The Corpse on the Shore
The Naka River ebbed against the river bank, grey and sluggish. The reeds tethered to the shore were in a very sorry state –broken and torn from the fury of storm the night before. The little Hyuuga Heiress toddled amongst the reeds, her feet bare and stubbed. A furious pout formed up against her face in the belief that she could quell her tears with the compression and she sniffed loudly, but only because she knew nobody could hear. Her thoughts were not of the storm that had scared her the night before but rather, closer to home.
Suddenly assessing that that simply sniffing was not sufficient to quell her tears, she staunchly stole a reed that was not broken and tore into it, uprooting it and rendering the stiff, slimy twig as a weapon. With this mighty reed, she beat the other reeds, suddenly aware that her father had underestimated her totally. Hinata lost his quiet derision in her daydream, imagining herself as a samurai princess, with ribbons in her long, flowing hair.
The dark humour played a sardonic twist upon Hinata's lips, and she spun around, knocking back reeds, and decapitating those that got too close. She swirled though motions beaten into her, jabbing and dodging and ducking and thoroughly destroying any reed that showed itself in her presence.
Tears suppressed, she stood back, her anger taken out on the plants. A smile played on her lips, knowing that she really shouldn't have done that, but she had and as of yet she hadn't been told off. She could start regretting it when someone told her off for it.
"I vow to grow my hair long. And wear pretty ribbons in it! And be beautiful!" she hissed to herself, suppressing those tears further and loosing herself into her daydream, the ribbons matching the inlay of her ornate kimono, the silver of her obi matching her beautiful and deadly katana.
She trundled along, waving her glorious reed around her as if she were a samurai caught in a bamboo forest of demons. The thought of the nine-tailed fox came to mind (After all, that was the demon all the adults all hated so much that they would only speak of it behind hands and in whispers) and she could practically feel the demon's villainous chakra (Orange and purple and red like blood) spilling over and into the area, it's hot breath, the puddles of drool that gathered around her feet. (The cold wet mud she was practically paddling in.)
The other demons had fled. It was her and him. Lowly (but beautiful) princess and cruel demon, the one-on-one showdown that everyone would recall and state how brave she was.
Demon blood stained her katana. She pondered whether to make her Kimono red (to match the blood she would be spilling) or white (just for dramatic effect).
She struck down another reed for good measure and twisted on the spot, eyeing the Naka River's sluggish movements for signs of betrayal. Her eyes caught something on the river bank, something large and unmoving, and Hinata eyed the object for a moment, supposing it was a log.
It could be the Kyuubi, trying to trick her with a Gen-jutsu so that she would fall into it's waiting mouth, crammed with sharp, ghastly teeth.
Or perhaps it was a crocodile. Once a time when Neji-nii-san had been nice to her he had told her that there were crocodiles in the Naka river. Or Alligators. Hinata couldn't remember which one was which, but she supposed it was the same difference. It might as well be the Kyuubi. All three had more sharp teeth than they ought to be entitled to.
She surveyed the object once again. It could be a crocodile she supposed. She gripped her stick tighter, feeling her palm go clammy and her reed shift in her hand. The object didn't move.
She crept through the reeds, her eyes fixated on the lump. It was long, and it was covered in the sludge of the river, a mottled brown. A twig snapped under her foot, and she gasped in panic. The object didn't move.
She ran at the object, battle cry forming in her mouth. She smacked the reed over it, the reed cracking halfway. Hinata opened her eyes, tears suddenly released by adrenaline and realised that the object was not a crocodile. Or an alligator. Or a log.
"Mister?" she asked the corpse, noting how long, or rather, how tall he was, his wet black hair, slicked and shiny with the river mire, and the symbol of a fan embroidered onto his sodden clothing.
She pressed her lips together and sniffed, wiping her tears away lest the man see her. That was the symbol of the clan who lived to the west of the river, whilst her family lived to the east. Hinata had always thought they must be bad people because they were talked of in the same way as the demon fox—whispers and rumours floated across the Naka River and settled like dust about the clan with black and red eyes.
In the thought that she had just assaulted an obviously ill member of the extended family, she glanced up and hastily searched amongst what could be seen of the family compound across the wide river—nothing much behind the canopy of dark pine trees, but none the less—their presence was suddenly far more conspicuous than she had ever felt before.
