata,” he says again. “Could you take off your headband?”

Shock goes through her, paralyzing her and she glances up at her Father for reassurance because he said to never take it off in public (even though she broke that rule for Sakura) but the Hokage is telling her so it’s not like she can disobey, right? Annoyance is clear on her Father’s face as he nods at her. “Listen to the Hokage,” he says, and he’s so short with her she shrinks back.

Hesitantly, she unties her headband, pulling it off, and immediately feels like she wants to disappear when the Hokage’s eyes go to her forehead. He sags slightly, looking so tired and so exhausted. “Yes,” he tells her Father. “That’s the Sound symbol, I’m afraid.”

Her Father scowls but Hinata’s heart beats with excitement. Sound? Sound Village, then? It’s a fitting name for the symbol on her forehead and it means that there’s a village and there’s somewhere she can start looking and- “S-Sound?” she stammers, and both sets of eyes go to her. She cringes, but- But. But she wants to know so very badly. “Is… is my m-mark Sound? That’s where… that’s where m-my soul… soulmate is?”

The Hokage looks at her with such sorrow in his eyes, and she doesn’t understand. “Yes, my dear,” he tells her. “I’m afraid so.”

“A… afraid?”

Father is the one who answers her question, because of course he’s the one to break the news to her. “The leader of Sound Village,” he says. “Is Orochimaru.”

Hinata spends the next week in a daze.

She knows who Orochimaru is, of course – her education, even Branch education, is more informative than what they learn at school. It makes sense. Konoha doesn’t want to talk about its failures. (If she ever makes it as a ninja, she knows she’ll never make it in the books for exactly that reason.)

Her soulmate… is in Orochimaru’s village.

It’s like there are eyes on her wherever she goes. Maybe she’s making it up, maybe she’s not – she doesn’t want to check with her Byakugan, and if people really are spying on her she doesn’t think she’ll be able to catch them – but she feels like it, like eyes are crawling all over her and watching her just in case because if her soulmate is in Orochimaru’s village-

Does that make her a traitor?

It feels like it does. It feels like that’s what Father has decided and what the eyes that haunt her have decided and Hinata feels like crying because she doesn’t know. What if her soulmate is this magical and amazing, wonderful person that she’d rather run off with them than spend any time longer in Konoha? That makes her a traitor, doesn’t it, someone who would abandon their nation for another?

She cries herself to sleep every night. Neji-nii knows why she’s so distraught, and she envies him so. His simple Konoha mark on his shoulder – it could belong to anyone. The world is open to him in that way and she envies him, but whenever she sees his forehead bare she feels abruptly bad for doing so.

He begins sleeping in her room with her, holding her, and Father says nothing.

(She wishes Hanabi were sleeping with them as well, both of them and her younger sister, but she hasn’t spoken to her baby sister since that fateful day so many years ago and she doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to speak with her again.)

Sakura notices that something’s wrong, of course. Sakura is her best friend, along with Neji-nii, and Hinata wishes everything were less complicated. That there were no soulmates that might turn you into a traitor, that she could just reach over and hold Sakura’s hand and when they’re older they can go on dates and stuff and get married and live happily ever after. They can have cute little babies with Byakugan eyes and pink hair and Neji-nii will be the best uncle in the world and- and- and-

And it can never, ever happen in a million years so Hinata says nothing.

It’s only when a week has passed that Hinata finally tells Sakura everything. Neji-nii leads them to a practice ground again and keeps a lookout for anyone and Hinata tells Sakura that their soulmates are from Sound – and when Sakura doesn’t know who Orochimaru is, Hinata tells her all about that, too.

Her friend’s face is pale and drawn and Hinata is grateful to have another person who realizes how serious this is who is also in the same boat when Sakura comes to a completely different conclusion.

Sakura balls her hands up into two fists on her thighs and nods sharply. “I guess we’ve got to save them,” she says with sheer, raw determination and Hinata is blown away by this girl sitting in front of her.

“What?” she whispers.

“I… I dunno about you,” Sakura says, “But I’m not joining Orochimaru. So… So we’ve gotta be saving our soulmates from him, then, right?”

All this time. All this time, Hinata has been thinking about someone swooping in to save her. Someone who will whisk her away from a house where people have seals on their heads and Fathers don’t acknowledge their daughters, where she’s a weak failure of a Hyuuga and a ninja- Someone brave and determined and someone who shines like Naruto and Sakura, but… maybe.

Maybe that was supposed to be Hinata all along?

“Right,” Hinata says, and she smiles.

She grows.

A determination has seized hold of her, one that hasn’t ever existed before, and she rises to the top. She battles with Sakura over the top kunoichi of the class, but it’s a fun battle, a rivalry that brings smiles to their face as they shove tests in each other’s faces, trying to beat each other’s scores.

They talk about their soulmates, sometimes, on the occasions when Hinata has the courage to sleep over at Sakura’s house (because she never asks Father, so she’s never certain if this is what will make him notice her, this is what will make him yell). “Do you think,” Sakura asks one evening, before the words stick in her throat and she stares at the ceiling. “Do you… do you think they’ll like us?”

Hinata doesn’t need to ask who she’s talking about, even if they had been talking chocolate just two seconds before. “Your… your soulmate,” she says, and she turns over in the blankets tangled on the floor, looking at her friend. “Is so lucky to have you.”

Sakura’s face darkens in a blush and she reaches over to shove Hinata’s shoulder lightly, deeply embarrassed. “Shut up,” she says, but there’s no heat in it. “So’s yours, you know.”

“Thanks,” Hinata whispers, and even though she knows it’s part of a dream that can’t happen, she reaches over and holds Sakura’s hand anyway.

Hinata graduates. Well, Sakura graduates, too, and so does the rest of their class. Neji-nii’s already graduated, already been put on a team with a weapons-loving kunoichi and an overexuberant fighter who is more than happy to announce to the world about his soulmate from Suna, and now it’s time for Sakura and Hinata.

Sakura gets Sasuke and Naruto. In another world, where Sakura doesn’t have someone in Sound waiting for her, she’d be over the moon. Beyond excited. But as it is, she gives Hinata a grin and promises to be nice to Naruto, for her sake.

Hinata ends up with Kiba and Shino, who she’s never really spoken to but seem nice enough, and Kurenai-sensei is really nice, too, so they all get along well. She really likes her team, and having her forehead protector means it can replace her headband and look so much more natural that way, like she’s a real shinobi.

But there’s one little issue, because nothing can ever go quite right for her.

Hanabi graduates, too, from a few years below.

Hinata only knows because she happens to catch a glimpse of her sister and the protector she wears, and her eyes go wide. “H-Hanabi?” she stammers, because she hasn’t spoken to her sister in so long, not since Hanabi was a little baby. “You… You graduated?”

Hanabi barely gives her the time of day. “Yes,” she says, and she walks away.

Kurenai-sensei approaches her about her soulmark in the second week.

