Ino
When they got near Lee’s room, Hinata and Ino were met with the sight of a distraught, sleep deprived Guy who seemed to be on edge.
“Ah, hello young ladies, what are you two doing here?” he asked with his trademark smile, but it was so forced to them that it made them feel sad for the man in front of them.
Hinata has a feeling that he possibly feels uncomfortable with her being here…being a Hyuuga who’s seeing Lee today would appear suspicious to anyone.
“I was going to see Lee at the hospital when Hinata agreed to come with me.” Ino could see a slight twitch in his smile when she spoke and it made her a tad bit upset with him, “You’re writing her off right now because she’s a Hyuuga, aren’t you?”
Might Guy sighs deeply and shakes his head, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t do that, but she is still a Hyuuga. She could leak out the truth of Lee’s mark to everyone in her clan then Lee’s clan will get involved and he’ll lose everything because of their greed. I haven’t been able to sleep, to eat, or do much of anything except focus on keeping him safe from the world that wants what’s worst for him.”
Hinata can’t blame him for this, either. She knows how persistent her clan has been over these last few days and she can only imagine how hard it must for Guy to deal with all of this on his own. Any human being would crack under such pressure, but by sheer will power, he’s still standing, still fighting for Lee no matter what, “It’s okay, I understand his concern and I don’t blame him for it.”
She moves in front of Ino to ask him, “Can I see Lee, please? I know it sounds unbelievable, but I don’t approve of what Neji did. If I can see the mark, I can tell you if it can be reversed or not. I won’t be able to do that if I can’t see him.”
Guy looks at the young girl, with each of them believing he won’t agree to it, until he opens the door to Lee’s room, “If you can tell me what is going on with that mark, then I will you owe nothing but everything in the world, Hinata. I know you are a Hyuuga…that doesn’t mean you are your clan. I’m sorry for judging you harshly in my moment of weakness.”
“It’s okay, I can understand why you did it.” Hinata’s gaze turns sad as she thinks on it more, “Everything is so tense now…all I want is to fix this for everyone so we can get back to normal as soon as possible.”
With that being said, she entered the room where Lee was staying with Ino by her side. Immediately, the Yamanaka omega was by his side in concern, “Lee, are you alright? You seem so flushed and your scent is out of control.”
This is not a lie. Lee’s cheeks are tinting a light pink slowly, his scent is stronger than before, and he seems rather weak when grabbing his medicine, “N-No, I’m fine, Ino…I’ll be fine, I promise.”
Ino doesn’t really buy it, but then Hinata steps in with a calm, comforting, “Hi…can I…um, see the mark Neji left on your hand?”
“Sure thing!” Lee speaks, only to drop his medicine on the floor, “Oh no…I-I’m so sorry. I just…haven’t been feeling well today. I feel so weak and lightheaded—the room spins if I get out of bed the wrong way too. I am trying to get better so the exams can resume, but I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Are you getting your first heat?”
Hinata shakes her head, “It’s nothing to do with that. His body is straining to fight off the dueling chakras within himself.”
Ino’s breath gets caught in her throat as Hinata explains to them both while holding Lee’s hand that had been marked by Neji, “This mark is irreversible…he embedded it with his chakra to ensure it wouldn’t budge. The only way to get rid of it is to defeat or lose to Neji in battle.”
Hinata walks over to the other side of the bed to look at his other hand, using her byakugan to better try to see if there was chakra embedded into this mark as well as well as to find any similarities with Neji’s marking. Her conclusion was grim: “Lee, Ino…this mark from the redhead alpha, that Gaara…this is embedded with chakra as well, but one of a darker spirit. I…I don’t know if there is any way to reverse this at all. Even if he was marked by Neji, I don’t know if this mark would go away or not.”
The color drains from the faces of the omegas as Might Guy enters the room, clearly having listened to them this entire time, “How do you this is irreversible? Isn’t that jumping the gun, Hinata?”
“It’s got a similar amount of chakra embedded into as Neji’s does, but it’s feels so strong, so dark, so menacing that I don’t feel safe leaving Lee to be mated by anyone.” Hinata frowns as she looks away, “This is why we’re not taught to use marks like this so freely. In cases like this, death can happen to the omega if one of the marks isn’t removed or they both aren’t contained. Mating him now could kill him too because it could make the other chakra in his body attack the remaining pieces of the other alpha’s chakra in his body.”
Might Guy is desperate when trying to bargain with her, “Your father, surely he can do something to contain Neji’s mark! Why not try getting him back in here?”
“We could, but I don’t know of the mark by the other alpha. Both marks need to be contained at the same time or else one of the foreigns could kill Lee unintentionally by trying to seek out the restrained other foreign chakra in his body.”
