Chapter Text
Hinata stumbled several steps back as she closed her eyes. One hand hurriedly roamed the area behind her until she bumped into a desk and the other hand clutched a scroll to her chest. In five, held for seven, out eight. Her breaths were too evenly paced to be natural.
She was trying to not hyperventilate.
It really shouldn’t have stung as much as it did. “I only need the log of Konoha’s west gate,” Itachi said gently. The sooner she understood that he posed no true threat, or at least not to her direct wellbeing, the sooner she would be able to flee from his presence.
Her lips twitched, as if she swallowed bitter medicine and her fingers released and gripped the edge of the desk almost manically, as if confirming the existence of it. At no moment did she dare to open her eyes. She knows, his mind hissed. Playing nice would likely get him nowhere, especially not when she must know exactly why his face was plastered on every bingo book in circulation for the past two years. Even if she was only ten, Hinata was still the firstborn of the head of her clan. Of course they informed her of all the gruesome details— it was the reason why she kept her eyes shut despite them being her trump card.
“I cannot help you.” Her voice was soft, an eerie contrast to his own. If he were a lesser shinobi, he might’ve been tempted to inch closer just to make out her words.
Ah. The sting grew sharper— her fears were not baseless. From her point of view, she had to choose between committing treason and handing over classified information to him, a known missing-nin, in hopes of being spared or refuse him, staying loyal to Konoha, and sentencing herself to death at his hand.
“Neither Konoha nor I approve of the recent dealings in the underground weapons market, it is no treason for you to help eliminate a common enemy.”
Really, he should’ve used force from the second he realized the archive room was not empty and yet, if only this bit of humanity he could keep, he would. This was not Sasuke who needed closure; there was no need to terrorize the girl who was once a friend. Was it presumptuous of him to still use that term even in past tense? It was hard to not notice her disinterest in the high politics of the village, allowing her to look upon both the Jinchūriki boy and the Uchiha clan without second hand resentment from the previous generation tainting her view. Hinata was a rare friendly face in the midst of Konoha’s elites.
Two years after his departure from Konoha, he learned that she still kept her hair short. “I feel more comfortable training with shorter hair,” she once said, pensively twirling one of the strands that framed her face between her fingers.
Two years after his departure from Konoha, he learned that she still used breathing exercises to calm herself in the face of pressure and now the stressor that caused her to count her breaths was not her grandfather or her cousin, but rather him.
All of a sudden he was thankful for not having the chance to find breakfast.
Hinata shook her head. No .
In a blink, he materialized much closer than before. The force of his sudden movement ruffled her bangs and her eyes snapped open with a sharp inhale. Veins covered the upper half of her face and her fingers tightened their hold on the scroll. Mistake, her wide eyes screamed as she stared into a red void and Itachi was inclined to agree (he ignored the surge of pride at her steadfast loyalty). It was an easy blunder to make for someone so young and whose combat style relied so heavily on sight.
A sigh escaped his lips as her body went limp. There was no longer any need to antagonize the poor girl and now it would be clear to anyone who entered the room that she had been attacked. There would be no doubt of her loyalties now if someone found her before she awoke. He gently set her on the floor, placing her arms as pseudo-pillows for her face before plucking the scroll from small calloused hands. His gaze wandered to the clutter of documents on the tables.
Piles upon piles of records, some reporting the entrance and exits of countless merchants, others reporting the rise and fall of costs for several goods. Notes were scribbled wildly in a color coded system unknown to him. It suddenly occurred to him that this was the sort of thing his mother encouraged him to do on the rare day that training was suspended. She wanted the next head of the Uchiha clan to be a knowledgeable one— one who relied more on wit than force.
While he was constantly deployed on the field as a child (his fifteenth birthday was last week, he’s still a child, isn’t he?), Hinata had no official military rank and thus her family was able to provide her with an education worthy of her station as a noblewoman, both in combat and political settings. It was a relief. That meant Hinata had not been stripped of her title as heiress and surely things were looking up with her family.
Itachi ignored the lurch in his stomach. He was wrong. While he had never been an optimist, he felt convinced that he was truly wrong. The paranoid Hyūga clan would never allow a beloved successor to study documents alone in an isolated archive room and yet he hoped to never hear about her deposition.
Hinata was an unbiased person. While he failed to make his own clan see reason, perhaps she could save her own from the vicious cycle of resentment through generations of discrimination amongst each other. She would do much good to everyone involved with her if she were in power, he was sure about that much.
Itachi tucked the scroll in his cloak before turning around. He had wasted too much time in the archive room.
oOo
When Hinata woke up, her hands clenched air and she looked around. For a moment she was inclined to scream, but the pressure of the presence of a chakra powerhouse was gone. The traffic log was also gone but she was still alive. The back of her brushed against something that was definitely not paper and she tilted her head as she picked up the strange item.
Hinata hummed to herself as she pulled herself to a sitting position and twisted the hair tie between her fingers. There was nothing wrong with the item itself, but rather it seemed strange that someone like Itachi would make the mistake of leaving behind a trace of his presence.
Once upon a time, Itachi claimed that long hair would suit her despite her grandfather’s disapproval of long hair on such an unaccomplished person. While she denied any inclination for it, a brilliant mind like his must have caught on to the falsehood of her words. She shook her head, warding off the memory. The thought that he would remember and care about unremarkable Hinata’s words after everything that he had done was laughable.
She curled her fingers around the hair tie and jumped to her feet. While a crime had already occurred under her watch, leaving it unreported would be utmost treason.