She turned to the cadaver. Her faithful reed was broken and the adults were going to be angry. She needed to know his face so that next time she met him, she could hunt him down and tell him off for tricking her like that. Or maybe ask if he was feeling better. Her father would like that assertion.
She pushed the body over, straining to lift the weight. The body rolled further down the bank, but eventually stopped when it met the water, his legs entangled in some reeds.
Hinata's face fell. She would be in real trouble should the adults find out how badly she had mistreated a visitor from another clan, especially one from the clan from the other side of the river. Especially one that appeared to be unconscious, or in a slumber. A shiver ran over her body, like a wet finger tracing her spine, and she didn't know what to make of it.
She approached the body. And observed. His face was too pale, and too blue for the man to be well, and he didn't seem to be breathing. In the depths of her mind Hinata pushed that thought away, and supposed that he was so ill that his breath must be shallow. His nose was blunt, like it had been broken, and his mouth long, as if it were smiling, taunting her with his lips. There was no rigour mortis. His skin had yet to develop the shade of green, of death incubated.
Were she older, she might have labelled this man as handsome, given the dimensions of his face, and the softness of his pale lips, but her mind gave that no thought as she intently stared at the man until his body was burnt into her retina.
His curly, wet hair covered his eyes and curiosity prickled at Hinata, and her trusty if not broken reed was close at hand. She moved the wet hair from his face with the reed. Hinata was too surprised to scream, but later, when the events had replayed over and over in her head, she supposed she would have never screamed.
She had come from a clan where the nightmare of their precious eyes being gouged out saturated their small family culture. Her nightmares derived of strangers hunting her down in a forest and stealing her eyes. Her night time tales often revolved around a Hyuuga hero that risked all to recover the precious eyes of his fallen comrades. Like all Hyuuga children, she had been taught the curse jutsu that would cause her eyes to self-destruct if captured by enemy nin. She knew what she was looking at, and that fear was so real to her she could identify it.
Where the man's eyes ought to be, there were only pits of blood and gore. A scent she had never smelt before—one that she recognised without knowing—of rotting, of death hit her and she recoiled, her face pulling into a scowl of disgust.
Then she vomited her meagre breakfast and began to panic .
She knew enough that the adults would be upset. Very upset. And angry. Very angry. She didn't want all that anger directed at her. She had enough of the percentage of her father's anger directed at her. She looked around and was aghast at how much of the reed bed she had ruined (the make-believe demons were forgotten in an instant). She was sure to be told off now, and it was all this man's fault. She looked at him, and some small, intrinsic part of her knew—had known from the moment she had spied him from afar—that he would never be getting up.
Tears rolling down her face, she pushed the man with her reed and her left foot, back into the Naka River and submerging him so he was pushed out of the river bank into the stronger tide of the river. She watched as the body floated, and then sank under the waves, perhaps never to rise again, wet and sodden with the murk and mire that dredged through the heart of Konoha.
She was scolded of course, for the dirt on her clothes and her silliness in wandering into the dirty river, but the adults did not know of the destruction of the reeds, or of the man she had encountered, so she was sent to the bath-house in disgrace, and cleansed. She was more relieved than guilty.
"How on earth did you get so dirty?" scowled her mother, white eyes narrowing in impatience. Hinata kept quiet for a moment, realising this wasn't a question her mother wanted to know the answer to, and that her large pregnant belly was making her irritable.
"I was playing, Mummy." Hinata squeaked, prising her lips from one another and quaking under her mother's quiet fury.
Her mother washed her hair almost callously, not bothering to mind the knots and tangles that hurt when she tugged on them. "And during this playing, how did you get these twigs in your hair? I hope you're not playing with that filthy Branch member."
Hinata shook head, not bothering to explain that Neji wanted nothing to do with her since he had received the marking marring his forehead, and was more apt to ignore her rather than play, like they used to.
"Can I touch your belly Mummy?" asked Hinata hopefully, brightening at the prospect. "I want to see how lump is getting on. Do you think they'll kick me this time?" In eagerness, she extended her hand, aiming for her mother's stomach, like a kunai to target.
Her mother swatted her hand away quickly, her fury not distracted. Hinata's mother often was pregnant, but Hinata never seemed to receive siblings, like other children did. Instead her mother seemed to inflate and deflate, her stomach rising and falling like a loaf of bread in the oven.
