"No, no, no, no, father!" Sasuke shrieked and held tighter to his mother's legs, refusing to let go in the slightest, "I'm not visiting some other stupid clan so that I have to play with some stupid girl!" The tears streaking down his round face dripped onto his mother's beautiful kimono, staining it.

"Sasuke." Fugaku thundered and stormed up to the young boy, frowning.

"No, father." Sasuke whined and moaned, "I hate girls. I hate them." He pleaded, hoping that his father would understand him after that simple explanation.

"I don't care how you feel about girls. You will get over this fear and you will be polite to the Hyuuga heiress." Fugaku crouched down to his son's level and stared at him seriously in the eye.

"And the Hyuuga's daughter is an absolutely adorable girl that is your age," Mikoto cooed and pried Sasuke's fingers away from her wrinkling kimono, squatting down next to son also. She patted his raven head gently, "You'll love her." She smiled at him reassuringly.

Sasuke looked horrified at the prospect of having to meet another girl his age, "But—but, girls always try to touch or hug me. I hate it." He screeched, frustrated that these parents of his wouldn't understand him.

Mikoto lightly kissed her son's creased forehead and smiled, "Sasuke, if you come along and are nice to her, I will help you make chocolate chip cookies tomorrow evening. How does that sound?"

Sasuke's eyes widened and he gulped he had never made chocolate chip cookies before, "Really?" She nodded. He frowned but nodded his head, "Fine. I'll be nice to her, today." He crossed his arms, his mind made up.

Mikoto sighed but looked back at Fugaku's amused face, "Well, honey, it doesn't look like we'll have to hire that babysitter after all." His only response was a grunt.

… …

Sasuke's eyes darted from the menacing man towering before him, then back up to his mother whose hand he was clutching so tightly. She looked down at him and gave him an encouraging smile and a squeeze of the hand.

Sasuke chanced another small glance at the man; he had a tall and muscular figure that tensed when Sasuke glanced at him and eyes that frightened Sasuke even more than girls did. The whiteness of them made his expression harsh and blank. Sasuke shied further behind his mother.

"So, Fugaku, you brought your other son, I see." The Frightening Man said, disappointed. He spared Sasuke a fleeting look, analyzing his fear and shakiness.

Fugaku nodded, "Yes, I felt that Sasuke should become acquainted with a clan such as yours, Hiashi-san." He took Sasuke's hand and jerked him away from behind Mikoto. Dragging him up to Hiashi, he hissed, "Remember what we had practiced before we got here?"

Sasuke nodded meekly and stood in front of Hiashi, his eyes averted to the ground in front of Hiashi's sandaled feet. Taking a deep breath, he whispered, "I am honoured to be in your presence. Thank you for having me here, Hiashi-sama." He ran back to his mother and stood as tall as he could, not wanting to embarrass father any further.

Hiashi nodded and waved his hand vaguely in the direction to a paper door, "Hinata is out in the courtyard. He may go and introduce himself to her."

Sasuke looked up at his mother with pleading eyes. She chuckled and gently kissed his forehead, "Go on, Sasuke. For me?" Quickly, she smoothed what she could of his unruly, spiky hair.

He nodded and scampered off through the door and into the courtyard where a small girl was futilely throwing shuriken at a nearly unscathed dummy. Finally, a stray shot embedded itself into the arm and the girl whooped with joy. She ran towards a kind looking woman, shouting, "Okaa-san! Okaa-san, I did it!"

The woman smiled and scooped her up into her arms, "Good job, Hinata." She looked up and noticed Sasuke observing them both. She gave a friendly and open smile, "Ah, you must be Mikoto-san's other son, Sasuke, we had Itachi visit us not too long ago too."

Sasuke stopped and looked at the small girl who was staring at him, and he froze like a deer caught in headlights. He swung his gaze from the girl to the door, then back again, preparing to make an escape from her if needed.

The girl's mother chuckled, reminding him very much like his own mother, "Don't worry, Sasuke-san, we won't bite." She motioned him forward with her hand.

Slowly, he edged himself closer until he was only two feet away. She sighed again, "Okay, well, it seems like you aren't going to come any closer." She patted the girl's head absentmindedly, "This here is my daughter, Hinata. Hinata, go say hi."

Sasuke tensed and waited for the hugging and attempted kisses to commence. The girl shyly trotted up to him and bowed when she was a foot away, "H-hello, Sasuke-san, welcome to the Hy-Hyuuga manor," She scurried back and clutched the pale lavender sleeve of her mother's kimono.

Hinata's mother replaced her sleeve with her hand and smiled at Sasuke, "My name is Kyoko. And I too welcome you here," She bent down to Hinata's level and brushed away the bangs that were dangling in her daughter's eyes, "Hinata, I have to go to the council meeting too, show Sasuke-san here around and be nice to him, okay?" She gave Hinata a quick peck on the cheek before drifting past Sasuke and into the house.