“I just wanted to let you know that I know about your soulmate,” she says, setting a gentle hand on Hinata’s shoulder as she speaks with a soft voice. “If you ever need to talk about it, I’m here.”

Hinata nods and tries not to tear up, because it shouldn’t mean what it does because she does have someone to talk to about it, but hearing an adult look out for her like this is… it’s a lot. “Should I tell the… the others?”

Kurenai-sensei regards her evenly, betraying not a hint of her thoughts on the matter. “It’s your choice,” she says. “But for what it’s worth, I don’t think they’ll care.”

She tells them right before the Chunin exams, and Kurenai-sensei is right.

There are three sound genin in the Chunin Exams, and neither of the girls is excited. They seem… frightening. Not anyone who needs to be rescued, not at all. They attack Kabuto and announce how good they are to all the other genin and Hinata feels her stomach shrivel up.

None of these people must be her soulmate. It was foolish to even think of it – foolish to even get excited at the first sign of a music note. Of course it’s not the first genin she meets. Of course not.

Hinata doesn’t have much time to worry about them, though.

Because yes, the first round goes fine. The whole team passes their test with flying colors, and they get a scroll oh-so-quickly in the second round. It’s only… only when they get to the preliminaries that Hinata-

She has to face Hanabi.

Every part of her shakes, every part of her trembles and she wants to quit and forfeit right now but- “You can do it, Hinata!” Sakura roars, and she looks up to see her best friend grinning at her. Neji-nii stands next to her, uncomfortable by the hand that Sakura has on his shoulder, but he nods at her. Naruto starts to yell encouragement from Sakura’s other side and Hinata starts crying on her walk down. They’re happy tears – they’re tears of relief.

Hanabi scoffs. “Are you that scared?” she taunts, and Hinata wishes that she had never been left alone with Father for so long, that he was the one she focused on so much.

“No,” Hinata says, scrubbing at her eyes, and she settles into her stance. “I’m not… n-not scared at all.”

Her sister wins. It’s something that Hinata expects. She expects Hanabi to win, expects her to beat down on Hinata, but Hinata keeps getting up and keeps going forward and-

She thinks of her soulmate, and if she can’t even save her little sister from what their Father wants to mold her into, how can she save them from Orochimaru’s clutches?

“Why do you keep getting up!?” Hanabi yells at her, and Hinata rises to her feet. “Stay down!”

Hinata smiles at her. “Because… because I love you, Hanabi.”

Neji-nii is the one that stops Hanabi’s deathstrike.

Neji-nii is there in a moment, catching Hanabi’s blow in his hands and turning it aside, and then catching Hinata as she crumples for the last time. Hanabi pulls back with a sneer. “Branch house protecting Branch, huh?”

He stares at her and he nods sharply. “No one else will,” he says, and she doesn’t have a response to that.

The hospital is quiet and white. Hinata’s in there the entire time training is going on for the third part. Lee is stuck in there, too, trapped with her, and they end up sharing a room for a bit because Hinata can convince him to stay in bed and not run off to exercise at the first opportunity.

There’s one night when it’s just the two of them and Lee exhales shakily, stares up at the ceiling. “That boy,” he says, quietly, quieter than she’s ever heard his voice. “I was close enough to see, when we were fighting. He has a Konohan soulmark.”

“Oh,” says Hinata quietly, because she knows of Lee’s own Suna one, and she wonders the same thing he’s wondering – is it? Could it be?

It doesn’t mean they have to be, of course – that’s the interesting part of soulmarks. You know the where, but you do not know the who. It could mean nothing. Lee could be destined for the boy’s teammate, covered in strange paint, or someone else altogether. It could turn out that the terrifying boy is actually a plant from Sound and he’s Sakura’s soulmate all along.

Or no one found their soulmate, during these Chunin Exams, and they’ll all have to wait.

“If he is,” she ends up saying. “He… he needs to t-treat you a lot n-nicer.”

Lee laughs, and she pretends – for his sake – that she can’t hear the tears just below the surface.

Neji-nii is to fight Hanabi and it’s the only thing that gets Hinata out of the hospital, in the end.

She begs him to not hurt her, not too badly, and he rests two hands on her shoulders and levels her with a serious look. “Hinata,” he says. “She tried to kill you, and she’s the next head of the Main House.”

Hinata deflates. “I… I know, but…”

“I’ll be careful,” Neji-nii tells her, and Hinata thinks that’s the best she’ll get in the end.

Neji-nii wins.

At least, that’s what Kiba tells her later – Hinata collapses about halfway through the fight, and that’s when a literal war breaks out what with Suna invading, so maybe it’s an okay thing that Hinata misses it and only wakes up in the hospital when it’s all over with.

She wakes up and Orochimaru has killed the Hokage, they have a new one named Tsunade, and Neji-nii is a chunin.

And before she can leave the hospital-

Sasuke is gone.

She doesn’t know if your soulmark actually fades when your soulmate dies. Some stories her mom read her said that they did – but her mom had said not everything in them was true, so she doesn’t know.

Still, it’s a relief to feel it up there when everyone comes piling back, reports of dead Sound nin being tossed around. There were five they beat, five they killed, and between those five and the three other genin Hinata wonders if she’s ever going to meet a sound genin that actually lives.

Sakura is inconsolable. She cries and weeps and Hinata holds her and tries to be with her as much as she can. “He was my friend,” she cries. “And he’s- he’s-“

Their talks of saving their soulmates from Orochimaru seem so silly, now.

Seem so naïve.

When she’s released from the hospital, Hinata doesn’t go home. Instead – she’s escorted straight to the Hokage’s office. Lady Tsunade half-glares at her over her desk and Hinata tries to desperately think of what she could have done, even as the ANBU disappear from behind her. “You,” Lady Tsunade says, and Hinata shrinks in her seat. “Your soulmate is… is a Sound Ninja.”

She sounds more than a little tipsy, but Hinata nods slowly, heart sinking. Does… does she think Hinata’s responsible in some way? Does she think she helped? That she did something- That-

The Hokage lets out an explosive sigh. “You’re the only one we’ve got on record,” she says, and that makes sense because Hinata knows Sakura never told a soul. “And we’ve got a Sound genin sitting in a holding cell who claims to have a Konoha soulmark.”

Hinata’s jaw drops. It- They-

“You… You do?” she questions, so timidly, so shy. “Do they… they really have one?”

Lady Tsunade smiles, devious and slow. “I’m not sure. But we sure could use a Byakugan to find out.”

The proctor for the first part of the exam, Mitarashi Anko, is the one who leads her down to the cells. She pauses. “Orochimaru was my jounin-sensei,” she says slowly, and Hinata had no idea and stares up at her with wide eyes. “I idolized him, when I was younger. It’s easy for him to get his claws in kids.” She stares past Hinata at something that isn’t there, before she shakes her head, clapping a hand on Hinata’s shoulder and giving her a small smile. “Give her a chance, okay?”

Hinata nods, because of course she will.