"Stop being so soppy Hinata, and get dressed! Hirumi. Look after her." With a waft of the scent of lily of the valley—a scent Hinata learnt to associate with constant and total disappointment, Hinata's mother disappeared, maybe to scold some branch member, or to make a fuss about a silly matter, or to perhaps to cry in her bedroom.
Like a salve to a burn, the branch member massaged the heiresses head, all too fond of the little girl. "You have to look special tonight, Hinata-sama." Cooed the branch member, who saw to Hinata's hair, slicking and sticking its fine short strands into a neat bob, before combing it through with a fine tooth comb, losing the lather and the bubble of the fragrant shampoo.
"Why so, Hirumi-san?" Asked the polite heiress, who addressed all her elders with respect, even if they were of lower status than her.
"There is to be a meeting, and Hinata-sama is expected to be there with her father, representing the clan. Your mother cannot attend."
There might have been a hint of some form of emotion, but despite noting its presence, Hinata couldn't quite understand.
"Is Mummy very unwell?" The little girl asked, suddenly struck by the thought that her mother could be ill, or could become horrible and still, like the man on the bank.
The Hyuuga woman stayed quiet for a moment there, tasting her words over in her mouth before she spoke them and taking the opportunity to take the small girl out of the bath and dry her.
"Sometimes having babies can be hard on a woman. Your mother isn't very unwell." The woman replied, petting down the girl's hair before helping her out of the bath and drying her down with a rough towel. She sounded unconvinced, but Hinata knew better than to test the waters any more than she had, and feared what would happen if her Father heard those questions.
She was sure she had earned more than a backhanding today, and as she was robed in a kimono almost befitting the samurai princess she envisioned herself to be, she resolved to put the incident behind her, and concentrate on her duty.
"Now. You must look like the best heiress the land of fire, Hinata, and bring pride to the family name," said the branch member as she fixed Hinata's ornamental obi, and attached an ornamental piece with jade attached. "There," said Hirumi "You look pretty tonight, Hinata-sama."
Hinata observed her little form in the mirror, and pouted, her eyebrows narrowing together and leaving a little crease on her forehead. "I must, if I am to represent the clan," said the little girl, with a grimness beyond her years.
She was the only little one there, and she shrunk to her Father's side. It was scary how many clans there were in Kohona, and how many there were trapped together in the small meeting place, sharing glances and snarls, and how many smoked large pipes, leaving smoke hanging in the air to add to the sense of trepidation under the low ceiling.
"What of the future of the clans?" cried out one man. They were loud too, and they all shouted, even her quiet Father, which shocked her greatly. She couldn't imagine herself shouting out to draw attention to herself in this cavern of wolves.
"Are those of Kekkai Genkai families to be removed from Kohona?" shouted a leader of a clan Hinata couldn't identify.
"What of the monopoly of the Kekkai Genkai families?" screamed a man from the back, shaking his fist.
Hinata realised that the mutterings and cries of approval were bad, for her father shook his head and hissed under his breath with ever comment, and her Uncle, her Father's advisor in all things civil, scowled deeply.
"Hear, hear! How is it possible for the smaller clans to compete against those larger, dominating families?" commented a blond man with piercing blue eyes. A woman to his side with dark, lank hair nodded her approval and added. "The promises and allure of the Kekkai Genkai displace mission givers from shinobi families without Kekkai Genkai, we also have to consider the land owned by these families- the land by the Naka is so valuable! It's fertile, arable land… And yet the compounds just sit there, doing nothing with it while we all have to buy in food from the outside! Kohona is starving!"
There was a cry of approval, and Hinata found herself shrunk to her father's side, overwhelmed by sound. "Yamanaka. Nara. Akimichi." her Uncle whispered in her father's ear. Hinata took it to believe that the Akimichi was the large man with light brown hair that kneeled by the blond man and grumpy woman.
"It is not our fault that customers prefer those families that have proven their worth time and time again," cried a brown haired man with black eyes, and that cursed fan embroidered on the breast of his Kimono. Hinata realised that he was the head of the clan from across the river. "Do you wish those of the Kekkai Genkai families to become farmers! This land was given to us when we sided with the first Hokage… what we do with it is our own business. We have family to feed and house, and we have our own land to do so. We do not steal!" His comment was met with hissing, though Hinata's father cried his approval.
