Fuzzy drama, Funny drama, Drama drama duck!

/.cough./ Hi. Not on crack. Really. Disclaimer: Batteries not included. Do not use underwater. Naruto belongs to Kishimoto. So do all his friends. And the misandry at the end belongs to Todd Goldman (we presume) who has made a lot of money from it. So I guess boys aren't so stupid after all. Mostly. Probably. Hi, I'm a recovering femnazi. Have some crack. I mean fic.

Descent into Rapture Chapter 35: To Diverge

This was what she wanted, wasn't it? Something, anything that would tell her the measure of the men she could give half the world to.

"Why did you leave? And… why are you back?"

Itachi laughed; a quiet, dark, full sound. "Hardest questions first, eh, Sunshine?"

"You said you'd answer. All I have to do is trust you, right? So tell me. Tell me everything." Itachi had never heard an order sound so imploring.

"Everything? You don't ask for much."

"I'm a Hyuuga. We have expectations."

"Fine, then. Don't interrupt, I dislike losing my place." He inhaled, and she might have been tempted to call it a steadying breath. "I left because not becoming a leader that fit their mould was the first thing I ever really wanted to do. Is that so fucked up a desire that I was no longer fit to be family? I made my choice, Hinata, and for that, damnatio memoriae. I cut all ties with them, had them cut really; I have my own life, without attachments."

Dimly, she recalled that this was important to him. She wondered if he simply disliked commitment, or if it was some kind of psychological response to being forcibly uprooted and left alone in a world suddenly so much larger than before.

"They left a deal on my table that day, years ago, on top of the autopsy report for my parents. I could be the Uchiha Heir again, I could be more than my bratty teenage brother would. They thought if all I needed to do was sign, I would. Sign away all the freedom getting kicked out had gained me. I believe I sent them back a suggestion to get bent. Do I look like the kind of person that has regrets?"

He paused to gauge her reaction to his disclosure so far. Her business poise was far too good, and he knew she wouldn't crack so easily again tonight. The Hyuuga were far more intimidating than any paparazzi could ever hope to be.

"As for why I am back, I'm not sure I could explain it well. It'd be idealistic and incorrect to think I want to change the world for the world's sake. But the Uchiha needs to be changed. They want to break us, we who control the future, they want to control us so that the future will be no different from the past, and that feudal stagnation is going to be overthrown sooner or later. I may as well be the one to spark it."

It was sounding like an amalgam of teenage rebellion and despair and hope and bitter anger, a revenge that coincided with justice, but was still born of malice. But this wasn't about who was the better person, it was about who was the better leader. And good leaders came with optional sets of morals.

"You're a powerful person, and a revolution of that magnitude…" he trailed away, seeing how little she liked being reminded that she was a piece in a game, perhaps a little more powerful, but still confined to the board.

"The real reason they let me get me into this 'negotiation' with minimal resistance is so I wouldn't contest the legality of Sasuke's legacy in public. It wouldn't sit well with the rest of the world to know the Uchiha could erase a person's history with such ease. And that the head and heir had let them without any fight at all.

"I had been groomed to take this position. There is no real reason they could refuse the offer. And so, here we are." She sat still as a death, pale and in another world entirely. "Say something."

"Something," Hinata replied automatically as she performed a quick internal check of her mask, and decided she wasn't leaking any unseemly expressions of sympathy or shame or strain. So she told him the only things she could think. "I think you're one of the most selfish people I will ever know." She paused and pasted a soft addendum to her statement. "You're also one of the most honest."

"Only when it suits me. Have you really nothing more to say than that?"

"What were you expecting?"

"A proposal?" he gave her the dashing smile that had on its own merit garnered several fansites, two even had halfway decent newsletters. "Or you could start with a proposition, and we'd work our way to the proposal… there's a fantastic little shop on Silk Road that sells chocolate body paint…" He sobered at the very clear dispassion in her eyes; he should have known even this girl, especially this girl, would never be completely won by him. All he could do was be was what she wanted him to be, and hope that was enough, ridiculous and unreasonable as the idea was. "Look Hinata, just because something makes you happy doesn't mean the rest of the world will be unhappy because of it."

"Are you justifying your actions to me, or suggesting I throw caution to the wind and…" she hesitated, to think of something appropriately inappropriate, "and marry my cousin?"

"Would marrying your cousin make you happy?"

"Well, it wouldn't make me cry either."

"Then I have no place to argue. Genetics and the law in most countries might though."

"I could buy a small country if I wanted… or establish one." She smiled a smile weak as watered tea, but she was truly trying to keep her footing despite the upheaval in her reasoning, despite the storm that had to be brewing in Sasuke.

"At least you're getting the hang of this 'selfish' thing."

Hanabi was not an idiot. Prejudiced, impatient and nasty, maybe, but not an idiot. So when her older sister appeared at the door, she knew who to blame for the stricken look in Hinata's eyes. Neji was off being inscrutable somewhere, probably with Ino, so once Hanabi ensured her sister was settled in her bed even though it was only eight, she called for a Hyuuga driver to take her to the Konoha Club.

Sure enough, she found who she was looking for.

"You're an asshole, Uchiha."

"What else is new?"

