Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, nor any places, characters, things, or ideas therein. The aforementioned belong to Masashi Kishimoto, Shounen Jump, TV Tokyo, Viz Media, etc. I am writing this story for entertainment purposes only, not monetary gain.

Summary: Art sometimes imitates life, but not even best-selling novelist Uchiha Sasuke could have written a page-turning, plot-twisting story like the one he'd just stumbled into. :Sasuke x Hinata:

Rating: T

Warnings: Violence, scary situations, and romantic situations.

Pairing(s): mainly Sasuke/Hinata, with sides of Neji/Tenten, Minato/Kushina, Itachi/Temari, and Konohamaru/Hanabi

Spoilers: None

Universe: Alternate

Dedication: To Mama Jo - mother, best friend, co-writer, beta, fellow Naruto fan, and partner in all things fun and slightly crazy. May this birthday be one of your best!

Author's Note: And so I begin yet another fanfiction journey. Entanglements is a fun foray into the life of Sasuke and Hinata as two fairly ordinary people who are caught up in some of the most extraordinary of circumstances. It's another fun AU - I won't say there won't be times where it'll get serious, because there will be those times. But for the most part, this is meant to be a fun story to take us all on a ride down the road of friendship, family, and true love which conquers all. I hope you all enjoy this first chapter, and thanks for giving this fic a try!

*~Entanglements~*

.:fyd818:.

*~Chapter I~*

~Change~

She raised the knife, dripping bright ropes of crimson red blood, and grinned madly at her prey. "Checkmate."

Pushing away from his desk with a feeling of deep satisfaction, Uchiha Sasuke pulled off his black-rimmed glasses with one hand as he reached for his phone with the other. Dialing the familiar number - one of only a few saved to his phone's memory - he waited for the call to be answered before saying with a grin, "It's done."

"What?!" The exclamation on the other end made Sasuke briefly pull the phone away from his ear as Jiraiya, his literary agent for the past five years since his original agent unexpectedly passed away, continued shouting exuberantly down the line. As soon as the big white-haired man lowered his voice, Sasuke put the phone back to his ear in time to hear, "It's not in my e-mail yet!"

"Give me just a second. I literally just typed 'The End' five seconds ago." After attaching the correct file to the e-mail, Sasuke quickly typed in his agent's e-mail address, a subject, and Here you go in the body before sending it. "All right. It should be there in a second."

He heard Jiraiya impatiently drumming his fingers against the desk, then another excited shout. "It's here! I'll call you back after I finish it, okay?" Without waiting for a response, he hung up.

Long-used to his agent's abrupt ending of phone calls, Sasuke meticulously backed up his work onto both a thumb drive and a portable hard drive before shutting down his computer. Leaning back in his chair, he stretched and rolled his stiff neck a couple of times before going to his wall safe and placing both drives safely in its confines.

Two years ago, a fan had tried to break into Sasuke's house to read the manuscript of his newest work. He didn't get far at all. In addition, Sasuke's computer had been nearly hacked over seven hundred times. Thankfully, Sasuke had a state of the art security system for his home (including a one-hundred-pound black German shepherd named Ninja) and a custom-designed program to protect his computer (courtesy of his genius friend Shikamaru).

Sasuke flipped off the light in his office and closed the door behind him, glancing up at the clock hanging at the end of the hall as he did so. Wow. Almost midnight. Jiraiya must've been camped out at his computer waiting. I told him it was possible I wouldn't get it done tonight, though...

Shaking his head, he made his way through his house to the kitchen. Ninja lifted his head from his paws and pricked his ears, staring pointedly at his empty food bowl as his master went to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of tomato juice.

"Just a second." Sasuke drank straight out of the bottle as he picked up the bowl, carried it to the pantry, and then scooped the usual amount of food in - plus a little extra. "Sorry I didn't feed you before. But I'm done now - and you get extra, both for being so patient and to celebrate." He scratched Ninja behind his ears as his dog headed happily for his food, tail wagging excitedly. "Good boy."

Leaning against the counter, Sasuke gulped down his juice as he idly watched the minutes tick by on the clock built into the stove. Jiraiya would undoubtedly stay up the whole night to finish Checkmate, and Sasuke didn't doubt the old man would call the second he finished. Even if that happened to be at five in the morning.

Maybe, if he went now, he could get some sleep before his agent called back. After rinsing out his empty bottle, Sasuke let Ninja outside one more time, then checked to make sure all the doors were locked before heading upstairs. He felt the same sense of contented exhaustion he always felt after finishing a book. Because of that, he felt sure he could get a couple hours of sleep.

Without bothering to change clothes, Sasuke collapsed face-first onto his bed and closed his eyes. After implementing some stylistic changes, he felt Checkmate might be his best book yet; for that reason he couldn't wait to hear Jiraiya's thoughts on it. He already had twelve books under his belt - thirteen counting this one - and for a twenty-seven year old, he thought that wasn't bad. He'd built quite a reputation for himself in the thriller community, topping several best-seller lists multiple times. His most popular novel to date, Blood Reign (novel number nine - not that he was counting or anything), had stayed number one for over twenty weeks.

And yet he could still hear the quiet whisper of his mother's voice in the very back of his mind, "Your characters can't be the only relationships in your life, my son. You need friends, and you need love."