That accursed clan was their ally, Hinata realised with horror.
"Stay out of topics that don't concern you and patrol the streets, Uchiha," sneered a man from the front.
The Uchiha seethed, and Hinata quickly sourced that there was a young man sitting next to him, and his black eyes were like a magpies, calculating and quick. "What of Shisui?" cried the Uchiha head, a snarl on his face. The boy started, and Hinata read something on his face that she shouldn't be able to understand, but she could because she felt it too. Guilt. It was gone in a flicker.
Shisui. Even his name sounded like the lapping of the Naka River at the reed beds. Or around his body and she pushed it into the quagmire of the Naka River.
She blanched, and the boy from the Uchiha noted it. It seemed that his beady black eyes narrowed with new calculations and estimations, theories on the Hyuuga heiress and fabricated connections to his cousin. But his eyes lost interest, deflated in the moment, imagined as a fabrication of his mind, and the darkness, and the sheer impossibility of the little Hyuuga having anything to do with Shisui, alive or dead.
"It says something about the quality of our police if they cannot determine the fate of one of their own members," coolly commented the dark man who set himself by the grumpy woman from before. Nara, Hinata recalled, realising that the two wore the same clan symbol, and were wife and husband. Or related. Or both.
The Uchiha head hissed in response, his face flushing. The boy to his side frowned and stared rudely at the Nara.
"It's a hate crime!" howled the Uchiha head, pulling out his trump card and scowling ferociously for all to see.
Silence followed. Hinata did not understand. There was a muttering amongst the congregation. Her uncle Hizashi muttered something into her father's ear.
"Kiri." Hinata read from his lips.
She did not understand, but a tremor gripped her heart, and horror seized her with the uttering of those two syllables, a foreboding foretelling of the future.
"Father." Hinata pulled at her father's sleeve. Her father shifted his attention to her, and it was unsettling to see her father so pensive. "May I leave now?"
Hisashi nodded, and her uncle saw her out of the dark smoky room, away from the ugly, angry men, and away from the Uchiha with the fan embroidered on their Kimono.
She heard it in bits and whispers, mainly amongst the unguarded branch house gossipers, but also amongst the adults that she was most concerned with, the elders, her father, and her uncle.
"There was so much blood they've been unable to clear it all up. I hear the entire district is covered with brown smears!"
"The Uchiha heir- Itachi is his name. Beastly business."
"Only one survivor. He's Hinata-sama's age, the younger brother..."
But some whispers contradict others, and arguments blossom that trail down corridors and reach the heiresses ears.
"A fifteen year old? I don't care if he's ANBU, prodigy or not. Taking down an entire clan of trained Nin that are easily A and S class? Impossible!"
"It's a hate crime. A hate crime. They'll be coming for us next."
"We should evacuate whilst we still have the chance. It's madness to remain here."
And everywhere she went in the house, she heard the same word, again and again, until the mere sound of it seems meaningless as a collection of odd sounds sown together.
"Kiri." They say. "Remember what happened in Kiri."
"Hinata," her Father orders her into his office, one day after her training has left her feeling weak and dizzy and she is still reeling with the amount of knowledge she is supposed to have absorbed.
"Father," she bows respectfully, hoping that she isn't sweating too much from the training, and that she at least, looks respectable.
Her father places his palms on his desk, like he is contemplating a hard choice, and Hinata waits, her eyes lowered demurely.
"I think it will be best for you to attend the village academy, with your branch member counterparts. You have this weekend to prepare, then you will be attending the academy the week after."
Hinata's head bounces up, and she queries her Father with her eyes, amazed by this turn of events.
"I would prefer that you take all your tutelage under my own digression. But that is not a possible action. We need to make ourselves as harmless as possible. Try to socialise… just don't bring your peers home."
"I- um, Of course! T-this is unexpected, but I will try my best!" Hinata tried not to look too excited.
Academy was disappointing. The village children were just as anti-clan as their parents, and that bias seemed to dredge down to them. Only the Uchiha survivor, who had captured the heart of his classmates, and no longer had ties to a proper, real clan anymore really seemed to be accepted by the village children.
Even then, he seemed to abhor the attempts of the village children to make a friend (or a boyfriend) out of him. Instead, Hinata, with all her floundering, envied him from afar as she clumsily attempted to make friends with the distrusting village children, and failed miserably.
