Hinata was heating the water for tea when the summons came.

It came from none other than Neji. She knew at once that something was amiss. He would not meet her gaze, staring instead at the tea kettle, his eyes disinterested but wide, as though he'd suffered a shock that had left him unable to reason.

"Your father wants us in his study," he said.

Hinata waited for him to say more; for him to give her a hint of the bad news that was to follow. But after standing there a moment, he seemed to come back to himself. He whipped around and hurried back down the corridor.

Hinata turned the heat off on the stove. She counted back the hours since she'd awakened. Nothing stood out in her memory. The servants had behaved as usual when she had made her way through the compound down to the kitchens. As usual, Kenji, the cook's apprentice, had protested when she came to prepare the tea herself, but, as usual, it was mostly for show. The servants were used to her habits by now, and she thought they understood. It was not possible that they live under the same roof and not hear of everything that went on within the walls. They knew of her failings. They knew that this was one of the very few ways by which she could prove herself a capable and dutiful daughter.

The day had stared off the same as always. Hanabi had been snoring lightly when Hinata had passed by her room, so nothing could have happened to her. Her feeling of dread eased. Maybe one of the clan elders had died. That group was always bossing her father around, telling him he needed a stronger heir, preferably a male one. But if that was so, why had Neji seemed distressed?

Hinata removed her apron and headed for the stairs. On the landing outside her father's study, she met Hanabi, who was blinking sleepily and looking just as puzzled as Hinata felt. At thirteen, she was a better ninja than Hinata had been, but still she could not be placed on the same level with Neji. Hinata gasped. Was that what her father was going to tell them? She had her sister knew the day would come sooner or later. She was resigned to it. Neji would make a better clan leader, no one could deny it. Still, she was not sure that she was ready to hear it today.

Neji was waiting by the door, and still not meeting their eyes. When they reached him, he opened it, and together they crowded inside Hyuuga Hiashi's study.

Hiashi was doing paperwork, and did not look up at first, though there was no doubt he had heard them come in. None of them dared to interrupt him, not even with a polite cough of clearing of the throat. Hinata watched Neji while they waited. She imagined he grew paler by the moment. Her own heart was pounding. Her father was kind in many ways, but cruel in just as many others. He had no regard for their lives as individuals. Whatever other plans they had could be postponed for his. It was not his responsibility to assuage their fears, but it was their duty to wait until he deemed the time appropriate.

When at last he raised his head, though, Hinata could see no cruelty there. Only a deep, weary sadness.

"Ah. You're all here." He closed his ledger book and folded his hands together on top of it. "Sit down, all of you. I expect we will be here for a while."

His request was unusual. Always before, when they were summoned to his study, they had to stand for the duration of the meeting. It was part of the protocol, serving to remind them, as they were constantly reminded, that he was their superior. To sit down with him in his study was to behave like… a family. Hinata gulped as she sat down in the chair Neji had pulled out for her.

Hiashi sighed and plunged ahead. "It has been brought to my attention recently that two of you are of an age to be married, and the other quite old enough to be engaged." He stared down at his hands, clasped together so tightly his knuckled showed white. Hinata knew her father well enough to see that if he were anyone else, he would be wringing his hands and pulling out his hair. "I have been neglectful of my duties to the clan," he admitted crisply, as though to get it over with as son as possible. "I… I have put my personal wishes above that of the clan. I wanted…"

He looked up at the three of them, then, and Hinata drew in a shocked breath. His eyes were brimming with tears.

Too often, it was hard to think of her father as human. If someone had asked her that morning if she had ever seen her father cry, she would have said that she hadn't. But seeing him like this brought back memories. Hanabi's birth, the blood on the sheets the servants carried out of her mother's room. Snow falling, the deepest winter she could remember. And then the closed doors, the hushed voices. Not understanding what was happening, she'd snuck out of the nursery late one night and went to knock on her father's door. Even at six years, she could not mistake the tears streaming down his face, the deep lines of grief. She had known, without him having to say it, that her mother was dead. Hiashi had taken her into his arms and wept, never explaining why. The next morning, she had woken up back in the nursery, and the servants had come to dress her in a black kimono and take her down to her mother's funeral.

She had stood beside her father during the whole thing. Watching his face, dry-eyed and composed, she had decided it must have all been a dream.

It seemed she had been wrong.

"I wanted…" Hiashi was still speaking. "Our fates were chosen for us, Hizashi and I." He looked to Neji, his eyes pleading, and for the first time that morning, Neji met someone's gaze.

"I do not deny that I should have fought against it, even though in the end it would have accomplished nothing. But I did not realize it soon enough. I was the lucky one, in more ways than one. My bride was chosen for me, but we came to love one another. But Hizashi… I know you do not remember your mother, Neji. Understand that I mean no disrespect – she was a kind woman no one could ever find fault with. But she was a poor match for your father."

Hiashi looked at them a moment. He pried his hands apart and placed them in his lap, sitting straighter. "But in many ways, I am the unlucky one." Hinata saw one tear spill over his bottom eyelid. "I am the one who must make the hard decisions. My brother's death brought so many things to the light for me." He swallowed. "I wanted to give you all what my parents had not given me. The freedom of choice. I stalled for so long." Hinata saw one tear spill over his bottom eyelid, trailing a path down his weathered cheek. "But the council has forced my hand."

For the first time since summoning her, Neji broke his silence. "Please, Hyuuga-sama! Tell them!"

Hinata looked at him in surprise. So he already knew. She looked back at her father, wanting to beg him to get it over with, but as always, she was too afraid to speak in his presence.