"Only that once again, it's your fault my sister is hiding in our house and not talking about it." She strode across the mats, eyes crackling like her namesake. "And for that, I'm going to hurt you. I promised you, didn't I? I hope you bruise easily."

"You can try, midget."

(this would be where the hyphens would be used in a gaggle... but Nooooo)

It took her five minutes to notice, mostly because being a head shorter than Sasuke, she was not close enough to his face to note that his eyes were duller than usual, and the slightly sour tang of alcohol floated on his quickened breathing. But when she did finally realize his surprisingly slow reaction time was the natural thing to expect, given that he had apparently pub-crawled his way to the Club so he could work it off by taking it out on the leather, she was more than a little pissed.

"You fucking jerk, you're drunk!"

"Not drunk, and even if I were, I'm still kicking your ass."

"Like hell," she snarled. Her knee flew at his face, as if it were personally aiming to ruin one of his more valuable assets. He braced his arms to catch it and hopefully throw her. At the last second she dropped her leg, drawing it close and using the renowned properties of weight distribution and torque to spin herself around and land a fist in his solar plexus. It knocked the breath out of him, but he wasn't so drunk or winded that he couldn't catch her balancing arm, the one not lodged in his chest, and flip her onto the less than comfortable floor.

"What is it with you Hyuuga and your fairyass dance moves?"

"Not… a," Hanabi discovered hissing while lying on the ground was neither intimidating nor effective. "Not a dance move," she tried again, without the angry cat impersonation. "Hinata took dance. I was an ice skater."

"Your parents trusted you, with blades on your feet, to play nice with other brats?"

"Private lessons, private rink… and not really your business, you bastard. I haven't forgotten why I was trying to beat your head in. What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" he demanded, as if taking personal offense at her determination to turn him into the bad guy. "What the hell is wrong with you? All of you Hyuuga, you're all so fucking caught up in this. What about that girl requires all the politics, all the drama, all the bleeding heartache that follows her everywhere?"

Hanabi blinked at him, like she was seriously considering having him sent to a mental institution. "You've been engaged to her for six and a half months, known her since forever, and you expect me to believe you don't know why the Hyuuga want… need her to be happy?" She stood, felt something shift back into place. She rolled her shoulders, feeling the wings of her back creaking as bones realigned themselves. "We've had a conversation like this before. It amounts to the same thing. You're an idiot and Hinata is too good for you."

She flounced out of the room, noticing Sakura standing in the hallway. She paused and exhaled some of her frustration.

"He might be drunk enough to get all your answers out of him."

Sakura nodded, in acknowledgment, eyes fixed on some point on the door, and slid inside.

"Sasuke? Can I talk to you?"

"Yeah, I guess." Sasuke didn't sound nearly as empty as he had for years. He sounded hurt and angry and maybe even a bit worried. Sakura felt something wither as she began to fully understand that it was Hyuuga Hinata bringing out these emotions, signs that he actually cared for her. Her carefully practiced speech went out the window and it was half sobbing that she said it. "How can you marry her?"

He didn't say anything, so she went on, relief flooding a space in her heart she hadn't noticed growing heavier. "Do you remember, when it was you, me and Naruto with Kakashi-sensei? Monday through Friday, three to five in the afternoon, fifteen minutes for water and rest. Best times in the world."

"The world isn't very big when you're seven, Sakura."

"But I've known you nearly all your life; I've loved you all that time too." She willed him to look at her with something more than disinterest. "What about her? There's no way she'll ever know you like I do, so why—"

"If she knew me like you do, I wouldn't want her like I do."

"You can't mean that! She's not capable of loving you, Sasuke. Not like me. Why won't you see that?"

Dimly, Sasuke recognized that Sakura was telling him, like everyone else had, that Hinata would never love one person to the exclusion of all others, and he had known that to start with. He liked that she would never, ever be cold.

"I'm sorry, Sakura." He left.

(flock of hyphens goes here, please)

"Five years," she whispered, feeling tears rolling over her cheeks, unstoppable and heavy, a deluge of saltwater and bitter heartbreak. "Five years to get another apology out of him, and it's still because he can't love me." Her hands went to stem the flow of her weakness, but she ended up crying into them, stifling her gasps in her palms. She didn't know how long she sat there in the empty room, but she had still more tears to shed when she felt arms wrapping around her. She wanted to weep even harder when she realized they were too slim and delicate to be Sasuke's.

Ino was not so grudging a person she would ignore Hanabi calling her on a date, especially when the younger woman told her to get to the Club and pick up her cousin, and possibly slap Sasuke on the way in. Ino was not so cruel that she would forget being small and having a best friend who happened to be related to her which made it even better. Ino had always cared too much about her friends to be able to take rejection well, but she would rather be in another catfight with Sakura than see her so completely broken yet again.

"I told you before, didn't I?" murmured Ino. "Boys are stupid."

"Girls should throw rocks at them." Sakura dredged up a less pathetic expression from somewhere. "Yeah, I remember. Does it still apply when they can throw them back?"

"Sure." Ino smoothed Sakura's hair away from her face. "It just means you need bigger rocks."

Nothing like like boy bashing to bond together. Like politically correct and puritan and nice could ever be funny.