She activates her Byakugan before they enter the room, though, just to check. It’s one of the genin from the Chunin Exams – she doesn’t remember her name, but resting on her navel is a Konohan leaf. Hinata sucks in a sharp breath, deactivating, and nods at Anko. “It’s… It’s there,” she stammers, and the woman grins.

“Good,” she says, and she opens the door.

Anko steps in first, Hinata practically tiptoeing in behind her, and it’s only when the Sound genin sits up that Anko steps aside to reveal her. “Who the fuck are you?” asks the other girl, and Hinata tries not to tremble.

It’s like Sakura, all over again – the easiest way to show, right?

She reaches up carefully, pulling off her forehead protector, and the other girl stares at her, mouth hanging open in shock. “M-My name…” She inhales. Exhales. You can do this, she thinks, and she forges onward. “My n-name is Hyuuga Hinata. And I, um, I think I’m your soulmate.”

…

“The absolute fuck,” her soulmate says, and Hinata’s heart sinks.

Chapter Text

Soulmate. Soulmate. Soulmate. “The actual fuck,” Kin says again. Her body trembles, whether from the cold that seeps through her or the fiery rage that begins to burn in her belly, she doesn’t know, and she’s standing and doesn’t know when she got up.

This- they-

Kin had poured out everything, had wrung herself dry and tossed out every single scrap of herself she could, had given them all they wanted so they would kill her and end her and this. This is why she’s still alive. This pathetic, wide-eyed Hyuuga who says those words as if they mean something, as if Kin is just going to bow to the whims of a stupid mark on her stupid stomach and abandon Tayuya for this bitch.

“This is why you kept me alive.” Kin has no weapons, not even remnants from breakfast she can wield, and so she throws her fucking pillow at the girl, watching as she catches it which just makes things even worse. “I told you fucking everything!” She whirls on Anko, who watches her with understanding eyes that Kin wants to rip from their sockets because fuck you, you don’t understand anything! “I don’t have fucking shit to give you, don’t you dare try to sell me on some Tayuya knock-off! Who gives a shit!”

Calling her a ‘Tayuya knock-off’ is downright generous to the alarmed kunoichi watching her, and Kin shoves at Anko, who catches both her wrists easily. Easily easily easily, because Kin is fucking nothing, she has no information and she’s worth absolute shit as a ninja, why do they care about keeping her? Is it because of the other girl? This Hyuuga? Kin had thought she was nothing, but what the fuck does she know about clan politics, maybe it’s all about this bitch having whoever the hell she wants and has nothing to do with Kin personally at all.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. No matter the reason, she hates it hates it hates it.

She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe. Everything’s starting to flicker black as she wheezes, struggling, the grip on her wrists tight tight tight, body shaking and those lilac eyes burning into it, searing into her, why won’t they just kill her-

When Kin wakes, she feels… nothing. The sheets underneath her, the comforter on top, the pillow back in its place as her head rests on it. Her breathing is steady, as is her heartbeat – ah. Anko had sedated her. There had been a pinprick, and… Kin rubs at the spot on her wrist and rolls over in bed.

Anko is there, sitting on a chair and watching her silently. It should be unnerving. It’s not. Kin blinks at her slowly, and then forces herself to sit up. “...You should just kill me, soulmark or no,” she rasps. Her throat hurts, and Anko hands her a cup of water, which she sucks down in relief before continuing. “I… told you everything I know. I’m a useless shinobi. I can’t-” Her throat closes up on her, and she drains the last of the water, though it doesn’t help.

Whatever they want from her, she can’t do it. Tayuya, Tayuya, Tayuya…

“You’re not alive because of your mark,” Anko says, and Kin stares at her like she’s sprouted wings.

“Bullshit.”

“Alright, alright, so it helped,” she admits with a shrug, “But it helped in a trustworthy kinda factor, it’s not the reason.” Anko reaches out and takes the cup from Kin’s limp hands. “I wanted you to live. I was the one who asked.”

It… That… makes no sense. None at all. Sure, Anko is kind, but she’s not that kind and she’s also kind of crazy. She didn’t know Kin at all before this. “Why the hell would you do that?” Kin can’t help her anger. Just let her fucking die already! She didn’t ask for Anko to ask for her to live! She didn’t!

“He was my sensei once, too,” Anko tells her gently. She reaches up to touch her neck – her seal, as well. Important enough to be marked by Orochimaru in a way that Kin never was, and yet she still turned her back on him. “I lost him. I lost… everyone.”

Anko reaches out and takes Kin’s hands, and she lets her. No one has held them this gently since… since… “Would Tayuya want you to give up?”

It’s a low blow. The lowest of blows, especially since she was killed by Konoha, and yet… “No,” Kin whispers. Tayuya would call her pathetic. Tayuya would break her nose for it.

“No, she wouldn’t,” Kin whispers again, and she leans into Anko and weeps.

Hinata tells Neji-nii everything, as they sit on the bed in her room. It’s not– it’s not like she has a lot of information, because all that Anko told her afterwards is that the kunoichi’s name is Tsuchi Kin, and that she had somebody else she loved before that, the ‘Tayuya’ that Hinata is supposedly a knock-off of. 

He listens to it all patiently, before asking, “What do you expect?”

She blinks at that, uncertain. “What… what do you mean…?”

Neji-nii lets out a gusty sigh. “Did you expect her to react well? With excitement? She’s a prisoner. Are you going to visit her again? What are you expecting from this?”

Hinata hesitates. She had initially gone because obviously, if the Hokage wants her then she’s going to go, but even if it hadn’t been an order Hinata still would’ve gone. She had wanted to know, she still wants to know, and… Hinata bites her lip.

“When… when I was little… I thought maybe my soulmate would be somebody that could save me,” she whispers, her hands curling in the sheets. She can’t look at him, instead staring down the grains of wood in the floor. “I wanted… to leave.”

He doesn’t say anything, but Hinata can feel Neji-nii staring her down. He’s felt the same, she’s sure. “But… once we found out about… about Sound…” She swallows. “Me and Sakura thought maybe we’d… we’d be the ones saving th-them. From… Orochimaru, and… and stuff.” Naive. Naive naive naive. Tsuchi doesn’t want to be ‘saved’ it seems like.

Neji-nii doesn’t say anything to that, either, and Hinata peeks his way. “What… what about you?” she asks. “What do you want?”

The world is open to him. He has a Konoha soulmark. And yet… He rubs at his right shoulder, right where his mark lays underneath his clothes. “...I don’t want a savior,” he says. “Or… to save anybody.” Neji-nii frowns, looking away. “An equal. Somebody who can watch my back in battle. That’s what I want. Not anyone that’ll look down on me.”

Oh. Maybe… hoping to save somebody was… 

An equal. Somebody who can watch her back in battle. Hinata feels foolish, though, for latching onto this as a new goal, because does she even have anything of her own? Sakura had said savior, and so Hinata listened. Neji-nii says equal, and so she listens. The only thing she’s ever thought of on her own is for someone to save her, and that feels pathetic, now. To put that on another person.

