Okay.
I know.
I dunno guys. There's stuff in my head. It will all make it out- not always in the order we all want, believe me. This one... was really really aggressive today so I just.
Meh. Here it is.
Much love,
Inky
Summary:
After the war there's marriages and alliances, work and farming and peace, love and babies.
And time traveling toddlers appearing without explanation.
Hinata
I woke to the feel of a petal soft nose on mine, and the sticky touch of itty bitty fingers on my cheek. They were gritty too, as though syrup had coated them before the sandbox had and the smell of woodland and pancakes tickled me as I began to address the incoming senses being stimulated.
My hands, still in the half wakefulness of sleep drifted from the covers on my futon to the edge of my pillow where my short sword lingered, although they hesitated to grasp the hilt.
The tiny fingers drifted from my cheek to the curve of my nose. Muddled half dreams of my belly swollen with a tiny kicking being inside and my ankles fat and the smell of soft newborn heads confused me long enough that when I opened my eyes it took me a minute to orient myself.
A pair of ebony black irises glimmered at me from the darkness at the edge of my bed, framed in a pale face with round chubby cheeks and a puckered mouth in a half pout of dislike and concentration.
It was so disorienting that for a moment I couldn't make sense of what my eyes were taking in, which frightened me. My eyes were an inherited miracle, the one part of my body that never failed to perform to everyone's expectations and so to distrust them made my heart pound. With a gasp I sat up in flurry of white sheets and blankets.
The child, for that is what it was now that I could make out all of it's shape shifted backwards rapidly at a half crouch, his stubby little fingers and dimpled elbows sticking out of his plain black shirt in the moonlight of my bedroom.
My mouth was agape. I tasted the air of midnight on my tongue before slowly lifting a hand to my lips, covering the permanent O of surprise on my face with my fingers.
"...who are you?" The child whispered, and his voice was small, making my heart hurt with his well veiled but still visible fear and his brave attempts to mask it.
I blinked my pale eyes at him several times, as though waiting for him to vanish like a haze of smoke into the black of my chambers but he lingered where he was, tense like a bow string about to kill.
I tried to speak, and no words came out, my throat taking a break from the conversation so as to give my brain more time to assess the situation further.
"You... you have Hyuuga eyes." His gaze fixed itself stonily on my face and I blinked again rapidly, wondering at the strangely familiar tilt of his jaw as he clenched it. The curve of his brows on his face holding the frown in place tickled something in my mind.
Those eyes I so trusted and that were so easily recognized fluttered over his little body, stopping at the embroidered white and red fan that decorated the right side of his black shirt.
I was confused. I must have hit my head. This could be a hallucination?
Slowly I lowered my fingers from my lips, not intending to speak but the word came out of my mouth anyway. "Uchiha."
Only, I had to be wrong. I had to be. The little boy glared at me in a way that said he recognized the word I had breathed into life between us, and he wasn't impressed with my assessment.
There were no Uchihas left, none. Or rather, just one. Just a single fan to build the Byakugan flame and...
He was my soon to be brother in law.
So then who...?
"Yeah, I'm Uchiha." The boy glared some more, hands tightening and loosening in equal measures as he studied me. He could not have been older than five, if that. A tremble rippled through his body despite his best attempt to remain calm. "I'm Sasuke. Sasuke Uchiha."
I felt as my voice, so recently resurrected died within me again, my eyes widening some more at his words.
No. I'm dreaming.
I have to be dreaming.
But the way that he stood at my extended silence and the stubborn set of his little jaw gave me pause.
Without any other ideas for words I softly whispered. "I'm Hinata... Hinata Hyuuga." Then more soothingly, trying to calm my galloping heart beat I extended my hand to him. "You... you don't have to be afraid, I promise. I'm... confused that you are here. That... that's all."
In the light of the moon the tears in his eyes glimmered wet and pearl like as he stared and I felt a knot rise to my throat at his panic. Slowly I stood and watched as, like a frightened fawn he took a step back.
"...how are you here?" I whispered, more to myself than him, looking around my room for an open window or door and finding none. He looked around as well as though realizing that was a good question, and the overwhelming weight of what he was thinking seemed to seize his body with panic I could see start at his finger tips and scatter up his limbs shakily.