She tried to approach the Uchiha survivor one day after school, in the empty playground. He is a handsome boy, much alike to the boy at the meeting, but younger and varnished with the malady of angst, his calculating mind disrupted by the constant twangs of the heart.
"I'm sorry for your loss, Uchiha-sama," Hinata chirrups, head bowed in soft solace, and eyes squeezed shut, hands pressed together in a silent prayer.
His bleak eyes rack over her inferior quaking form.
"Fuck you," he snarls, leaving her to wonder what she did wrong.
She's still a little scared about the clan from over the river, about the dead body she disposed of, and those empty buildings that can be glimpsed from over the river- stagnating and rotting. But she's more scared about the termination of the Uchiha, and what that means for her own family.
She watches his retreating back shake in anger and wonders what will come of her family- those of pale eyes and cunning plans and gentle but deadly force, if their sister clan, the stronger, more oppressive, more influential family has been decimated to single figures.
"Uchiha-san?" She calls out in sudden inspiration, her heart suddenly beating, very, very fast and her eyes dewy with unshed tears. He refuses to turn, and he walks faster instead, walking away.
"WHAT HAPPENED IN KIRI? WHAT HAPPENED IN KIRI UCHIHA-SAN?" She suddenly screams, her voice unrecognisable, the tremors and fears of her voice taken and snatched from her throat, thrown up into a vomit of a statement.
But the intent is there, and the fear, and the horror and the drainage of energy from night after sleepless night as the stalemate continues for another day.
He pauses for a moment and half-turns, his pale face draining of any colour, before swiftly turning away and shaking his head as if to shake his thoughts away. "If that's true then Hyuuga, then why?" He comments blithely, turning away again as if she is a liar.
Her mouth opens like a fish and he walks away. Hinata realises that he doesn't realise how they are hated. And that she doesn't have the heart to rebuke that belief.
She dawdles home, caught in an endless torrent of thoughts she can't help but feel are too adult, too clever, too scary for a little thing like her. When she enters the household, she finds that she has a sister, and that her mother is dead. Thus ends her stay in the academy.
Hinata's Father burnt incense in his office, ever since Hinata's mother died. The branch member's tattle about his choice in incense – soft, woody, the same perfume Eriko used to wear when she was young, and wasn't married to Hinata's Father. Hinata simply doesn't like the heavy burning smell. It makes her sleepy, and this is the room that she must stay alert in at all time.
"Hinata…chan. Come sit by me. Let me look at you."
Hinata falters, and then shuffles to her father, coming up to his desk and taking a place by his side, wondering where this sudden sentimentality has come from. She curses the incense for not reading this situation before it happened and the incense gets into her eyes. She begs them not to water.
"You're very beautiful, daughter," her Father praises, placing two fingers under her chin and twisting it, like one would examine a cabbage. Hinata is gobsmacked. "With time, you will grow into an elegant young woman. Like your Mother."
He adds the thought of her Mother like an afterthought, and Hinata understands why. The Clan needs to believe that their leader is in mourning, as they are. A family like this, where brothers and sisters can become wife and husband, that is so strongly intertwined, needs an official indication of what is acceptable, and what is not. Treachery is a dangerous undercurrent, and all the Hyuuga dabble in the rip-tides of politics.
His eyes meet hers. "I would try to marry you off, my Daughter. Join you to a clan with political strength. But you are too young for a feasible marriage and the period for that kind of attachment is long gone." He exhales into his paperwork. "Besides, no-one will take you. "
"Because I am of a Kekkai Genkai family?" Hinata asks. An arranged marriage does not surprise her. Her life is one of duty and protocol.
"Because you have cursed eyes. Because your Mother was your Father's first cousin. Yes."
Hinata flushes uncomfortably, and her treacherous eyes notice how old, and how haggard her Father has become. Her mother's death, the threat of extermination. The word of Kiri on every other person's lips… Perhaps the end of this extensive waiting will be for the better.
"You know of the secret tunnels through the house?"
"Yes Sir."
"And the exit to the river Naka?"
"I do."