“...That sounds nice,” she says. She thinks of Kurenai-sensei and Asuma-sensei, with their Konoha soulmarks and the way they’ve chosen each other. She thinks of Sakura with hers, how Sakura could be Tsuchi’s soulmate but could also be someone else’s, of Lee’s Suna one and how that Sabaku no Gaara had had a Konoha one, of how Hinata doesn’t even know what Hanabi’s mark is because she hasn’t spoken with her sister, truly, in so long.

Hinata thinks of the fact that… that Sasuke could be her soulmate, now, and she wonders if that same thought has occurred to Sakura. Even if she has a Sound mark… she still has a choice, doesn’t she?

“I’m… I’m gonna go visit somebody,” she says, and Neji-nii lets her leave.

First, she sees Lee. She’s at the hospital anyway, and though he was healed enough to fight and try to track down Sasuke, the Hokage was very angry at him for leaving and so he is very firmly At The Hospital. He greets her cheerfully, clearly impatient to leave, but the nurse gives her a grateful look for occupying his time. He tells her of the battle – of how he had fought alongside Gaara, and it had gone well. 

That’s surprising to hear. “He’s not… I mean…” Hinata struggles with how to voice it in a way that’s not blindingly rude, given how scary he was before.

Lee grins at her. “Naruto Has Spoken Words That Have Touched Him!” he announces, bright and cheerful and wonderful in the way that Lee is. The way he was subdued before… it’s all gone now. “He Is Remaking Himself Anew, And I Will Support Him.” He blushes, ducking his head a little. “We Have Spoken Of Our Marks, And Will Exchange Letters.”

“I’m… I’m really happy for you, Lee,” she tells him, smiling softly. She really is. “You’re… you’re a really good person to… to help with that.”

“Perhaps That Is Why We May Be Fated,” Lee proclaims, and Hinata tucks that away as she goes to visit the second person here she wishes to see.

Naruto looks surprised but happy to see her. “Hinata!” he greets cheerfully. “Why’d you come?”

Hinata pinks a little, and sits in the chair next to his bed. “I… I wanted to see if you… you’re alright…?”

“Yeah!” She’s never seen him this banged up before, but she doesn’t call him out on it. “Once Granny Tsunade lets me go, me and the Pervy Sage are gonna go on a training trip and then I’ll be strong enough to haul Sasuke back here!”

Sasuke… that’s what she wanted to ask about. She presses her fingers together nervously, trying to find her words, and Naruto’s smile kinda fades. “Hinata…?”

“Is… is Sasuke your soulmate…?” she asks in a whisper. Once upon a time, she never would have been able to ask that. She liked Naruto. Still does. He and Sakura are strong. They’re loud and brash, never giving up and always going, happy and bright and… But she’s stronger, now, and she knows it will never be either of them and she can ask.

His smile fades completely. He tries to force a little laugh, but it doesn’t quite come out right, and he looks away, staring down at his bandaged hands curled in his comforter. “You know, you’re not the first to ask me that!”

Hinata… pulls off her headband. It’s the least she can do, pulling it off and waiting for Naruto’s eyes to flicker back up and then stop and stare. “You…”

“I’m… I’m just…” Hinata can’t look into his impossibly blue eyes. She thinks of Tsuchi’s dark, black, accusing ones. “Trying to… to figure… figure things out,” she says.

She hears rustling, and looks up to see Naruto struggling to pull off his shirt. “Here, I wanna- I wanna show you-” Hinata has to help him, bandaged as he is, and when she finishes pulling it off the symbol is emblazoned, plain as day, right over his heart. A Konoha mark, with a line running right through it.

Hinata’s eyes are wide, and Naruto looks down and touches it. “When I was little, it scared me,” he admits. “It still kinda does, cause I don’t know if it means… that I never get Sasuke back. But I don’t care if it does.” He meets her gaze, his eyes blazing with the kind of determination she wishes she possessed. “I’ll get him back anyway. Mark or no mark.”

Naruto shakes his head. “Who cares what stupid stuff like this says. I’m gonna do what I want, and… you should, too.” He grins at her. “Okay?”

Hinata is breathless. “Okay,” she says, and she gives a small smile back.

Anko asks her to live with her and Kin agrees. It feels… she doesn’t know how it feels. She can’t be a prisoner forever – they have no use for her anymore, and they’re clearly not willing to kill her off, so it makes sense to simply… go with Anko, and let whatever happens… happen. “I can’t be on my own, huh?” she asks. Anko is Not Allowed to mention the crying, and after a few teasing remarks, she’s let it drop. (The teasing is… okay, though. Tayuya would mock her over crying, too.)

Anko snorts. “Now, you really think you can be trusted on your own?”

Kin shrugs. “It’s not like Orochimaru would take me back. You know that.”

She doesn’t expect the levity to drop from Anko’s face and demeanor. “Yeah, but not everyone does. I’ve…” Her face twists a bit. “I’ve never been trusted by a lot, you know.”

“...Why?” Kin’s brow furrows in confusion. “Do they really think you’re playing the long game or something? You’re old-” She ignores Anko’s sound of protest at that. “-and you had nothing to do with the invasion. What would even be the point of making you a spy? And why are you allowed to supervise me, then?”

Anko wraps an arm around Kin’s shoulders and pulls her in. Kin lets her for just a moment before shoving her off. “Honestly? It doesn’t make any sense to not trust me, aaaaand I think they’re just hoping I’ll slip up. If they shove the two of us together, surely one of us might slip up, right?” Kin gives her a flat look, and Anko grins. “Fortunately, we’re not stupid.”

Kin sits on that one for awhile.They move all of her nonexistent stuff into Anko’s apartment, where there’s another bed set up for her. (It seems… conveniently-sized for two people, and Kin isn’t sure if Anko has just always had a solid amount of room or if she moved into this just for Kin’s sake. She… doesn’t think she wants to know if the latter is the case, so she doesn’t ask.) Anko takes her out shopping to get some more clothes, and Kin considers attacking and trying to kill the store clerk, a teenager between her and Anko’s age. It would mean that Anko has to kill her to stop her.

But Tayuya wouldn’t want her to just give up like this – Tayuya wouldn’t want you to join Konoha, either, part of her whispers – so she doesn’t.

Instead, she simply doesn’t let Anko express any feedback on clothes, cause her taste is shit, and watches the way that everyone looks at Anko. Civilians don’t seem to know anything. Shinobi around Anko’s age or younger don’t even give her a second glance. But there’s a few – just a few – that are older, and she can see the distrust that flashes across their faces, just for a moment.

Older shinobi aren’t as likely to be out in the field, but are more likely to be in charge, to be working behind the scenes, to hold power. If they don’t trust, they could make Anko’s life very difficult.

When they return to her apartment, she asks. She has to. “Why do you stay?” The other is a special jounin, Kin remembers, but she seems skilled enough to actually become a jounin. Is it higher-ups that prevent her from advancing? “If people distrust you this much. Why do you stay? Wouldn’t it be better to be anywhere else?”