This doesn’t stop him. Instead of lying still, wallowing in pity and despair from where he stood, Guy ran out of the room to get to Hiashi Hyuuga before he was too far away from the hospital.
The very moment he was gone, Lee started to sniffle, his eyes downcast to the floor, “You knew all of that…f-from one look, huh?”
She nods, letting him in on something she doesn’t believe Neji told him, “I was raised knowing all of the different marks our clans has in our arsenal. I was raised how to spot out the reversible from the irreversible as well as what to do when a foreign mark shows up. It was incredibly easy for me to spot out.”
“If you knew…then Neji would have known as well…” Lee’s eyes are watery when the very idea hits him, “He never respected me. I-I never earned his respect, h-he never saw me as an equal—all of my hard work…it was for nothing with him.”
Hinata doesn’t say anything in response, whereas Ino hugs her friend in an attempt to soothe him as he expands upon this thought in pure despair, “If Hinata knew how severe using marks on my hand would be…then he definitely would have known a-and he didn’t care! He didn’t care if it blew up in his face and got me killed. I…I cannot believe I mattered so little to him after all of this time.”
Hinata and Ino both don’t deny this because it’s true. Neji definitely would have known all of the risks and precautions to be taken, but he didn’t take any of them when marking Lee’s hand in the manner he did. He didn’t bother to care enough about the possibilities of it backfiring because Lee was just an omega to him—someone fated to be someone’s mate, someone meant to be a bird in a cage.
Ino doesn’t say anything in response to his rant, knowing nothing she would or could say would ever improve this situation. All she could do was be his literal shoulder to cry on in a rare moment of vulnerability from the young omega.
It doesn’t stop her from vowing to take Neji’s head should she see him again. Neji is as good as dead in her eyes and she won’t stop until he pays for what he did to Lee.
That redhead alpha—this Gaara person? He’s just as guilty in her eyes. Both of them had no right to mark Lee’s hands like this. Now Lee is being blamed by the public for something that was never his fault and he stands a risk of dying should he be mated by either one of them thanks to their selfishness and objectification of him.
Nothing could really make her angrier in that moment until Lee let out a weak exhale and let him collapse against the bed, “I’m sorry, Ino, H-Hinata…I never wanted to make you two so upset. How are you guys doing? How has everything been ever since the exams ended?”
“I’ve been fine…how can you not be more upset at them right now? Both of those alphas are the absolute worst for what they did to you! How can you not want to pummel them into the ground?” Ino is harsh with her wording but it’s what is on her mind after hearing him speak so casually out of nowhere.
Lee blinks, wiping away a stray tear as he spoke in a wavering voice. “I don’t hate them, Ino. I shouldn’t have ever allowed Neji to mark my hand by being too slow to dodge his movements. That was all my fault…you shouldn’t be so quick to judge Gaara as severely as you do Neji. Gaara isn’t t-too bad. He’s a harsher person than I can be a-at times, but he’s a good guy I think underneath it all.”
She looks at him as though he grew a third head, her arms in the air as she ranted, “No don’t defend him! He marked you on your hand without your consent despite knowing what Neji did to you! Sakura told me how it all happened too so don’t think I don’t know anything about it!”
He shrugs this all so casually that it makes Ino wonder what all this redhead alpha did to make Lee go so easy on him, “I know it’s easy to judge him and maybe I should be as hurt by what he did as I am with Neji…but I don’t feel hurt over what Gaara did to me. We were strangers and he was having a breakdown then. I should’ve gotten help right away for him instead of trying to help him myself. That’s all my fault, not his. He’s also an interesting person to talk to, so there’s that he’s got going for him.”
Ino’s arms fall to her side, her jaw slack as it hits her then, “…You…have some weird sort of crush on him, don’t you?”
Lee looks away from them, confessing something incredibly embarrassing out loud to them both, “I…um…never had one before on anyone, so I don’t know what’s it like to have one. I just think that between the two, Gaara would be easier for me to live with.”
Now this is something both girls can accept.
Hinata herself isn’t above agreeing with him, “He may be foreign and we don’t know what his customs for his clan are, but he would easier for you to live with than Neji. He abides by the strict conservative rules and tradition around omegas, mating, and relationships. He probably put that mark on you because he was wanting to live up to the Hyuuga tradition of mating young as a way to show their assertiveness, confidence, and maturity as an alpha or beta in the clan.”
Maybe that was why he did it, but Ino doesn’t care about his reasoning, not when it left Lee in this state. Why should she care about his or that Gaara guy’s reasoning anyway? They both left marks on Lee against his will without any respect for him as a person; how is that not a show of alphas seeing him as property just because he’s an omega?
She bets they don’t even know or care about what condition he’s in now…okay, maybe that Gaara guy could. Neji…she’s convinced he couldn’t care less if he tried if he couldn’t bother to visit Lee once.