"When they attack, my Darling, I want you to escape from here. Escape, and swim down the river. Don't dare to take any more than ninja essentials, and trust your kinsmen to take care of themselves. Escape at the first opportunity. Stay close to the banks. It's ten miles down to the next fishing town. You can get to the mist then. Kiri have had one civil war, one Kekkai Genkai genocide. No one will expect you there. Hide your eyes. Live well. Survive. I may not be the warmest father. I doubt you have many fond memories of me. But I love you enough to tell you to run."
"Father… I…"
Hisashi placed a swift kiss on his kneeling daughter's forehead and patted her back awkwardly, not used to this kind of reassurance.
"I'm scared too. Take that terror and turn it into fury. Use it to forge your weapons and your hatred. Hone your skills. Love your loved ones. Strike down the ones that hate you… Avenge my death."
Hinata's breath caught in her throat. "Daddy." She chocked, winded and shocked. Her legs quaked, and her eyes welled with tears, incense or no incense.
Like an old man, he hunched over his desk for support. "Go now, and pack your emergency pack. Rest assured. I will die fighting. Now leave an old man to his musings."
Trembling with emotion, the girl who was so very nearly an genin bowed and walked from the room, her fingers nervously prancing in the anticipation of the task ahead of her.
She lines up for her Genin Headband, and the others tie it around their heads, or waists. Knowing that she'll soon have to take it off, when she places it around her neck, it feels like a shackle, but she knows that all too soon, she'll be free of it.
She's placed on a nice team. Kurenai, her sensei, is a woman of experience, and she seems more than happy to have a Hyuuga on her team. It's a case of good eyes, good close combat skills, good combination with her team-mates. The woman obviously doesn't play with shinobi politics.
Her teammates seem less than happy though- Shino, the enigmatic leader seems rather wary of her, though by the fifth D mission, he seems accustomed to her presence, having ascertained that she is no immediate threat. She would even ask him about his bugs, if he didn't seem so secretive about his family techniques and was a little less aloof, but she's afraid of making him clam up. If she had time, she would, but the deserted Uchiha compound seems to float into her line of vision more than she would like, and at certain venues, she's refused service. It makes her all the more certain that it'll happen soon.
Kiba is less certain. His though his dog has always liked her, and greets her with tail a wagging, Kiba scoops the puppy up and pulls it away, all too wary of her white eyes, and thoroughly freaked out when she does things that are second nature in her household, like catch things without turning her head or turn on byukugan without warning.
But a few weeks that turn into months of bowing and softly forming apologies leave him more than content with her presence, until finally-
"I'm so sorry, Kiba-san. I know that you really hate it whe-"
"Oh, leave it out. And call me Kiba-kun. We're teammates now. Hey. Shino! Let's all go to the beef joint down the food stalls. All the other teams meet up and have socials and damn it, I'll use any excuse to eat more beef!"
Akamaru barked. Hinata clapped her callused hands together and nodded with exaggerated motion, even though she wasn't fond of braised meat. Shino nodded slightly.
To them she left a letter, which she wrote and left in a marked Hyuuga satchel that was hidden in their training ground.
Dear Kurenai-sensei, Kiba-kun, Akamaru-kun and Shino-san.
Thank you very much for the kindness you extended to me over the period we were in a team together. I think I can say truthfully that it was one of the happiest times in my life, and I've enjoyed myself, even if they were silly little D- rank missions. I may be dead/a fugitive/ a prisoner/ MIA now (Remove as appropriate), but I think I can say that should things have not come to what they have, we would have made one of the best recon teams. I would have liked to get to know you better, and eaten more beef with you, and I can only wish that this dream was achievable.
I hope that our paths never cross. I never would want to fight you, and I hope you would return that feeling. I wish you the best of luck with your new comrade (presumably, I'll be replaced) and with your career as ninja. You show real potential, and I can only wish I was there to watch and grow with you.
Best of Luck for the future, Hinata.
Dare I send you a kiss? Yes. I think I do.
x
The night before the attack, walking home from the training ground, her hands bloodied but her heart content, if not weary, she ran across an unexpected person. She'd written him off before, and she was surprised when he cut into her line of vision, his eyes flickering in suspicion.
"Activate your byakugan" Sasuke ordered in a forced half whisper.
"Nobodies around" Whispered Hinata back, her heart fluttering in unexpected tremors as she scanned the immediate area. She remembered her place in the world, just as she had forgotten it, as if she were just a simple member of a team in a village that wasn't threatening to commit to genocide.