Orochimaru had not killed Anko, and Anko had likely not known enough to be a true liability – he would have taken her back. Perhaps even he would have been subject to the whims of emotions, and been attached enough to take her back, no matter what. The first apprentice, the first shinobi serving underneath him, was likely a special one.

Anko stills, finger on the kettle button. It’s just instant ramen tonight – after a moment, she starts moving and presses it. “I’ve got people here I care about,” Anko murmurs. “Even if Orochimaru never trusted you, would you have gone back for your Tayuya?” Kin hates that she keeps bringing her up, hates hates hates it. “Besides… I wanna prove them wrong, you know?”

She grins at Kin. It’s pretty believable, which is impressive. “They’ll die eventually, and I’ll still be here. Those fuckers won’t ever kick me out, and I won’t ever prove them correct. And you know who else I want to prove myself better than? Orochimaru. Spite’s a pretty powerful motivator. They’ll always be wrong about me.”

Kin doesn’t know what to say to that, and so she says nothing.

They exist in a weird place. Anko has work off – which Kin is grateful for, because she doesn’t know what will happen once Anko goes back to work in T&I and she doesn’t ask, not yet – and so Kin just gets to… experience Konoha. Anko takes her to a new restaurant for lunch. She spars with Kin, to test out where she is and figure out what rank she should be, should she ever want to join the forces of Konoha though Anko doesn’t say that aloud and it’s just the implication (genin, ugh, she’s still considered a genin). They even go to the library in case Kin wants to pick up any civilian books, which is kind of an overwhelming feeling because she’s never been to the library before?

Anko tells her that’s ‘fucking sad’ when Kin shares that tidbit, and Kin swings a punch and misses while Anko grins.

It’s weird. It’s weird. Anko reminds her of Tayuya so much that it almost viscerally hurts and yet it doesn’t because the two are also completely different people. Kin has no idea if they would have managed to get along or if they would’ve torn each other apart. But Kin had… had loved Tayuya in a way that she will never love Anko (ew), so that… it’s different. (Has she ever admitted that she loves Tayuya before? She doesn’t remember, and Kin kind of hates herself for not remembering.)

The evening of day two, Kin asks. “What about that Hyuuga bitch?”

Anko quirks a brow at her. “What do you mean?”

Ugh, you know what she means, fucker. “Do I have to meet her? Does she want to meet me?” Kin makes a face. She doesn’t know if she wants Hyuuga to have asked after her, or if she wants the girl to have completely forgotten about her. It’s unfortunately probably the former, so… ugh. Ugh!

“If you don’t want to meet her, you don’t have to,” Anko says. She’s very carefully neutral, which is weird for Anko and Kin doesn’t like it. “But I think it’s a good idea.”

Kin scowls bitterly. “Oh? You think it’s a good idea to replace Tayuya with one of your Konoha bitches?”

Anko shakes her head. “Hey, hey, don’t put words in my mouth. Soulmate or no, you don’t gotta date her. I’m not forcing her down your throat or shit. But do you really want just me?” That’s… a stupid point, but a real one, too. “She’s here, reaching out. You’re in Konoha, for better or for worse. Isn’t it better to talk to literally anyone else for a while?”

Kin frowns. Kicks her legs as she sits on the bed, and stares down at her feet. “...Is she allowed to supervise me or whatever, or do you have to be there the whole time?” That sounds fucking awkward.

“You two can be alone,” says Anko. “I’ll fuck off.”

“Hmph. You just want us to hang out so you can do whatever the hell you want.” Kin squints at her, and Anko grins and shrugs, but that’s almost reassuring in a way. It’s motivation that makes a lot of sense. Kin…

She’ll never not miss Tayuya. She doesn’t think it’s possible to stop missing her. Tayuya is etched into her bones, into her very being, in every breath she takes and god this is so fucking stupidly poetic, civilian fiction is something that should be banned from existence. But stupidly poetic or not, it’s… true. She will always, always miss her. If she ever meets Orochimaru again, he will kill her. Kin is upset by this but also not upset, because it makes sense and it would be stupid to be upset over it. She did betray him, even if it was only in an effort to die.

Kin supposes if she really wants to die, all she has to do is find Orochimaru. That idea feels… bad, though, feels so weird and unsettling and she doesn’t actually want to do that, nope.

And Tayuya would be so pissed at her for giving up. Kin hates that Anko is correct, that she’s judged so well from the basically nothing that Kin has told her, but it’s true. Tayuya would be so pissed, because you struggle to survive no matter what life fucking throws at you, and also? You be a fucking smart shinobi. That means you take what allies you can, especially when they’re idiotic Konoha genin who won’t betray you because they’re just not built like that.

Kin doesn’t know what she wants out of this, but… but… “Fine,” Kin says. “I… can meet up with her or whatever. Give myself a fucking break from you.”

Hinata is nervous.

That’s. Obviously not new for her. She feels nervous every single day of her life, in some way. She feels frightened or fearful or shy or- or- nervous! Every single day. But there’s no backing down of this, not when she’s already told Anko she’ll come, and Hinata swallows sharply and knocks on the door of Anko’s apartment.

The door swings open and the special jounin grins down at her. “Great timing!” she crows. “I thought you weren’t gonna come.”

“No, you did, I kept saying she fucking wasn’t,” says the voice of Tsuchi behind her. “Cause she’s fucking late.”

“S-Sorry…” Hinata stammers, a little helpless, and Anko practically yanks her inside. It’s a good-sized apartment, though Hinata hasn’t exactly been in a lot of apartments – it’s bigger than Kurenai-sensei’s, at least – and Tsuchi Kin is sitting there at the table, frowning heavily at her.

Hinata is intimidated, but honestly more by the weight of this whole thing (Tsuchi looks exhausted, more than anything else, and Hinata thinks she might have been crying recently by the red of her eyes). The weight of what this could be, what lies between the two of them. Do what you want, she tries to tell herself, and even if Hinata doesn’t know what she wants from this, she does know that she wants to be here. She knows that so, so fiercely it’s crazy. She wants to be here and look at Tsuchi and speak with her and just-

Figure it out. Figure out what she wants.

“Well, I’ll leave you two girls at it!” says Anko, and before Hinata can do more than stare at her in surprise, she’s out the door.

Hinata’s bewildered. “She’s… she’s going…?”

“I’m sick of her,” says Tsuchi. …Okay, actually, if she’s had zero privacy that’s really fair. Hinata thinks she’d go crazy and start crying or something if she was never allowed to be alone ever. “Sit.”

Hinata sits, and they look at each other. Tsuchi stares her down, and Hinata looks down with a blush and fiddles with her fingers. “...Say something,” says Tsuchi, after a minute. “What the hell do you want from this? From me?”

“I… I don’t know,” Hinata whispers. She feels pinned underneath her stare. “I… really don’t… don’t know, sorry.”

“Tch,” Tsuchi clicks her tongue and looks away and Hinata can breathe once more. “If neither of us know what we want, what the hell are we doing here…?”

