::Remember the Name::Chapter Two::

::Remember the Name::Chapter Two::

Hinata awoke, delirious with pain.

She remembered the shouting, the uproarious demonic laughter, at least when she was conscious. Being dragged away, sharp stones from the floor grappling her clothes and tearing through, reaching skin.

She remembered the ropes, binding her wrists, scratching harshly until they bled. At first Hinata imagined they were wet from the buckets upon buckets of ice cold water they threw on her. Through lidded eyes she saw the ropes, now dyed crimson. But she had no strength left to panic.

How long had she been unconscious?

Hinata realized that she was sitting upright, held up by leather straps that fastened her to the back of a chair. Her neck ached from hanging down for so long a time. She longed to rub it, soothe it, take away a small percentage of the pain that now coursed through her veins.

The room she was in was shadowy but not dark--she could still see herself, and patches of the walls around her. But where was she? What would her squad leader say when she never showed up? That she quit? Did her squad leader even notice she was gone? How about Neji? What rumors would he spread around next?

Hinata shook her head, trying to clear her mind of all these questions. Her world was still blurred at the edges like a washed-out photo. The only thing that drilled through the haze was the pain; the agonizing pain, the heart-striking anguish sending shocks up her spine from her wrists, her ankles, her arms and legs, her skull.

“Oh, so you’re awake?”

She turned her eyes blearly towards the obscure figure’s voice.

“It’s about time.”

Harsh fingers siezed her chin and roughly jerked her head up. “My subordinates claim to have kidnapped an AnBU member from Natsuko Hitomi’s squad…” The man--for surely with that voice it must be a man--turned her head first to the right, then to the left. “…but they must have been mistaken. Natsuko takes only the best and the brightest. And from what I have seen, you didn’t put up much of a fight.”

Hinata could barely hear him as the blood pulsed in her ears, drowning out the noise.

“Ah…but from your eyes, I see that you’re a Hyuuga…hmph.” He let her head drop to her chest and loll from side to side. “Must be a cross breed from the Cadet Branch. No wonder she’s so weak.”

Oh, that definitely made it’s way through her skull.

The girl grit her teeth in mild fury, temporarily blinded by what she just heard. Weak? Weak? He called her weak? He had no right--

But the fact still remained--it was true. Not a single word that had come out of her captor’s mouth was false…she was weak. She just wished that people wouldn’t constantly remind her of the fact.

Hinata almost jumped when she felt someone’s hot breath on the back of her neck. “So you’ve got fire, eh…? Well…show me just how much, will you, dear?”

The cool blade of a knife touched the skin of her arm through a rip in her jacket, making her flinch. But the man simply cut the ropes that bound her arms and body to the chair with a flick of his wrist. The sudden missing force brought her tumbling to the damp, cold floor as her head slammed against the ground.

The pain increased ten-fold.

She could feel the freezing, contaminated water seeping into the raw wounds of her wrist, the cuts along her arms and legs. For awhile she was numb--before the stinging, nearly unbearable pain set in once more.

“Get up,” the man ordered.

Hinata tried moving her wrist, her arms, her fingers, to crawl to a better position; tried blocking out the agony that set in on a loop every few seconds.

“I said, get up.”

She barely managed to lift her head to look at her captor, eyes wide with pain and fear. It seemed like he was growing another head, but it must have just been a hallucination from her traumatized mind…

Yeah. That was it.

Wait a minute--Hallucination.

Hinata thought hard. Kurenai-sensei had said something about that, she remembered…

===

“Hinata! Over here!”

Hinata spun around, purple sweatshirt half on, eyes panicked. She was late. But that voice--that was the voice of her sensei. She ran to the sound.

“There you are, Hinata,” Kurenai smiled, half waving. “Alright. We’re going to start learning about Genjutsu today.”

Hinata looked confused. “Genjutsu?”

“Yes. Genjutsu are illusionary techniques used to confuse and/or escape from you opponents. They’re very useful to use against others, but that also makes you susceptible to them as well.”

Kurenai stood in front of her. “To dispel minor, weak Genjutsu, the hand seals are horse, tiger then ‘dispel!’.”

With hardly a second warning, mist began to curl it’s lacy fingers around Hinata’s ankles and up her legs, as if trying to grasp at her clothes and hold her there. Suddenly, the mist became tree roots that gripped her to the ground. Hinata let out a muffled scream as it began to drag her underground like quicksand. Was this Genjutsu?

A voice murmured in her ear. “Relax. Remember? Horse, tiger, dispel. Calm down and dispel the technique.”

Hinata quickly steadied her trembling hands and managed to perform the seals. “Dispel!”

The illusion faded.