The boy didn't relax, just as all good ninjas shouldn't.
"You've thought about what I said?" the newly minted kunochi said, two years later, the incident still in her mind.
The boy standing in front of her had features so similar to that dead man, that corpse on the riverbed. She hadn't quite noticed, when they were still academy students, with peach soft features and puppy fat, but now, standing on the precipice of puberty, she could see the sleek bone structure, the same slant of the lips, the same eyes waiting to develop.
The shinobi tilted his head, and scowled in distaste. "I can see the truth in your words. What if it happens they are true?" He asked, like he was admitting a fatal flaw or an error he was responsible for.
"G-get ready to run. And run fast. My family will be next. Then it'll just be you to tidy up. Maybe they'll let you go. Maybe you were just lucky the first time round. Perhaps they'll keep you as a proof that the Kekkai Genkai clans were never killed off in Kohona. Whether you want to play political puppet is up to y-you. You could play their games if you want to- I guess," Hinata scanned his face, and was shocked that it seemed some part of him seemed to agree.
"Why is this happening?"
"We were always hated." The cursed words came out slicked and easy, and Sasuke's shoulders dropped down as if the burden he was carrying had trebled in weight.
Hinata's eyes raised themselves to the sky as she contemplated prose that would sooth the worries and fears of her heart. It was an impossible task, and her eyes found their path back to the black holes of Sasuke's eyes.
Unforgiving. Empty. Lonely. Destructive. There were a thousand negative adjectives to describe the intangible pull of those desolate eyes.
"People have always hated other people. They just need a justification. Blood. And power. If it wasn't us, it'll be somebody else."
They'd killed his family. They were probably going to kill hers in a matter of days, weeks or months.
His scowl deepened, and Hinata would have felt sorry for him, were she not more concerned by being seen with him and the possible consequences. Perhaps some guilt weighed on her chest, but it was little, and counter-balanced by the thought that she may have saved him.
"Thank you." Sasuke unexpectedly commented. "If you hadn't approached me…I might not have…I mean."
"It's okay," Hinata squeaked, blushing but worry wearying her smile thin. "I need to go. Good luck!" She waved him off, and tottered past him towards the relative safety of the compound.
She noted, that when he thought he couldn't see him (but she could) his hands shook despite all his efforts to quell their shaking. She wished him the best for a half-moment, then fled, making a note to herself that she really needed to fix up her bag of supplies and some of her sharpened shuriken in it.
The explosion was to the west of the Hyuuga compound, from the direction of the abandoned Uchiha district. The time had come, and the Hyuuga heiress had envisioned this many, many times over, knowing that the day would come.
She been planned since the day that she gained her Genin headband, and on presentation her father simply bowed his head and told her she shouldn't get too attached to it.
So she doesn't panic. She slips back into the servants' passage, and glides through them like a ghost, hearing fighting from beyond the walls. The clank of metal on metal is heard occasionally, but more often it is the screams and cries of her clan mates that are heard, and the dull sound that sharp metal makes when it meets flesh. Her lips form a hard line as she trudges onwards. They've known this was coming from when the Uchiha fell, so they should have prepared like her. Any attempt to save them puts her in danger, so she sticks to the shadows, her face slick with tears and her body trembling.
She hopes that her father has saved her sister. She's only little. She hopes Neji is safe too, because even though he hates her, he deserves more than death. She even thinks of Hirumi, who has cared for her like her own child. She daren't activate byakugan because she knows she'll not be able to continue down the servants passage, away from her clan.
In a secreted enclave she finds her survival kit, and she tears the note that reads "Please don't remove, Thank you. Hinata" from it. She limps down the passageways, the bag heavy on her back.
The guilt of leaving those who have ghosted down these hallways like strangers to their little heiress haunts her like a restless phantom. There are faces she desperately tries to remember, and forget at the same time, with the same dead-fish eyes and false (but normal and reassuring) politician's smiles.
She meets fire on the second floor, and has to change her route, out of the relative safety of the passages and into the thin, claustrophobic, twisting branch house. The walls are narrow but the roof high, and the carpet covered in the blood of her extended (but in reality, all too close) family.
Their bodies have been removed, and Hinata is ashamed to say it, but she's relived, because that means that this floor has been cleared, and there ought to be no shinobi patrolling these floors. And the eyes of the dead won't follow her as she walks along timidly, her body light, but her feet lighter, their eyes judging her in death as they did in life.