Hinata looked up at Sasuke, then back at the ground and began to draw random lines into the dirt with her toe, "So…um, Sasuke-san…"

"What?" He barked at her and backed away.

She looked up at him, looking, if possible, just as scared as him, "Do…do you l-like cookies?" She asked in a desperate attempt to relieve herself from the glares that she was receiving from Sasuke.

Sasuke crossed his arms across his chest, "Yes. I like chocolate chip the best. I hate raisin oatmeal ones the most, but mother only buys those ones 'cause she says that their the healthiest."

Hinata brightened considerably, "Really? I love chocolate chip too!" She smiled and grasped his hand, "Kano-san said that she would let me bake cookies with her today!" She began to pull him along into the house until Sasuke jerked his hand away from hers, growling, "Don't touch me!"

Hinata brought her hand up to her face to examine it in confusion, "Wh-why? I don't have any cooties if that's why you're mad, Neji-nii-san even says so. Well, he used to." Her face darkened, but she quickly cheered up, "He says cooties are supposed to make you sick, but I used to hold hands with him all the time and he never gets sick." She grinned and held out her hand again, "See? You're not sick are you?"

Sasuke snatched her hand roughly and let her drag him in through the winding halls of the Hyuuga mansion; at least she was only holding his hand.

He looked at her more; her white eyes weren't nearly as frightening as Hiashi's. In fact, she had very pretty eyes that shone brightly and smiled even better than her pink mouth did. She seemed nice.

"So, Sasuke-san, do you want to make chocolate chip cookies? Or peanut butter ones?" She chirped animatedly and continued to skip down the hallways, careful not to drag along Sasuke too harshly.

He pursed his lips and considered this. He really liked chocolate chip cookies, but he also really peanut butter and jelly sandwiches too. Maybe they could make peanut butter and jelly cookies! He grinned and tugged at her hand to slow her down, "I want to make peanut butter and jelly cookies. 'Cause that's like a sandwich in cookie shape, right?"

Hinata's eyes and mouth widened, "That would be so yummy. Why haven't they come up with that type of cookies yet?" She began walking again amazed with the hugeness of Sasuke's discovery.

Pride swelled up in Sasuke's chest, puffing it up he strutted beside Hinata until they came to a large room with many ovens, stoves and kitchen utensils neatly lined up and glimmering under the bright lights of the kitchen.

"Where's Kano-san?" Hinata pouted and dragged Sasuke through the whole kitchen, crying, "Kano-san? Kano-san? Where are you?"

Sasuke stopped stubbornly, causing Hinata to almost fall flat onto her face had she not been clutching his fingers so tightly. He rolled his eyes, "Don't be such a klutz. We can make cookies by ourselves, can't we?" He puffed out his chest once more, "I'm five. I can make something as easy as peanut butter and jelly cookies."

Hinata stopped worrying about Kano at once and nearly had stars glittering in her bright eyes, "Really? I'm only four, my birthday's in De'ember."

"It's 'December', stupid."

"No, it's De'ember!" She cried stubbornly and let go of his hand to clench her fists and stomp her feet, "It is De'ember!"

He shook his head, "You're only four, I'm five, so I'm right." He crossed his arms across his chest triumphantly.

"Oh. Right." She mumbled and unclenched her fists, sullen.

"But four's not that little after all." Sasuke quickly said, he didn't mean to be mean, it just happened.

"I guess, it's only a year littler anyways." She brightened up, "We'll make cookies without Kano-san. You're five, you know how to, right?"

Truth was, Sasuke had absolutely no clue how to, but if he admitted that, that would mean that Hinata wouldn't listen to him anymore, and he wouldn't be right anymore either. He said smugly, "Of course I do."

"What do we do first then?" She asked curiously.

"First we make two peanut butter an' jelly sam'wiches. 'Cause it's only us eating them."

"Okay!" Hinata ran through out the kitchen and deposited all the ingredients along with a butter knife onto the floor in front of Sasuke, "Be careful with the knife, okaa-san says that they're sharp."

Sasuke nodded and took a large glob of peanut butter and haphazardly spread it across the bread and repeated with the jelly. Taking both slices of bread, he slapped one piece on top of the other, "Your turn,"

Hinata took the knife out of his outstretched arm and carefully spread the peanut butter and jelly across the two pieces of bread, her tongue poking out of her mouth in concentration and then copied his movements of slapping the pieces together. She held out her sandwich expectantly, "Like this?"

"Yep. Now we need one of those mushers." Sasuke poked his head into the closest cupboard.

"What's a musher?"

"You know, a musher? Those buckets that spin inside and go 'vrooooooom'." He explained as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Oh." Hinata said, it dawning on her suddenly, "A musher. Yeah. We've got a musher." She shuffled through a bunch of other cupboards before producing a bright, white (much like everything else in the manor) blender.