It’s broken through the barrier for Hinata, though, and she sits up a little straighter and exhales before speaking. “Um… I’d… I’d like to get to know you…?”

Tsuchi snorts and doesn’t look at her. “Is that a question or a statement?”

Hinata has never really talked to anyone like this before. Even Sasuke wasn’t like this, not that she really spoke to him. “A… a statement.” She casts her mind around for ideas. Clearly, ‘Tayuya’ is off-limits. Hinata doesn’t want to step on that exploding tag. She also doesn’t want to ask about family, because Hinata’s family is. Um. Well, it is what it is and that’s not a very good starting conversation topic. (And Tsuchi… probably saw everything with Hanabi, so it’s not like she’s clueless…)

“Can… you tell me what Otogakure is like?” she asks.

Finally, Tsuchi looks at her. “Do you really want to know something like that?”

Hinata nods. Actually, she does. She hadn’t thought about it before she asked the question, but she genuinely, truly does. Hinata’s never been to another village before, so she has no idea how different it may be, how it even works.

“It’s… different,” Tsuchi starts, haltingly. “Everything’s more rigid here. If Oto needed me to be a chunin for a mission, then I was. We don’t have exams like you, and there’s not really civilians.”

Otogakure is clearly not a picture of a normal shinobi village, if ‘village’ can even be the correct word used, as Hinata listens to Tsuchi speak. She starts out awkward, detached, and then Hinata genuinely prods her about another shinobi she mentions as an idiot and soon Tsuchi is ranting about some stupid thing Zaku did, how he had told them the completely wrong target house and so they killed all the completely wrong people, and it’s genuinely kind of horrifying though Hinata is doing her best to not react when Tsuchi abruptly stops. “He’s dead now,” she says. “He’s dead now. Orochimaru killed him.” She drums her fingers on the table, looking at the grains. “If Konoha hadn’t locked me up, I think Orochimaru would’ve killed me, too.”

Tsuchi falls silent after that. Hinata watches her and fiddles with her fingers under the table, before she finally speaks up with a quiet, “If… if Neji-nii hadn’t stopped me, my sister would’ve killed me,” she whispers.

That draws Tsuchi’s attention. Her eyes glisten, but she’s not crying, just yet. “Yeah?” She challenges. “What the hell was up with all of that?”

It spills out of her like a waterfall, every word every secret every notion. Of how the Branch house works. Their horrible, horrible seals, of her own uncle’s death because of her and how pointless that ended up being, because Hinata’s not even the heiress anymore. She talks about her soulmate marking and how that brands her instead of seal, about how she wants it to change but can do nothing, and her sister doesn’t even speak with her and and-

She cries, tears tracking down her cheeks, and Tsuchi cries, too. “Shut up,” she barks weakly, finally, hitting the table with her hand. “Why the fuck am I crying? You- that’s such stupid clan bullshit. Run the hell away.”

It’s such a ridiculous statement that Hinata can’t help but laugh a little, wiping at her eyes. “I’m… I’m a Hyuuga. Run… run where? I’m not… not like you. I can’t… can’t just switch villages.”

Tsuchi glares at her with teary eyes. “I didn’t fucking switch villages, I’m… I’m not…” She wipes at her own eyes and glares down at the table. “She wouldn’t want me to give up.”

Hinata takes a step onto that exploding tag. “Tayuya?”

It doesn’t spill from Tsuchi, but erupts like a volcano, laden with profanity and profound anger and profound sorrow. Of having nothing and no one, but getting scooped up by Orochimaru, getting found by him and having a place, finally. Of Tayuya and becoming part of two, becoming more than just a duo, of loving her and losing her and even it’s stupid, even if she’s gone and can’t think at all- “She wouldn’t want me to give up, so I fucking won’t,” Tsuchi sobs, rubbing at eyes that won’t stop shedding tears and Hinata cries with her.

“I’m- I’m glad you’re not g-giving up,” says Hinata, because even if she barely knows her she is still so glad for this, so glad to even have this moment of… of whatever this is even if they never have anything more, and she wipes at her teary cheeks.

“This is so stupid,” cries Tsuchi. “I don’t- I don’t even know your fucking name! God!”

That. Hadn’t occurred to Hinata, and she gives a little bow of her head while Tsuchi stares at her. “I’m… I’m Hyuuga Hinata,” she says, trying a tiny smile even as she can’t quite stem her tears. “Nice… nice to meet you.”

Tsuchi stares at her, long enough that Hinata’s tiny smile falters, and then she just starts laughing. It’s completely hysterical laughter, bubbling out of the other girl as she laughs and cries at the same time, and Hinata lets out a few giggles to go with Tsuchi’s laughter — why are they laughing???? – before Tsuchi manages to settle herself down.

“I hate Konohans,” she says. “You…. you killed my Tayuya. And this is all so fucking stupid that I can’t-” She cuts herself off, shaking her head and wiping at her eyes. This time, they manage to stay dry. “I’ll make you some fucking tea, and let’s just… sit.”

And they do, until Anko returns home. Hinata doesn’t think her eyes ever quite grow dry, but it’s… it’s okay. The cup between her palms is warm.

Kin remains with Anko, and Hinata continues to visit.

It’s… it’s weird. Hinata is nothing like Tayuya. Absolutely nothing. There is zero point in comparing her and so Kin stops even trying, after the start. Hinata is quiet. She stutters over her words, is politer than Kin ever thought a person could even be, and she’s bashful, too, with a big bright blush that overtakes her entire head. She’s absolutely nothing like Tayuya, and that’s good. If she was, then Kin would just feel like she was replacing her.

But… it doesn’t. It truly doesn’t, despite everything. Hinata is so completely different and she and Kin are so completely different that it’s not worth talking about.

She and Hinata drink tea. They eat snacks. The second time Hinata comes, she brings two bento boxes she made for the two of them, and they’re really fucking cute and it’s kind of crazy. Like, this onigiri is supposed to look like her? (And it. Kind of does. Seaweed for her hair.)

Hinata blushes. “Yes… I, um, I like to cook…”

It’s fucking delicious, too, and Kin tells her so just to see her entire head turn red. Hinata can’t tease back, and that honestly just makes teasing her even more fun. She also brings different kinds of tea, too, and Kin learns the ins and outs of brewing all of them.

They talk, sometimes. Kin only sheds a few more tears after that, determined to have no more huge crying sessions, but sometimes… she just…

Hinata has this weird, terrifying focus to her. When she looks at you, it’s like there’s no one else in the world – but like, literally. It’s weird for someone that has no visible pupils, and maybe it’s a Hyuuga thing (if she ever meets any of Hinata’s family, shitty or otherwise, she’ll have to watch for that), but it’s just… yeah. Hinata looks at you and she’s listening and focusing on no one else and words spew from Kin’s gut like vomit.

