…
Her death.
She sits naked before a mirror. Her fingers tremble, the blade drops like the river of blood before it, it clatters too loudly on the marble floor of her too large bathroom. It is her sobs that break the silence, she cannot stop looking at her reflection.
I hate you.
I don't want to be you anymore.
With a renewed resolution, she grips the fallen blade and resumes with the desperation of a woman with seemingly no other choice.
She wonders, her mouth pulls into something darkly joyful, if she should crave his name into the blade and send it through her skull so that he would, as always, be the last thing she'd have going through her head.
…
Her rebirth.
She is a prisoner of her own mind. Her routine was simple: wake up, lie in the shadows of the shared room until her hunger could not be ignored, eat the stale leftover bread from the canteen, return back into her thoughts and her covers, wait until the moon shone so brightly that she could imagine the sun rising once again, repeat.
Somehow her journey left a web of pale, white scars like lightning down her forearms from a thick white line of scar tissue across her wrists. The orphanage called her cursed, the children whispered about her darkness - the indigo of her hair against the paleness of her eyes and the oddly archaic scarring of a white lightning against her skin.
Hinata is not stupid, for all intents and purposes. It was easy to remember a time where she felt extreme joy, where she felt the motivation of tomorrow, the embrace of protection, love, trust - but it was so often coupled with the following shadow of rejection, betrayal, shame, and her own failures that she did not want to remember.
Her mind would not let her. Beneath her closed eyelids, she watched almost in trance, of moments of regret, anxiety and pain in another life.
She left Konoha, but it did not leave her.
…
His envy.
He hated missions like these. But the war was on the horizon, they needed more bodies, more soldiers, more children. Given his age, they had thought that he would be best at connecting with these people. Yet somehow, as he stands with his team before the orphanage, he has never felt more isolated.
The civilian village was poor, yet there was a vibrancy that coated the worn roads, shacks and its people that made him wonder about his life had he grown up there. But he was an Uchiha and for all his wealth, that was not a luxury he can afford.
It was easy to spot the loner in the crowd. The other children shuffled away from the girl, clumping in little groups of friendship towards the front of the presentation. A carefully folded bandana was tied across her eyes, sleek indigo hair peeked out haphazardly from around it. She stood with her shoulders slumped and almost trembling, her fingers gripped her sleeves so tightly that it tented from the pultrusion of her bony wrists and shoulders.
Before he would open his mouth, Rabbit murmurs, "She is blind."
A unique cruelty, he agrees, particularly for his family. For a moment, he envied the child, barren of responsibility, death, war and its consequences. Then, his eyes flickered towards the brilliant blue of the summer day and the sound of excited children, innocence and a future. Shisui takes a breath of the summer wind and affirms, that he would never regret protecting this.
A child screeches, he flinches at the shrill sound and the moment is broken. His eyes flicker back towards the blind girl, to his surprise, she is gone.
…
Her fear.
She remains trembling from the sight of Konoha.
Hinata is lucky, for all her failures in life, she wonders how the world has treated her so well.
The orphanage did not have a medic, only a young doctor trained by a passing veterinarian that affirmed her blindness without a second care. For all her selfishness and second chances, she knows she could not return to the Hyuuga, branded.
Her anonymity had been a momentary victory, enough for her to wake up at the kiss of the sun against the horizon and allow herself the luxury of hot, familiar rays of sunlight against her pale skin. Then, the ANBU team arrived.
She had stood in the crowd of other children and trembled under the gaze of these killers of a lifetime ago. The familiar insignia, the undertone of anxiety - they were preparing for war, and they were looking for bodies in the children around her. A hot surge of anger, perhaps fear, shook her so entirely that she sprinted from the commotion as silently as she could manage and puked against the putrid toilets of the public bathroom.
Hinata could her the excited voices of the orphans echoing down the thin walls. She could understand the attraction - prestige, belonging, purpose, and contribution to a bigger cause. For the attention starved children around her, perhaps herself as well, it is attractive. Somehow, the bile tasted like blood against her tongue, the cold water felt like hot blood and she is alone once again, her love meaningless and dissipated amongst the winds of war.
Someone was speaking to her, yelling even, against her ear. Someone gripped her tightly with both arms and there is chakra, there is so much chakra - the blindfold against her face shifts, Hinata returns to her reality and twists from the grip, landing soundlessly on the floor.
Terror trickled down, almost following the pale white lightning like scars down her forearm, she does not know it but it was chakra. She does not need to use her eyes to know that ANBU was watching her, one with a hand of medical chakra and the other, a boy her age, stare at her with an intensity rivalling the sunlight that morning. Somehow it feels cold against her skin.