"That's it. Now plug it in." He ordered and gathered up the two sandwiches into his chubby fingers.

Hinata obediently did and set it down on the floor in front of them, "Now what do we do?"

"I'm gonna put them in, and you get some eggs and sugar." He waved his hand for her to scramble up and dart towards more parts of the kitchen in search of more ingredients.

She ran back with a large, heavy looking package of sugar and a smaller carton of eggs, "Is this good?" She asked eagerly and dropped the sugar onto the ground and plopped down next to Sasuke, eggs carefully sheltered in her arms.

He put his fingers to his lips, "We put the sugar in firs'" He reached inside the bag and took out a fistful of sugar, "Keep putting in some 'till I say stop." He ordered and dropped the sugar in handful by handful.

"Stop!" He gripped her wrist just as she was about to drop in the sugar, startling her. He brought her hand back to the bag of sugar and made her drop the white grains from her dirty hands back into the large bag. "Now we put in the eggs." He cracked open an egg and watched in fascination as the liquid dribbled lazily from the eggshell.

Hinata copied his example and frowned as she watched an eggshell slipped in with the yolk and fell onto their sandwiches. Shrugging, she asked, "Is this enough?"

Sasuke nodded, "Now we put on the lid and press the button." Hinata did as she was instructed and squealed with glee as the sandwich swirled violently amongst the egg yolks and sugar.

"How long do we mush it for?" She asked innocently and tapped the glass.

"Until I say so!" Sasuke snapped at her and returned to watching the blender blend the ingredients.

Several minutes later, he pressed the stop button (or what he assumed to be the stop button) and opened the lid, "Now get me a…metal thing." He made a wide rectangle shape in the air with his fingers.

She put her finger to her lips, "You mean a cookie sheet?"

"Whatever, just go get it!" Sasuke snarled and crossed his arms. He was the five year old, she wasn't supposed to correcting him.

She came back several minutes later carrying a large cookie sheet and dropped in front of Sasuke with a loud clang, "You wanted this, right?" She smiled, proud of herself for being able to correct someone old as five.

He stuck his hand into the blended mixture and took out a gooey mess of peanut-butter-jelly-sandwich-egg-sugar mud-like substance and dropped it with a satisfying 'plop' onto the metal sheet, refusing to try to explain anything more to Hinata.

Hinata eagerly followed his lead and giggled as she took out large globs of their cookie batter until a terrifying and shrill shriek issued from her widely opened mouth. She waved her hand about in the air, splattering the batter all over the kitchen. And Sasuke.

"What?" Sasuke asked sourly and wiped off what little amount of globby mush had landed on his cheeks with his arm, "What happened?"

Large tears welled up in Hinata's bright, pearly eyes, "I--I gots hurt! I cut myself on the musher's knives!" She wailed and hiccupped violently, referring to the small blades that poked up from the bottom of the blender.

Sasuke gripped her wrist and brought her shallowly scratched finger up to his lips, giving it a light kiss, "There. All better." He brought her finger to her face to show her, "See? Okaa-san says that a kiss always makes things better. It even stopped bleeding." He said proudly and let go of her wrist.

"Oh yeah…" A look of dawning spread across Hinata's small face, "Mother told me that too…"

"Anyways, we have to put this into the oven now." Sasuke gripped the edges of the steel cookie sheet and waddled over to the impossibly large oven, careful not to slip on any of the stray globs of cookie batter.

He put the sheet down and tugged the creaky oven door down to his knee level with all of his strength. He put his hands on his hips, "How hot should this be on?" He turned to ask Hinata who had skipped up next to him.

She put a finger to her pouting lips, and decided to just crawl onto the oven door so she had an easier access to crawl onto the stove above, "Okaa-san's only taught me an itty bitty bit of reading," She drew her thumb and index finger together so that there was only a small amount of space left between them before they touched and squinted through them, "But I think if we if we turn the button here," She spun the dial behind the stove to 500 degrees Fahrenheit, "They'll cook!" She pressed a random button and crawled back from the stove and onto the floor.

"So I just put them in?" Sasuke asked and deposited the tray into the oven and slammed the door closed loudly.

"Uh, I think so." Hinata frowned at the oven looming in front of them, "Yes."

……

Ten minutes later (a full ten minutes of civilly debating between the big difference between oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies), Hinata stood behind Sasuke, oven mitt at the ready as Sasuke pulled down the door causing a hot blast of wind fly into their faces and nearly reduce them to tears.

"A-are you sure y-you can do this?" Hinata whispered and clutched the back of his shirt tightly, "I mean, even f-for a five year old, it's scary."

"Of course I can!" Sasuke huffed, offended she would even suggest a thing.

"Sorry," Hinata mumbled quietly and hid further behind him.