On Hinata’s end, she’s not too shocked by what Lee is saying because in some weird way or another she can relate to him on the issue with Gaara.
Deidara was so nice to her when he was here in the village. He was never making snide comments about her being lesser than Neji like those in her own clan would do when they thought she couldn’t hear them or calling her a ‘peculiar/improper’ beta for not acting like a stereotypical ‘proper’ alpha. Unlike Ino, they both come from conservative clans and those who don’t fit their roles perfectly are under constant criticism from everyone around them, leaving them to feel inadequate in everything. She can understand why he’d be more open to having this Gaara as a mate than Neji despite doing the same exact thing he did to him. In his situation as an omega, she can only imagine that he’d be desperate to mate with a nice alpha instead of one who will trap him in the same conservative setting he must want to escape.
(At least, she wants to escape hers. She’s not sure about Lee; for all she knows he could be happy in his conservative homelife.)
“Both of them were wrong no matter what. I wouldn’t want a thing to do with either of them if I were you, but if you do like Gaara, then there’s nothing I can do to stop you from liking him. Even though he is no better in my eyes than Neji, but you already know that by now.”
Lee gives a weak smile before letting out a loud cry with his distressed pheromones filling the air to the point where they almost choked on it, leaving Hinata to stay with him as Ino went to get a nurse right away.
Their visit with Lee didn’t go further than that, which disappointed Ino. She had been wanting to talk to him more about what Gaara and him spoke on, but she realizes this will have to wait until a later day.
Walking around the village with Hinata by her side hasn’t been bad—if of anything, that’s the main saving grace for her day. Hearing her stories of Deidara has been relieving for her as much as it was interesting.
Though before she was about to go home, Hinata did clear her throat and with all of the confidence within herself, asked, “Ino, I was thinking we could go on a date for real today…if you want, that is! I would never force you or any omega into anything!”
Had it been before the exams, she would have asked her if she was doing this to make Naruto jealous or not. She might have accepted if she gave her answer of ‘no’ for whatever reason or if she had said ‘yes’. Now that the exams are over and Sakura is trying to improve herself as a person to her, it doesn’t feel as right to agree to it.
(Why does Sakura keep coming up! It has nothing to do with her, yet she keeps on coming up in her head!)
There is also another reason why she is more hesitant on this offer, “Hinata, you never showed any interest in me at all before this. I thought you brought up the date to get your dad off of our backs.”
“I mean, I don’t know…it’s just, after the exams I can’t get you out of my head and you’re nice to me just Deidara was—”
“You’re comparing me to Deidara?”
Hinata wonders if she did something wrong here, but then Ino stops in her step completely before moving to walk in front of her to look at her in the eyes, “I think you’re a good person, Hinata, and you are the type I would want to mate someday because of how hard you work to separate yourself from your clan’s sexist views on omegas. I think my problem is you already admitted to crushing on Naruto to try to move on from Deidara and I don’t want you to date me for the same reason. Can you think of anything that attracts you to me without bringing up Deidara at all?”
Hinata tries and subsequently fails, which leads to Ino speaking to her in a softer tone, “If you love Deidara still, then I have no problem with it. I will do whatever I can to bring Deidara back, but I wouldn’t mind having you help me do it. When I do bring him back, he will need to see someone else by my side to show he’s loved by more than just me in the village…who better to do that than you?”
This rejection doesn’t hurt. All it does is leave her with a feeling of closure.
She had been made to believe there was no point in crushing on or loving Deidara at all ever since he left the village. She’s tried so hard to force herself to move on, to find herself another omega just like him, only to fail each and every time because ultimately, there’s only one Deidara.
She has always been afraid of something very particular if Ino ever found out about her crush on him, “It doesn’t bother you that I cannot get rid of my feelings for him no matter how hard I try? It doesn’t bother you that I want to one day be his mate when you do bring him back?”
“Not at all! I’ll take you being his mate any day over that stupid Uchiha who stole him in the first place!” Ino smiles brightly in a way that she is able to see is completely her own with no trace of Deidara there, and Hinata is left with a chest full of hope, as though she can at long last stop her grieving over the aftermath of Deidara’s disappearance.
“Thank you, Ino. It was nice spending time with you today…can we do it again sometime? Not as a date or anything, just as friends.”
“Why not? Come on over to the flower shop whenever you please and I’ll do my best to get off work for you.”
She most likely won’t ever move on from Deidara, but at least she has Ino’s blessing in her feelings for him.
She walks Ino home and they part ways without any unnecessary drama between them. It’s uneventful and she’s able to tell her father they were better off as friends as opposed to girlfriends without any issue.
It doesn’t stop her from noticing how tense he appears when he hears the news of the arrival of some important guests he needs to tend to immediately.
Whatever is going on, she’s glad she’s not at the center of it.