Some of it’s mean. She swears at Hinata. She insults her and even throws her cup at her once but Hinata just catches it because as satisfying as it is to fling things, they’re all shinobi and no one’s actually stupid enough to get hit by a fucking cup. But sometimes she just… she just wants to talk about Tayuya. About Orochimaru. About Zaku and Dosu and countless other stupid fucking shinobi that she half-hopes are still living out there and half-hopes are crushed and dead in the invasion because she kinda hates every single person she knows.

With Anko, it’s… even if Anko is nice, even if Anko seems to get it and likes to tease and joke around and stuff, she’s part of T&I. (The answer to ‘what does Kin do while Anko does work’ seems to be ‘hang out with Hinata’.) It feels like every scrap of info she gives Anko will be tucked away and used to manipulate her later even if Anko’s doing it for her own good or whatever. 

Kin’s pretty sure Hinata’s not capable of that, but she listens anyway.

And… Kin listens, too, even if she feels so weird about it. Hinata isn’t the kind to vent, not like Kin does, but Kin learns to poke and prod in the correct way to extract information. It starts out as… not a game, really, but as a distraction, as something to do so she doesn’t puke up her entire fucking life in front of this girl. If Hinata’s talking, then Kin isn’t, and she needs that sometimes, when her hands shake so much she can barely hold her tea or when her entire body is so so hot with anger and sorrow she thinks she’ll start screaming if she thinks about anything.

So Kin prods and Hinata talks. Her family is… fucked up as hell, but there’s really not much to say about them that Hinata hasn’t shared already. She doesn’t fucking talk to them, so what’s there to tell? Instead, Hinata talks about her friends. Her cousin, Neji, who sounds like kind of an asshole but maybe in the way that Kin might appreciate. Bugboy and dogboy, who she remembers from the matches, and then that pink-haired bitch who Kin might punch if she sees again, just because of how satisfying it would be. Neji is apparently on a team with the weird bowlcut kid who got FUCKED up, along with another girl who Kin seriously has zero memory of whatsoever, and then, of course, Naruto.

Hinata does tell her the entire story, of how that Uchiha kid ran off after getting marked by Orochimaru, and that’s how Tayuya and everyone else died, and Kin cries that day while Hinata touches her hand – not holding, fuck that – and if Hinata has the details on who killed Tayuya exactly, she lies and says she doesn’t have them.

She probably doesn’t know, exactly. Hinata sucks ass at lying.

That… when Anko comes back that day, she doesn’t ask about Kin’s red eyes. She never does, fortunately, and Kin is pathetically grateful for it. She never asks what Kin and Hinata talked about, either, though they sometimes volunteer that information on their own.

Today, Kin has something to say.

“What… did you do with her body?” It hurts to even ask the question, makes her whole self tremble and shake, but she has to.

Anko eyes widen and then soften, and Kin has to look away. “We buried her,” she says gently. “Do you want to see her grave?”

Kin nods, just the barest hint of one, and when Anko takes her to the simple stone with the characters for Tayuya’s name, all Kin can do is weep.

Sakura gives Hinata her blessing about Kin. “I fought her in the Forest of Death,” she tells her, shaking her head and making a face. “I… don’t want her. Tell me you didn’t share my mark?”

“I didn’t,” Hinata assures her. “I… I didn’t even tell the Hokage, promise.” Sakura is taking lessons from Tsunade, so maybe they’re close enough that Sakura wants her to know, but that should be Sakura’s choice.

“Thanks.” Sakura leans back on her bed until she’s flopped entirely on it, looking up at Hinata sitting on the edge. “You really like her, then?”

Hinata nods. “We’re friends,” she says quietly, just to push against whatever Sakura might be thinking. Not that Hinata wouldn’t or doesn’t like Kin that way – she doesn’t… know, she doesn’t – but Kin is still hurting and Hinata will never ever push anything on her. Ever. So they’re friends, and Hinata is happy with that.

“Alright.” Sakura huffs. “Whenever it’s cool, I want to meet her. Maybe she’s better when you’re not fighting her.”

She’s… not sure that Sakura will find whatever ‘better’ness she’s looking for that, because Kin is still very combative always and Hinata has grown to like that, but she agrees anyway.

Kiba and Shino, of course, find it hilarious. “She’s exactly your type,” crows Kiba, gleeful, and Hinata turns bright red and has to sit down against the tree they always meet under.

“What… what do you… m-mean b-by-” She squeaks, more inarticulate than usual. “F-Friends! J-Just f-friends!”

“Suuuuuuuure,” says Kiba.

Shino adjusts his glasses. “He is correct, however. Why? For you have always preferred your people a little… rough.” Hinata feels like she’s going to pass out. The two have teamed up, and part of her is a bit upset but the other part is just happy they’re taking this in stride so much.

“Uh-huh.” Akamaru barks, as if to punctuate Kiba’s words, and both owner and dog are grinning. “There’s Sakura. She’s kinda crazy. Packs a real mean punch, too, and since she’s getting trained by the Hokage I bet it’s gonna get even MEANER.” Hinata… can’t really protest any of that.

“There is another example,” Shino continues. Did they rehearse this, or is she just that predictable. “How so? Naruto is a very unrefined person.”

That is the nicest way they could have put that. Hinata buries her face in her hands. Kiba laughs and smacks her on the back. “It’s not bad, it’s not bad! I’m uh-”

“Unrefined.”

“Unrefined, too!” That’s super true. Kiba smacks her back again and Akamaru climbs on top of her and starts licking her ear. “We won’t say nothing when we meet her, promise.”

This is so so horrible and Hinata keeps hiding her face. She thinks Kin will like them. Or at least get into a massive argument with them and pick a fight, which she seems to like, so it’s a win either way. “Okay,” she whispers. “As… as long as you don’t say anything. We’re… we’re just friends.”

“You have phrased that incorrectly,” says Shino. “Why? For there is nothing ‘just’ about friends.”

She pulls her face from her hands and blinks up at him. He’s as serious as ever, and a small smile spreads across her face. Hinata can’t help it. His words make her feel almost giddy. “You’re right,” she breathes. “You’re right.”

Neji-nii is the most interesting one to talk to about Kin. “I figured out… what I want from her,” Hinata tells him one evening, when they’re taking their usual dinner of just the two of them.

He doesn’t speak, simply looks at her expectantly while sipping his tea, and Hinata presses her lips together in a thin line before she breathes deep and forges on. “I don’t want… anything from her,” she says. “I don’t… I’ve never had that before.”

She looks down at her half-eaten rice. With Sakura… she had wanted. To have another like her, had wanted understanding and that comradery, and then she had held hands and had dreams of what could never be. With Neji-nii, family, protection, something she could not find in anyone else. In her teammates, she had wanted that sense of a team, wanted to work with them seamlessly and wanted their acceptance of her mark.

With Naruto, she had always wanted to be him, to strive towards his ideal as much as she ever could.

“I don’t… I don’t want to be her,” Hinata says. “And… and there’s nothing that…” It’s hard to put it into words, how freeing the whole concept is. “She says… says our clan stuff is… bullshit.” There’s pity in everyone else she’s told, or a stop and a stare or even just having to reconcile their mind with it, because aside from Naruto and Sasuke she doesn’t think anyone else here has really dealt with that kind of thing, and Kin just cuts through it all because for all that Hinata has suffered, she thinks Kin has had it worse.