The matron rushes forward, and dips low in apology, her fingers sinking deep into Hinata's shoulders, pressing her forward in a low bow as well. Outside, she could hear the breaking of thunder, it pours and she has never felt more comforted by the filled silence of the rain.
…
Her insanity.
Sometimes she imagines Naruto. Years have past since her first return to the world of the living, she no longer trembles at the arrival of Konoha in her life. Instead she often listens to the whistles of wind along the cracks of the orphanage walls and wonders if she was made from a broken mold. Flashes of her family life, the pain of her brother, the loneliness of her sister, the distance of her father tell her yes.
One spring, her hands would not warm, they would remain cold from the icy winter winds and she had long stopped caring enough to circulate chakra. Her medical training long ago prod at her, but it was Naruto's voice that spurred her to take care of herself.
She hated it.
The truth is that she is a coward, it has been years and she is not stupid enough to forget the lives she could have saved. Sometimes, self preservation reminds her that her insignificance could have never changed the course of life, the river of time.
But it is Naruto's voice again that asks her why she never tried.
…
His saviour.
It is the sound of war that he hates most. Sometimes in the battle field, his ears would pick out the momentary lapse of judgement, the catch of the throat before the cry, the pain of the blade before the sound of its twist, the squelch of organs before his feet.
The war had just begun, and somehow, he could not see anything but death around him. Shisui eyes the colourless sky, the setting sun ignites the horizon ablaze and it is fitting, he thinks, that the sky bleeds to match the earth.
His jounin team is joined by a child he had recruited years ago, she is young but determined to protect a village she had never really lived in. Shisui cannot look her in the eyes and send her forward into the fray, but he does. It is the halted screech in her throat that catches his attention, his autopilot ends and there is a circle of corpses around him. Her eyes catch his, like a fading battery, her vitality follows the blood leaving her throat.
Shisui does not flinch as someone skewers him with their blade, his eyes do not leave her. He will not leave her alone to die. He must suffer for his actions.
She collapses. Her killer moves towards him.
He finds himself running, flickering between giant trees towards his village. The enemy follow him, their team determined to end the fledgling legend of Shisui of the body flicker before he can reach his peak. Shisui is alone, his breath hot against the slick skin of his neck, he's not sure if its blood or sweat anymore.
He is a jounin, but barely beginning his life in the grand scheme of time. The movement of his split skin burn like alcohol down his throat but everywhere. His fingers are cold, they are clumsy as he tries to grip the branches around him.
He will not die today. It is easy to think as opposed to act. He weaves a genjutsu around his body, the best his mind can conjure at the moment. In his fumbling, he drops a few soldier pills into the shrubbery below and swallow a string of curses instead.
There is creeping darkness, a icy coldness of unconsciousness that he is aware of in the edges of his vision. I will not die today. He musters.
Hinata's body moves towards the fighting before she could understand why. Her blindfold forces her to use her Byakugan, and the brilliance of the expended chakra was like trying to ignore the direct gaze of the sun in the noon sky.
She meets the unsuspecting ninja with direct kills, her fingers draw their weapons as her own, and in their fatigue, the memories of a past war serve her well. She protects the genjutsu covered boy, aware that his blood leaked from his hidden position down the branches like a morbid hourglass of his life.
Hinata presses a hand of medical chakra against her broken ribs, her chakra flickers at the use. She lands before the genjutsu covered boy, and his chakra splutters the genjutsu into nothingness. A hand grips her neck painfully, she manages, "Please."
She does not have enough chakra to heal him completely. She lies him beneath the tree, her hands pressed against the hole in his abdomen and prays that it is enough.
Shisui is shaken from his reverie as hot tears land on his chest, the blind girl is struggling to keep her breaths even, her hands cool against his bloodied body. "Hey, hey. Don't cry, it's going to be -" okay, he isn't sure if that is the case. "Who are you?"
Her head snaps up, her river of indigo hair tickle his chest, the bandana is soaked from blood and tears, leaving two comical trails of wetness down her cheeks and bandana. "I -" her voice shakes, "I'm no one."
He cracks a wry grin, "Hi no one-san." He moves to sit up, "Thank you. I - I have to go -"
"No!" The urgency in her voice would be suspicious, if the flush of red up her neck didn't appear. It is almost a boyish grin, when Shisui wonders if even in blindness, he had that impact on women. "I can finish."
He nods, suddenly aware that she had returned to healing him immediately. "I remember you," he muses, "My team stopped by your -" as if death relived itself behind his eyes, and the cooling chakra immediately ended.
"I'm sorry," she murmurs, "I'm sorry you must kill. I'm sorry." Her pale fingers curl into itself against her knees, her chin tucked into her chest, wisps of her hair tremble, "I'm sorry I can not do more, shinobi-san. I -" her voice catches something raw, and Shisui feels his heart break at the vulnerability, he wonders why he feels the sadness, why he is sorry too in the same way, "I'm sorry."
