A few hours later I was circling lazily among the thermals three thousand feet above the gorge.
“Now this is sweet,” I crowed to myself as I watched the people far below. “Naruto can probably already fly, but Hinata’s going to faint when I show her this.”
Hinata.
I sighed, my mood spoiled.
There were two of her, and the one I was in love with was a ghost. What was going to happen when they met? Would the looping Hinata freak out, and refuse to have anything to do with us? Would she merge with my Hinata, and if she did would she still care about me afterward? Would she try to drive me away, so she could have Naruto all to herself? How would Naruto react to any of that? I didn’t know, and I was afraid to find out.
“The more I put this off, the more I’ll agonize over it,” I observed to myself. “I can manifest my contract easily now, so I’m out of excuses. It’s time to get this over with.”
The real Hinata listened gravely as I showed her my summoning contract, and explained how I proposed to get her into Naruto’s loop. She’d actually invited me into the Hyuuga compound for this meeting, so we sat in an elegant sitting room drinking excellent tea instead of standing on a windswept roof in the dark. It was two days after the preliminary round in the forest arena, and already Hinata was practically running the place.
“I thought you were leading up to something like this,” Hinata commented when I was finished. “It’s a logical extension of your method of visiting me. But if I understand correctly we will then be able to summon one another, and there is no easy way to sever the contract.”
“I’m afraid not,” I admitted. “It isn’t just a piece of paper. I might be able to remove your name later on, but it would take time and some difficult seal work. So we have to trust each other not to abuse the power, which I know is a lot to ask. For what it’s worth, Naruto told me to tell you that he doesn’t intend to let me use the contract against you. Not that I would anyway, but I’m trying to give you more to go on that just my word.”
“I am prepared to risk much, to attain my goal,” she said serenely. Then she pricked her finger with a chakra scalpel, and signed her name. Her calligraphy was immaculate despite the difficulty of using a bloody finger instead of a brush.
“Thank you,” I said. “I won’t betray your trust. Naruto said he’d wait for us in his loop for the rest of the afternoon. Once I go back I’ll need a few minutes to recover, and then I’ll summon you. I’m not sure if I could call you against your will or not, so please try not to resist when you feel the pull.”
She nodded, and turned to look up at me gravely. “You have gone to great lengths to make this possible, Sakura. Do you really believe it is possible for two such as us to coexist so… closely?”
I stepped closer, and had to remind myself at the last minute not to touch her. She wasn’t my Hinata, and proper Hyuuga ladies don’t deign to accept hugs no matter how much they need them.
“I do,” I answered. “I promise you, Hinata, if you’ll meet me halfway I think we can make this work.”
“I… see,” she breathed. “It isn’t a ploy, is it? You really do want me to be a part of this, even though something about it terrifies you. I’m sorry, Sakura. I wish you’d found me first.”
The first blow struck before I even registered what she’d said. I was caught completely flat-footed at close range with a kage-level Hyuuga, and her Sixty-Four Palms attack was my first sign of danger. I tried to body flicker away, but she followed without missing a beat. She closed a dozen of my tenketsu before I’d even started to think about a plan, and my Hinata always beat me if she got me to this point. Hell, I wasn’t even wearing a taijutsu-capable body. I hadn’t wanted to remind her that I could have that when she couldn’t, so I hadn’t done the full transformation on myself.
“Hinata, what are you doing?”
I wrapped myself in fire and tried to fend her off long enough to split off a second aspect, but the flames didn’t even slow her down. Her limbs were coated in a thin layer of water, little spikes of it penetrating my skin and forming chakra disruption seals across my tenketsu as she struck them. Even my control wasn’t enough to work around that, but when had she ever had the time or motivation to research such a thing?
She swept me off my feet and slapped a hand against my forehead, and everything went vague and distant. My body was shutting down, and my mind wasn’t doing much better. I felt like I was moving in slow motion, my thoughts trapped in sticky tar. My chakra was draining away, and I didn’t want to reveal that I had a seal holding more, and Hinata was damaging my body so much faster than I could heal it anyway. Better to die and come back later…
My blurry gaze fell on the Sakura Contract, still lying on Hinata’s table in solid form, and I felt a moment of panic. Would I lose it if it wasn’t in my mindscape when I died? Did Hinata have some plan to use it against me?
Wait, the techniques she was using were all non-lethal…
Then everything went dark, and I knew no more.
24. Resistance
Disclaimer: I don’t own Naruto.
I floated in a half-aware daze, my thoughts so sluggish I could barely string two words together. It was dark, and I hurt everywhere, and thoughts that weren’t my own kept intruding on my consciousness.
I’m a bad girl, and bad girls need to be punished. Resistance means punishment. Escape means punishment. Resetting the loop means punishment. I should be a good girl so someday the punishment will be over, and I can be rewarded instead.
I pushed the genjutsu away, but the pain suddenly flared into burning agony. I blacked out.
When I drifted back to awareness it was cold, so cold that the barriers around my mind had turned brittle and begun to crack. Something was beating against them, a methodical thudding that matched the rhythm of my heart.
The thought that I was drugged out of my mind floated past, and snagged on a stray reflex. I tried to gather my chakra and purge myself, but the power failed to answer my call. Wasn’t that impossible? I tried to concentrate, and felt for a moment the leaden pressure of chakra suppression seals. Then the pain flared again, and drove me back down into oblivion.
Eventually I returned to awareness, but I could feel that bludgeon of pain waiting to punish me again. I couldn’t fight like this. I needed to slip away, but I couldn’t. I was pinned in place on a thousand lances of despair, held by cold red eyes that refused to let me go.
That wasn’t right.
“Your eyes have no power over me,” I whispered. The pain came again, and the me of regrets and misgivings screamed in agony. But the me of love and hope slipped her bonds, and vanished away to safety.
“Sakura!”
I woke to Hinata’s voice, and sighed in relief to find her arms around me. I was lying under the trees by my hidden pond, with warm sunlight falling on my face.
“Hey, Hinata,” I said weakly. “I guess I got caught, huh?”
She nodded. “Yes. That monster has been working on you for days. It was all I could do not to march out there and rip his eyes out. But I know he would have caught me as well if I’d tried it, and I can’t do you any good as a hostage.”