"I don't know." His eyes finally overflowed with a slow blink. Frustrated he wiped at the wetness on his face with the backs of his wrists. "I don't know."
I was out of the bed before the first sob wracked his body and carefully placing my hands on his shoulders while I crouched on the marble of my bedroom I peered at his face, trying to smile through the sleep and growing panic in my chest.
"It's okay... It's okay, I've got you."
Hands pressing to his eyes he cried, a silent terror eating away at him. I swallowed my own emotion down before gathering him in my arms and standing. He fit into the curve of my hip and along my body, his head laying on my shoulder and relaxing as the rest of his tears came tumbling out of him.
It was the middle of the night, the moon was high, and the house silent. I sat there rubbing his back at the edge of my futon watching the moon shift, still in disbelief until the sun began to pink the navy of the heavens. And it wasn't until the sun encroached on my sheets through the windows and finally touched on his bare toes hanging limp from my arms that I finally let the panic hit me.
I was sitting in my room, with a child in my arms who claimed to be Uchiha Sasuke. The same man engaged to marry my younger sister in less than a month.
"...Oh...God..." I let the sound slowly drift out of my mouth before looking towards the sun in growing confusion. I had trusted that when it rose he would disappear and I would wake hugging my pillow embarrassed by a strange dream. But no, the light had betrayed me. And sure enough, this scenario was by far more awkward than any strange dream I could have had.
A little shudder ran through the small body in my arms and I started, looking back down at the round cheek pressed to my collarbone and the dark hair that slid across his forehead. Streaks of salt drifted down the curve of his cheek and I closed my eyes.
Whatever was happening, this child had nothing to do with it. If there was one thing I knew was that he needed me. Carefully I untangled myself from his grip and slid him into my bed, tucking the blankets around the small shape before straightening and eyeing my door where a maid was going to try to waltz in to open my curtains, bring my breakfast and...make my bed.
My eyes strayed back to the snoozing toddler on said item of furniture and quickly I hatched a plan.
It would appear my lying skills were going to have to get significantly better and quickly in the next couple of minutes.
Sasuke
I nearly killed her. I could not believe that I nearly killed her.
Gasping I stared down at the child, because that's what she was. A child.
I had felt the presence of something, had realized there was an unfamiliar heat curling to my side, sensed soft breath at the nape of my neck and in less than five seconds had a blade to the throat of whatever was cozening up to me in my bed.
However, I had not been prepared for the toddler gaze that stared up at me in terror and confusion.
Her eyes were already overfilling with tears that reflected the moonlight at me from the single round window above my bed and I watched as heat roasted her cheeks to apple pink while my katana hovered over her pale throat.
"What...the fuck." I hissed and scrambled off the bed like I had been hit with a pound of chakra to the chest. My katana didn't lower, the glow of my Sharingan joined the glow of the moon and the child gasped burying her face into her hands with sobs that wracked her little body flat on my mattress.
Jutsu? My brain was scrambling. It was like heading into a knife fight only to find my opponent had tried to disarm me with a floppy wet fish- and even worse- it was working. I had no idea what was happening, and rapidly I slammed my katana back into it's sheath.
"Who are you?" I snapped, walking around the bed to reach the weepy thing that could simply not be where she was.
I was answered with more soft squashed sobs and impatiently I pressed my knee into the mattress, taking one tiny wrist in my hand to pull it away from her face only to have a terrified wet sound escape her. I realized it was a her the moment I took in the nighty, pink and ruffled at the bottom and the indigo hair splayed in the hime style around her face despite it's short length.
"Why are you here?" I asked again, without touching her this time. From between the fat stubby fingers I could see the pale white eyes overwhelmed with tears staring into me and the tinge of red from my gaze on her skin made me sigh sitting up and shutting down my Sharingan quickly.
"How did you even get in here?" I asked again impatiently and sat the child up despite the stiff limbs and back that protested against my grip. She was a waif, small in every way, breakable like a new baby bird fallen from the nest.
I pictured my bed wet with baby pee and reigned in some more of my frustration to ask quietly, softly.
"Look. No more red eyes." I blinked at her, assessing the feel of her chakra, the lack of composure on her tiny face and the infant smell. My Sharingan had detected no jutsus. Nothing.
Just...soap and the salt tang of a little girl's tears.