But she doesn’t feel bad for Kin. Hinata hates it when people feel bad for her, so she doesn’t feel bad for Kin. She doesn’t.

“If… if we’re friends forever, I’ll… I’ll be happy. If… if things change…” She turns pink, picks up her chopsticks, and then puts them back down. “If it’s for good, that… that will be, um, good. If it’s for bad, I’ll be sad, but…” Hinata’s words are inadequate here. She doesn’t know how to say this. “There’s no… no expectations. I don’t… I don’t hope for anything but also don’t hope for anything, and-”

It’s funny. For all the baggage of her soulmark, Hinata feels nothing of it when she’s with Kin. They’re just Tsuchi Kin and Hyuuga Hinata, an odd pairing with the freedom such a thing entails. Neji-nii studies her. “...I want to meet her,” he says. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, but…” He shakes his head. “I’ll see for myself.”

When Hinata tells Kin of everyone that wants to meet her, the other girl… hesitates. There’s uncertainty written across her face that Hinata doesn’t see very often, before it’s quickly masked with a scoff and a scowl. “Want to make sure I’m not corrupting you or some shit?”

Hinata knows that Kin knows that’s not the case, and Kin knows that Hinata knows that Kin knows that’s not the case. So Hinata doesn’t bother to argue the point, because if that’s how Kin wants to approach it, nothing Hinata can do will change that. It’s her armor. It’s okay. “Will you?” Hinata asks quietly instead, hopeful.

Kin looks at that hopeful face, clearly wavering, and then sighs, entire body slumping. “Fine. Sure. If that’s really what you want.” Kin shakes her head. “It’s a terrible idea, but… whatever.”

It is 100% a terrible idea.

Kin refuses to not be herself. She refuses to ‘tone herself down’ or ‘be polite’ or anything like that. Kin has no idea if Hinata had expected that, on their very first real outing together, but she’s not going to do it whether it’s expected or not. Does it mean that Kin and the pink bitch get into a fight almost immediately? Yep. Does it also mean that they both punch each other in the face? Also yep, and it’s satisfying as hell.

She’s not stupid enough to take it further and neither is the pink bitch, who ends up storming off and dragging Hinata’s cousin, who… probably hasn’t emoted a single time the entire exchange? He looks deeply judgemental the whole time, not changing at all, but his face might just be stuck like that.

The absence of Hinata’s cousin maybe… concerns Kin just a tiny little bit that maybe she went too far, maybe, except the dogboy that Hinata’s on a team with is doubled over with laughter the entire time so it can’t be anything too serious. Bugboy definitely hasn’t emoted at all, but he also hasn’t left, so all in all Kin will consider this a rousing success. “That was fun, at least,” she tells Hinata.

Hinata just kind of shakes her head. “I… should have expected this,” she says, but she doesn’t seem upset at all so Kin erases that tiny concerned part of her, because it’s super not needed.

It ends up just being the four of them hanging out, and they pester her for some stories and shit about Otogakure, chill as can be, and Kin takes great delight in telling them some of her most horrifying tales that also don’t make them upset about How Her Life Was (between Anko and Hinata, she’s figured out that line). They remind her of her Oto teammates, just… like, acceptable. Tolerable. She doesn’t feel the urge to snap their necks at any point.

She gets an invitation to training – unexpected – and pets the dog before they part ways – he’s really unfortunately cute – but before she and Hinata can head to lunch, Kin hesitates. “Can I… take you somewhere?” Hinata’s brow furrows a little bit, probably trying to figure out how Kin has somewhere to show when she’s barely spent any time out of the apartment, but she nods anyway.

Kin takes her to Tayuya’s grave.

What do you say here? What do you do here? Kin doesn’t know, and so she says nothing. They just… stand together over Tayuya’s grave, neither of them saying a word, until Hinata finally breaks the silence. “What… kind of flowers does she like?”

Kin stares. She feels… like glass, almost. One little tip and she’ll fall over and shatter into pieces. “...Why?”

“So… So I can bring some next… next time I visit.”

Kin can’t help it. She laughs. Raw and ragged, ripping at her throat, she tips over and Hinata catches her and she laughs and she laughs, cracking into a million pieces only held together by Hinata’s warm arms, and her laughter catches in her throat and her eyes burn and her body shakes shakes shakes and Kin presses her face into the crook of Hinata’s neck and she sobs. One hand is on her back, moving gently up and down, and Kin shakes and shakes and shakes but she’s held together, she’s held, Hinata grounding her until Kin has not a tear left in her body.

“She… she doesn’t…” Kin’s voice is hoarse, and she coughs a little and tries again. “Tayuya doesn’t like flowers.”

“Oh.” Hinata’s voice is soft. Kin keeps her face tucked away, and doesn’t look at Hinata’s expression, but her hand continues to rub, nice and gentle. “Then… then I can bring… something else.”

Tayuya would hate Hinata, Kin thinks. She would dislike her. Hinata is soft-spoken and quiet and shy, and Tayuya would dismiss her on sight and not find the core of steel underneath. And even if she did find it, it would bother Tayuya so much that such steel is hidden, isn’t at the surface, that Hinata quakes and stutters and shows an inexplicable kindness instead of putting up the proper walls she should to keep herself safe.

Kin doesn’t hate her, though. Kin… Kin likes her, it’s shocking to say, likes this girl that’s so different from anyone she’s ever known. In Oto, no one like Hinata would have ever survived. And yet Hinata is here, holding Kin gently, promising to bring a gift to a dead girl that no one else remembers, even though they’re enemies, even though such a girl would have hated her and Hinata has to know that.

She likes her. She doesn’t know what to do with that, but she does.

Kin pulls back, wiping at her eyes, and doesn’t look at Hinata’s expression. “Let’s… let’s go get some ramen,” she manages to get out. “You said you… could eat a fuckmillion bowls. I… I want to see that.”

Blindly, she reaches out, and snags Hinata’s hand. Hinata sucks in an audible breath, startled, and then laces their fingers together. It’s… it’s nice. It lets Kin get tugged along in the right direction without looking at Hinata, but it’s also simply nice. “Does… Does Tayuya like ramen?” Hinata asks quietly.

Kin’s hand twitches in Hinata’s grasp, but she doesn’t pull away. Whatever this is, whatever they have… She feels warm, like a soothing tea running down her throat and relaxing her body, feels lighter than air, feels- feels-

“...She does,” Kin says quietly. “Shoyu ramen.” She takes a peek at Hinata’s face. The other girl is smiling at her, soft and genuine. Kin’s weakness doesn’t matter. Kin’s… everything doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to prove here, no one to be, in a way that’s different from anything Kin’s ever experienced before.

Hinata smiles at her. Kin takes a breath, squeezes Hinata’s hand, and she smiles back.