Sasuke gulped. It shouldn't be too hard, right? Father was already teaching him Katon Fireball Jutsu, he was getting more and more used to heat anyways, he could handle this. Cautiously, he stuck his oven mitt clad hands into the oven and quickly snatched out the heavy cookie sheet. Hinata slammed the door shut with a slam and coughed at the heavy black plumes of smoke that had swirled through the air, lingering in her hair and clothes. She glanced down at the cookie sheet that had been dropped with a clang onto the floor. She scrunched her nose at the acrid smell and asked, "Are you sure they're supposed to look like that? The other cookies that me and Kano-san made were…prettier."

"Cookies aren't supposed to be pretty, stupid. Besides, no one's ever made peanut butter jelly sandwich cookies, so they're gonna look different." He couldn't help but think to himself though that she was right.

"Maybe you're right." She grinned, "Let's go bring them to okaa-san! She'll like them!"

He nodded. It was a good idea. They gathered up the hot cookies carefully and put them into the sleeves of Hinata's kimono. Together, they trotted to the council meeting room, suddenly wondering if it was such a good idea now that they were staring at the large, antique doors that looked quite frightening with the many carved birds and dragons leering down at them.

Hinata bit her lip and wrung her tiny fingers together, "May-maybe we shouldn't butt in…" She glanced at Sasuke, then at the daunting door in front of them.

"Don't be stupid! We're not butting in…just interrupting." Sasuke decided and reached up to pull down the handle to enter before he changed his mind.

The bickering and chatter that had been thrown back and forth between the clans and clan members ceased as soon as they watched the two children enter hesitantly. The hush was broken by Hinata's cheerful shout, "Kano-san! Okaa-san!" She bounded up to them and enveloped them in a hug.

"Look!" She emptied out her sleeves and gave each of them a cookie, "Sasuke and I made them!" She turned to Kano, "You weren't like you promised, so we made them by ourselves." She puffed out her chest proudly.

"O-oh." Both Kano and Kyoko eyed the cookies with horror.

"Yeah!" Sasuke piped in and snatched two of the cookies away from Hinata's fingers, "Otou-san, Okaa-san, try them!" He offered them up to the two of them who had them same expression that Hinata's mother and caretaker were modeling plaster across their faces.

Fugaku cleared his throat and tried to save them all from impending doom, "Er…Sasuke. This isn't an appropriate time for you to be offering these. We're in the middle of a very important meeting."

Hiashi frowned, Fugaku wasn't about to show him up in the 'strictly-discipline/reprimand-their-children' category, that was where he shined the brightest. Clearing his throat with an even louder cough, Hiashi looked down at Hinata with cold eyes, "I do believe, Hinata that you should leave. Now."

Hinata's cheeriness dimmed, but she held out her hand anyways with the proffered cookie, "Would you like one too, Otou-san?"

Hiashi took in his breath with a hiss, he did not like the bright eyed look his daughter was giving him, or the glare that he was receiving from his wife. Cautiously, he took the cookie from his daughter's petite hands and flipped it over in his hand carefully as if it were a bomb in need of diffusing.

"Will you try it?" Hinata asked quietly and crawled off her mother's lap to stand in order to face both parents properly.

"Yeah, please?" Sasuke did the same and rocked back and forth on his heels.

Hiashi looked at Fugaku. Fugaku looked at Mikoto. Mikoto looked at Kyoko, who in turn, looked up at her husband. They all knew that they didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell. The children had pulled out the big guns.

Irresistible Bambi Eyes.

Each taking a deep breath, they all brought the cookies up to their mouths to take a small nibble.

The effect was both horrific and immediate.

Kyoko fainted, both Hiashi and Fugaku projectile vomited onto the coffee table, Kano had turned a deep green, and Mikoto was clutching her stomach and moaning in pain. The council members all leaped out of their chairs and fled the room within fifteen seconds flat of the whole even occurring.

"H-honey," Mikoto wheezed and got up on trembling legs, "I think…we should go home now."

Sasuke pouted and whined, "Already?"

"Yes. Already." Mikoto leaned against the wall and patted her husband (who was frantically trying to comb chunks of nastiness out his hair and turning the same colour that Kano was) on the shoulder.

"Fine." Sasuke grumbled and made his way up to Hinata who was staring at her parents in confusion, trying to figure out the reason to their sudden sickness. He cleared his throat to grab her attention (a trait he had recently learned from his father), "I'm going now. That was fun."

She grinned brightly, "Will you come over to play again?"

Sasuke turned back to his mother, "Okaa-san, will we?"

Mikoto responded by heaving all over her husband's lap.

……

Couldn't help it. I just had to add that bit of nastiness in there.

It's a sort of side story to Smile For Me. The caretaker, Kano, I had made up on my own.

Ciao,

MissLe