There was a child sitting on my bed sobbing into her hands. Delicately she rubbed at her face trying to wipe away her emotions and in the brief pause I caught the pale lavender tinge of the Hyuuga eye, making me wince.
I had a Hyuuga infant in my bed at night.
My limbs couldn't keep me where I sat and so I stood, taking several steps back until the entirety of the room was between her and myself. What the actual hell was happening? Was I being framed? Who would do something like kidnap a child from my soon to be in laws and bring them to my bed at night? Fury raged in my chest for a moment as I watched the baffled weeping of the obviously traumatized child.
Whoever did this was going to eat their spleen. I would make sure they did right before I took their head off with Chidori to the face.
I wasn't the pacing type, but I could feel the energy and tension like the start of a fight rotating through my body, the gears were turning. Slowly I raised my hands up into my hair and breathed in deeply, staring at her.
My lack of proximity seemed to appease her tears and she stared back through her fingers, hiccuping between breaths.
She was small, so small I had no idea how to gauge her age. Three? Six? Eight? Kids were simply not my forte and so I stared some more until she closed her eyes against my glare, whimpering and shivering at once.
Kids were really really not my forte.
"What's your name?" I said it as quietly as I could, trying to remember how you had to approach a beast before slaughtering it. Sharp movements, loud voices, aggressive eye contact aggravated the calm and so I lowered my dark eyes to the marble.
Her voice gurgled in her throat for a few seconds and through a rainfall of hiccups I managed to make out two names.
Two mind numbing impossible names.
"H-H-hinata H-Hyuuga."
I let out a long breath, letting my shoulder blades hit the wall of my room hard as I leaned there, stuffing my shaking hands into my pockets.
"No." I found myself saying, slowly as though talking to a disabled 80 year old senile dog. "No, Hinata Hyuuga is the daughter of the main house, she-"
"P-please don't hurt me." She whimpered and as her hands pressed to her streaming eyes I stopped, studying the way her cheeks flamed again.
It did seem...disturbingly familiar. I wasn't very well acquainted at all with my soon to be sister in law, but...
No. No.
This was not happening.
Activating my Sharingan again I scanned the room, searching for something, anything. I almost hoped Orochimaru would come crawling out of the woodwork like some blessed sanity.
As I turned in a full circle, searching for the threat that was obviously messing with my senses I head her sobbing still and stop, slowing to a steady if shaky breath and expecting the real enemy to crawl out of the baby skin I turned, body at the ready.
But she was still there, her arm over her face she was asleep or unconscious on my bed same as when she appeared. Her breaths were generally slow and easy except for the stuttering gasps that rankled her as payment for the tears.
Standing at the edge of the bed I studied her, tracing the little dimples on her tiny exposed knees and the insignificant pearl toes that lined her small feet with my gaze.
This was bad. This was worse than bad.
At best someone was trying to frame me for... what? Pedophilia? With a child from the most prestigious Clan in Konoha, and one soon to attach itself permanently to me.
And at worst?
I swallowed the rock that was sitting snug in my throat.
At worst...I had a miniature Hinata Hyuuga in my bed. And I had no idea how or why?
I've gone insane. It actually did happen.
The two possible worse scenarios were starting to look like they should switch places the more I thought about it.
Raising one hand to my face I pressed my fingers to the pressure point on my forehead hard, trying to dispel a quickly growing headache at the forefront of my face.
I stayed there, thinking and analyzing the short list of possible explanations for my predicament for so long that when I looked up again the first pink tendrils of sunlight were sneaking through the pie shaped glass of the circular window above the bed.
I watched, the way one watches a blade slide through an enemy the same calm and sickened feeling in my gut as the sun slid down the wall and across my floor, over the foot of my bed and onto the child's face.
When she didn't disappear I felt my heart do a painful thing that ached as much as my head.
"No." Staring in confusion at her slow even breaths on my pillows I turned my head right and left just once to myself. "No."
A knock, sharp and frantic downstairs made me tense, eyes shifting quickly to the hall outside my open bedroom door.
Bracing for a fight, I squared my shoulders and headed down into the fray.
I didn't know it at at the time, but nothing was going to prepare me for this particular trial.
This is the teaser for Switcharoo.
It will not all be in first person- this is the only chapter that will. I took it for a test drive. No go. I kept messing up tenses. It felt awkward and stuttered.
:)
-Inky