Kurenai clapped. “Good, for your first try. But sometimes, when the Genjutsu is too strong, a dispel technique might not always work. You will have to interupt the flow of chakra around you by inserting your own chakra in the form of a huge wave or surge.

“Because you descend from the Hyuuga clan, you naturally have a lot of chakra; as much as you would need to perform your gentle fist technique, and even your Fuuton. All you have left to do is learn how to concentrate all that chakra outwards, in order to penetrate the Genjutsu.”

===

The memory faded.

So. That was it. She had to concentrate all her chakra in one place, then expell it in a single moment. Hinata closed her eyes and began gathering whatever chakra she had left to spare.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

She peeked open her eyes and saw Neji, staring at her through the puddle she was laying in.

“Just give up. Your weak. No one will care if you live or die. No one pays any attention to pathetic shinobi like you. You’ve been captured, you deny that you’ve been captured, and are going to waste your remaining chakra on dispelling a Genjutsu that doesn’t even exist.”

Hinata wished he would just shut up. She was losing concentration.

“If that’s not stupid, I don’t know what is, Lady Hinata.”

She tried to remember the other night, with Kiba and Shino and Kurenai-sensei.

“You’re going to die here, and no one will ever know what happened to you.”

She tried to remember Naruto’s voice, and how genuinely happy he was to see that she had passed.

“In fact, no one will even care that you’re missing.”

Anything to block out Neji’s voice.

“Because being weak is your destiny, Lady Hinata.”

It wasn’t working. Her cousin’s dreaded voice drowned out all other thoughts.

“Just like it is my destiny to surpass you.”

Hinata squeezed her eyes shut and slammed her hands over her ears. Still, Neji’s voice echoed in her mind. It filled her until she thought she was going to burst.

“STOP IT!”

Hate. Blind, unimaginable hate. It coursed through her veins like liquid fire, melting Neji’s voice, turning it to steam that merely hissed in defiance. But the intense feeling also brought about fear. Terror from the hatred that she had never felt before. Rage, yes. Misery, yes. Helplessness, most definitely. But never hatred.

Through the haze of emotions Hinata expelled the pent-up chakra in her body like casting off a shell that shattered into a million pieces. Around her, the illusion fizzled and faded away, taking the pain and the cold with it.

She thought she saw a streak of purple among large silver and black blurs, heard the murmur of voices speaking kind words of encouragement, felt the sting of what could have been a needle on her left shoulder. The needle dragged down and made what felt like a few loops--what were they doing?

No time for that now. She was out of the trap, and now it was time to sleep.

===

Awake.

Hushed voices, a distant clatter of metal. Soothing liquid that calmed her parched throat. A bright white light. People were whispering around her, but so softly that their voices blended and she could barely make out the words. Too much imput.

Her head was throbbing.

--Focus on the bright, magical glow overhead. Nothing else. All sound, drowned out to almost complete and total silence. Watch the pure light spin in circles above--

That was the extent of her thinking. As people whizzed around her as if on superspeed, she continued to watch the light. Suddenly, she noticed something that had dimmed down to her speed level.

It was a moth, a small cabbage-moon moth that had found its way into the room and was now fluttering above her, attracted to the light. She felt herself smile. It was kinda funny how that little moth was so desperate to get at something it could never grasp. Hinata wanted to tell it that you couldn’t grasp light, that it was impossible and to stop trying, but she could barely move her mouth and vocal chords at the moment. It never crossed her mind that the moth would never be able to understand her. But at that moment, it was as if it were the most important thing in the world to say.

===

Naruto stood off to the side and watched Sakura do what medic nins do best. Whatever happened to Hinata, AnBU wasn’t saying. All he knew was that she had been rushed to the hospital from AnBU HQ because of severe chakra drain. It was fatal, but Sakura had gotten her heart pumping again in a few seconds.

After nearly half-an-hour, the pink-haired girl turned to her teammate.

“Alright…I guess you can talk to her, but I don’t expect her to be responsive for at least another few minutes or so. Don’t stress her, or she might go into cardiac arrest.”

“Right. Thanks, Sakura-chan.”

The teen walked up to where Hinata lay. She was staring straight above her with wide, blank eyes, murmuring something Naruto couldn’t quite make out. He leaned closed to whisper. “What is it, Hinata? Hinata-chan, what do you see?”

Naruto followed her gaze up to the ceiling, where a white-green moth was fluttering happily around one of the lamps.

“What? A moth? What’s so special about a moth?”

The blonde screwed up his face, puzzled, before shaking it off and walking towards the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Hinata-chan.”

Hinata just smiled and stopped her mumbling, her eyes slowly drooping. She’d tell the moth when she woke up again. She’d tell it that what it was trying to do was impossible.

That it shouldn’t waste it’s time.