She follows slicks of blood down corridors, from where bodies have been dragged. Eventually, streaks amalgamate and form consecutive flows down corridors filled with smoke, from a fire staged from deep within the house.
She reaches a door and activates her byakugan, the veins lacing her forehead jutting out with all the tenacity of wire.
She's close to the fort door that leads down the embankment to her beloved river, and the reed beds she's avoided since that fateful day when her safe childhood ended.
But outside are shinobi, three of them, grim faced but set—a job well done, and all in one night. She was twelve, and by the looks of them, they had a combined age of at least sixty. She sat in the shadows and waited patiently. Smoke filtered thinly from behind her from the bowels of the house, a fair distance away, and her little hiding hole was safe for the moment.
"Have you seen the bodies?" Asked the red haired man that looked to be the youngest of them. Hinata shook, and placed a hand to her mouth, acid of her empty stomach flooding up her throat.
A silver haired man, who wore a mask shook his head and pulled out a book, feigning interest in the cheap tawdry tales within.
"I didn't even know that there were so many! Just like rats, breeding and breeding. Good riddance I say." The red haired man shook his head. "Probably would have died out over the next few generations though. Inbreeding and that. Diseases in the blood. I hear the heiress is very weak."
"Have we got the heiress?" The final shinobi asked, a Kunochi wrapping her coat around herself more tightly, and resting her hands below her breasts in an attempt to stave off the chill that had entered the air.
"Probably with the other bodies. They'll all be burnt. Make it look like some kind of statement of intent from another country. I hear the Hokage wants to invade Ame."
"Ame? It's wet down there. I don't want to fight to invade a wet country!" the Kunochi protested.
"I could do with a good fight. I wanted to fight the leader, but I hear he gave a hell of a fight to some of the Root legion. They're organising and counting the bodies now. Probably harvesting. You know what Root is like."
Hinata made an internal note, for when it came to the time to avenge her father, as she had promised, prising her lips together in the hope that she would not whimper, or cry.
The Kunochi shivered. "I fucking hate Root. Fuckity fuck fuckers."
"What are you even doing here anyway?" The silver haired man raised his masked face and lazily perceived his comrades. "Weren't you two assigned to the main household ?"
The two other shinobi froze and nodded, sharing an expression of deception, and vanishing in the direction of the main household.
The lone shinobi sighed and pocketed his book, taking a generous look around the small opening. "You can come out now, small mouse," he called.
Hinata froze, not realising that she was detected. Unconsciously she met her hands to attempt to dispel a gen-jutsu. There were no fluctuations in the chakra field., and the man remained in position, suddenly laughing.
"You're as untrustworthy as my genin!" he suddenly sobered. "I don't blame you."
He looked side to side, acting as comically as he could in this situation. "I hear that there is a side door I'm supposed to be guarding. The funny thing is that it's a very small door, and you're a very small mouse. Should a small mouse like you creep out of the door, how is a shinobi like me supposed to know? I don't have eyes in the back of my head… like some."
Hinata took a deep breath. "H-how can I t-trust you?"
"You can't. You take chances. Thing is, I like to be able to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day."
Hinata crept out of the door, and the shinobi spun on his heels and tucked his head in his book, comically pretending to be immersed.
"You're Sasuke's teacher." Hinata realised.
The man turned and blinked, though Hinata realised that he was winking, his hidden Sharingan spinning. "Another sweetheart? Sakura will be heartbroken."
Hinata shook her head. "He'll need help too Sir," she bowed. "Thank you Sir. I won't forget this."
The man turned back to his book, turning a page.
"I will. In fact I've already forgotten," were the words of the shinobi as Hinata fled for the secreted door, his words in her ears with the rush of adrenalin as Hinata fled for the secreted door, his words in her ears with the rush of adrenalin and the joy of being able to crunch the reed bed once more, rushing for the misty Naka river.
Never before had its slow and sluggish movements looked so inviting. Never before had the river sparkled under the moonlight, as if the stars were congratulating her for her accomplishment. Never before had she felt so alone.
She jumped, entering the mire of the Naka once more.
Author's note
Just edited for better grammar and greater relevance in later chapters. Chapter two is next, but I should really stop procrastinating and get down to some chemistry revision...