…
Her saviour.
She began to train. It is painful but no less than her own thoughts, it is the vision of her recent helplessness, the bloodied hands on an open wound of an unnamed Konoha boy that haunts her.
Hinata sits against the thin branch, the height easily giving her a full view of the rising sun and its uninterrupted warmth against her skin. She drinks in the warmth, it revitalizes her like a full case of chakra pills. She leant into the tree with a peace she worked hard to achieve, with her bandana around her neck and insecurities 100 feet below her, where civilization dwelled.
The cool summer air was refreshing against the intense heat of the sunrise, it felt like Naruto's brimming chakra. Like creeping shadows, that thought interrupts her thoughts, she allows herself to tip and she briefly wonders if she will wake up in another time again.
A set of warm hands steady her, the slight scent of pine and ash envelope her and she felt the familiar texture of a flak jacket. Her hands readjusts her bandana when the voice behind her rumbles, "Hey relax, I don't care what you look like."
She pauses, she raises an eyebrow but he cannot see. He scrambles, "Not that you're not - I mean - I don't care if you have your blindfold on or not."
Shisui sighs in defeat, his eyes peak at the girl as they face the sunrise. A jittery giggle erupts from her lips and somehow the world looks brighter in his opinion.
"It's fine." She says. Hinata lets his chakra wash over her, like the sliver of sunlight that leads the rest of its brilliance over a dark world, she feels warmed just by sitting next to him.
"I didn't tell anyone about you." He begins, oddly at peace. He turns to stare at her, taken aback by the wry grin painted across her lips, it looks more natural, he thinks. Shisui figures that at least he could stare all he liked, for her blindness.
"Thank you." Suddenly, he's not sure if it is the sun that left the rising heat up his neck.
"How did you learn how to -" Shisui wonders if this was edging into something else, if she would tell him about who she is, and he wonders if he would do the same. "You probably shouldn't tell me, actually."
"Ah," she understands, she leans back into the bark, her head tilts and Shisui is left with a sight of her exposed neck and wry smile. "How are you?"
The sun begins to set just before he leaves.
…
His epiphany.
He feels like life had sucker punched him. She turns around, after a year of waiting, her blindfold is finally around her neck like a highjacked collar and not across her face. Her eyes blink to adjust in the brightness of the day and her nose wrinkles. His eyes can't help but trace the lines of her features, from the shadows down her nose to the slight tan line across her cheekbones.
His heart thunders in his ears, his cousins could screech at his shoulder and he could have not heard it. The world could go into chaos around him and he would still stand woodenly, gaping. Something hot trickles up his neck to his ears like a particularly exciting lightning jutsu and like said jutsu, two things hit him like the lightning before the thunder strike.
The first, she is obviously a Hyuuga.
The second, he is hopelessly attracted to her.
…
Her return.
The boy returns sporadically to her life.
If she were more emotionally sound, Hinata thinks she would fall in love. It is easy to enjoy his presence, there is a darkness that she understands, the weight of war, the burden of love, life and expectation of family. And such brilliance in his ideals, his goals, his undertaking of the notion of world peace - she wonders if she will always be destined to have someone like Naruto in her life.
She does not try to guess who he is, only that she has never met him in her previous life. Sometimes, she convinces herself that he is the reward for her training, but she knows that she will leave him to save her future at one point.
His chakra tickle the edge of her Byakugan range, he is wounded. In her haste, she does not see the muted tainted nature of the chakra signature following him. She arrives before the boy, her hands lit in medical chakra and she wonders why his agitation erupts, there is a sound, a pressure against the back of her neck - it is the intuition of prey before being hunted.
Her bandana slips from her face from the sheer force of the attack, her eyes blink open wildly as she comprehends the blade through her abdomen. Over the shoulder of her murderer, who is clad in a slick porcelain mask, she meets eyes with the boy and he is beautiful.
It is the last thing through her head.
Shisui's eyes burn, he struggles against the earth jutsu until he hears a snap and feels the hot pain of a broken arm rise like bile up his throat. It is the vision of her unmoving form that haunts him into the darkness.
He wakes to the burning of alcohol against his wounds, his hands wipe at the crusted up blood around his eyes so roughly his sleeves leave a rough scratch across his cheekbone. He cannot sense her.
"Shisui." Tiger says, their voice apprehensive, "Your eyes."
Shisui stares at the spot on the ground, there is no blood. Hysteria bubble in his throat, he briefly wonders if insanity ran through his family, and if that were the case, he feels closer to his family already.
..
Elsewhere, Hinata wakes to the scent of upturned soil. The sound of anesthesia drip next to her ear as voices pause at her consciousness.
"Hello, child. Welcome to Konoha."