Granted, keeping company with serial killers, psychopaths, and their unfortunate victims - albeit imaginary ones - was kind of lonely sometimes. But he liked his life the way it was. Why should he complicate it with a bunch of people - especially if one of them was female?

Yeah, he'd much rather spend his days with the voices in his head than the clamoring of real people any day of the week. It was a lot less ... messy that way.

Hyuuga Hinata pushed a loose lock of her blue-black hair off her flushed face and looked around. "Is that the last of it?"

Her roommate, Tenten, looked up from the box she was folding shut. "I think so." The brunette's chocolate-brown eyes scanned the main room of the women's shared condo, her brows wrinkled. "Everything else will have to wait till after the wedding." She looked down at the aquamarine and diamond ring sparkling on her left hand, a dreamy smile curling up the corners of her mouth.

"The wedding which is only a week away now," Hinata said with a grin. Nudging a box out from in front of the couch with her foot, she dropped onto the welcoming cushions with a tired, relieved sigh. She picked up her bottle of water off the side table and took a swallow, not even caring it was warm.

Tenten wrapped a loose strand of hair around one of the twin buns atop her head and shook her head. "I can't believe it's after midnight," she moaned. "And you have to get up and work in the morning. I'm sorry." She patted the top of the box, pulled a fat pen out of her pocket, and scrawled Books, Tenten across the top.

Recapping her water bottle, Hinata set it aside and shook her head. "Honestly, it's fine. I'm really going to miss you when you move out, you know."

"It's not like I'm moving across the country or anything. I'll just be fifteen minutes away - even closer if you drive." Getting to her feet, Tenten crossed the room and picked up her glass of tepid formerly-iced tea. After draining the last of her drink, she said, "I'll miss you, too, though."

"The really good thing coming out of this is that you'll be family now," Hinata said, pleased. Tenten and Hinata's older cousin, Neji, had been high school sweethearts. They continued the romance through college, into their careers, and were finally getting ready to tie the knot. She could hardly wait until she could, at long last, call her best friend "family."

"I've always wanted a big family," Tenten said wistfully. Sweeping her bangs off her sweaty face, she sighed. "And now I'm getting one."

"Perhaps more than you bargained for," Hinata warned. Tenten had been to several Hyuuga family functions, but everyone had been on their best behavior because of the "outsider." Once Tenten and Neji said their vows, she'd be privy to all the nasty little arguments and snide comments which occasionally made Hinata want to drop her familial name.

Tenten's eyes cut sideways to a series of boxes in the corner. She owned an extensive collection of weapons (including, but not limited to, katana, sai, a wide variety of knives, and around a hundred other things Hinata had no names for) and didn't only put them on display. She knew how to use every single one of them. "A little conflict never bothered me."

Which was the major difference between Tenten and Hinata. The former could hold her own in any sort of fight, but Hinata tended to back off and try to keep the peace. She really didn't like conflict and often went out of her way to avoid it. "What time will the movers be here tomorrow to pick up your things?"

After an instinctive glance at the clock hanging on the wall, Tenten responded with a grimace. "They're supposed to get here at eight-thirty - right about the time you're leaving for work. Sorry, it was the only opening they had for two weeks."

Hinata hid a yawn behind her hand. "No problem," she said. "I'll just leave a little earlier." Ignoring the various aches and pains which pricked up her legs, into her back, and through her shoulders, she got to her feet and carried her bottle toward the kitchen. "If there's nothing else you need my help with, I'm going to head to bed." She knew she needed a shower - desperately - but she was too tired. She'd just get up a little earlier and do it in the morning.

Tenten followed her, tea glass in hand. "I think we're all done. I'm headed to bed too. I'm so tired, I think I could sleep straight through till the wedding. But there're still a thousand things to get done, so no such luxury for me, I'm afraid." She rinsed her glass at the sink, then shuffled toward the kitchen doorway. "'Night, Hinata."

"Goodnight, Tenten." The two women went to their separate bedrooms, where Hinata changed into an oversize tee shirt before tumbling into bed. Something niggled at the back of her mind, trying to tell her she'd forgotten something very important, but she was too tired to try to think what it could possibly be.

It wasn't until she woke up several hours later to Tenten's frenzied knock on the door that she finally remembered:

She'd forgotten to set her alarm.

*~To Be Continued~*

Ending Author's Notes: And here begins yet another journey! Entanglements is near and dear to my heart in a way few other fics are - I've put more of myself into this story than any other. I'm really excited to share this story with you for that reason, and many others. As far as technical details, from here on out I'll shift this story to my usual Friday update schedule. For those of you who have been begging me for a longer story - you'll certainly get it with Entanglements! It's not done yet, but let's put it this way - I just finished writing chapter 35. I figure it'll have around forty, give or take a few, so this is going to be a nice long story. Some chapters will be shorter, some longer, but there is a lot of ground to cover with this story, and I'm going to be taking Sasuke and Hinata on a very exciting journey. There will be ups and downs, of course, but I can promise you a very fun ride. I picture everyone living in a small town (named Konoha) in middle America, but I'll still be using the usual clan-name given-name format as usual (e.g. Hyuuga Hinata), since to me the names just don't look right flip-flopped. And I'm not going to throw in any American-sounding names, either, to keep things on an even keel. It may seem strange, me setting this story in America, but I promise there's a good reason why I did. As always, feel free to ask me questions in your reviews, and unless it involves huge spoilers, I'll answer it next chapter. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I hope to see you again for next week's update!