Hanabi was the one who spoke, her lip trembling. "What do we have to do?"

Hiashi looked over at his youngest daughter, and his face went still. "Nothing, not yet. You, at least, still have some time."

And then he turned his eyes on Hinata. As always, she felt like cringing. All of her life, those eyes had looked on her with disappointment. She had always tried to please him, and always failed. Earning his approval had always been a mountain she knew she would never be able to scale.

She forced herself to look back at him, and her world turned upside down. "Hinata." He reached out a shy hand. She could not help but hesitate, looking first at Hanabi, then at Neji. "It's all right." Hiashi's voice trembled with emotion. "I never meant to make you fear me."

Hinata reached for his hand, her fingers shaking so badly that she could not return a good grip, and her hand slipped out of his before he reclaimed it.

"Forgive me." Hiashi took a deep breath. "The council has arranged your marriage to the traitor, Uchiha Sasuke."

-----------------------------

Somewhere on the far side of Konoha, Sasuke sneezed.

Someone was talking about him.

He tilted his ear toward the living area of the former team Taka's apartment. Karin and Suigetsu had been arguing all morning about the household accounts. His room was the most isolated, but he was still able to hear the voices if he listened, especially when they were raised.

"Thirty crates of bottled water!" Karin was screaming. "Do you think we're made of gold or something? And where the hell do you expect me to store it? It's not going in my room!"

Their living quarters were growing more and more crowded. Karin did have a point, Sasuke had to admit; Suigetsu held onto money as easily as one could hold onto water. And they had been unable to earn anymore, not since they had come to Konoha. Before, they could draw on Orochimaru's resources, or they even could have done freelance work. But now that he had decided to come back, and his team to accompany him, they were stuck until the council of Konoha deemed them loyal enough to join the ranks of leaf shinobi – or, in his case, rejoin.

Sasuke's interest faded as Suigetsu told Karin just where she could store the bottled water. They weren't the ones talking about him. Jugo, then? There was a good possibility he was talking to himself. He had been locked up in his room for hours, ever since they got back from the Hokage's tower. Ever since they had heard the council's demands.

Sasuke leaned back on his couch, looking up trough the window at the sky, pale blue scattered with pillow-like clouds.

He could hazard a guess who was talking about him.

The Hyuuga clan.

Family of his bride.

For about the umpteenth time, Sasuke wondered if it was worth it. Marriage to someone he didn't know, just to be accepted in Konoha. One voice in his head told him that he hadn't belonged here to start with. If he had, he wouldn't have left. And why should he have to sacrifice his freedom to a nation that had taken everything else from him already?

But the other voice, the one that had made him come back, the one that had sent him running to Naruto's aid when the jinchuuriki was about to be captured… that voice told him that this was not the same Konoha that had ordered his brother to wipe out their clan. This was a new Konoha, the one he had helped Naruto save and rebuild. His Konoha. And if the elders, those whom he could never forgive but would let live for Naruto's sake, if they ordered him to marry a girl he'd never spoken with so that he could remain here, in his home…

He would do anything.

For the first time, he thought he had stumbled across what Itachi must have felt like when they ordered him to murder the Uchiha clan. Sasuke had not been able to understand why his brother had done what he had done, why he had killed everyone – all but one – who was important to him, just for the sake of a nation that was corrupt at its heart. Maybe Itachi had felt the same way, that it was his home, that it was more than his life was worth to protect it.

Maybe. Sasuke's fists clenched. Still, he would bring vengeance to the elders one way or another. He had sworn, after all. Only, he would do it a different way, a more subtle way. When he had first set out on his quest of vengeance, running to learn from Orochimaru, he had not been very wise. He had thought the only way to get revenge was to kill the person who had wronged you. Since then, he had come to learn that there were many, many different types of vengeance. There was humiliation. There was blackmail. There was torture, taking away every joy in a person's life, one by one, until he or she was left alone in utter despair.

And then there was the other way, the way that hurt the least people. He would revive the Uchiha clan, and they would return to their place as the strongest ninjas of Konoha. He would give the elders nothing to find fault with.

And then they would regret what they had done.

There was one problem with his vision, though. When he pictured the revived Uchiha clan, he pictured the old ones, his cousins, his parents, Itachi and himself. But they were gone. The new clan would consist of his descendants. His, and Hyuuga Hinata's.

When he pictured their children, they had Hinata's eyes, ghostly pale and unnerving.

It made his dream all wrong.

------------------------------

Hinata had come close to death several times in her ninja career, the last, and worst, being when she had tried to defend Naruto from Pein.

Though there was no pain this time, there was still some of the same feeling – the light-headedness, the queasiness, the feeling that she could not quite grasp a hold of consciousness.

She heard voices somewhere, far away. "Get some water." Neji, speaking curtly. "Don't let her fall!" Her father's voice, urgent. Then he was beside her. "Hinata. Hinata, are you all right?"

When she came to, she was sitting on the couch in her father's solar, which adjoined to his study, and he was beside her, holding a damp cloth to her forehead. "Hinata." His face was so close beside her, she could see the depth of the wrinkles on his brow. "If you cannot bear to go through with it, we can think of something. We can find a way out."

But Hinata was not really listening. She was looking at the other two: her little sister, who was too young to even be contemplating engagement, much less marriage, and her cousin, who had already had some much taken from him by the main family. "What about them, To-sama?" she asked, pausing to gasp in a deep breath. "Who do they have to marry?"

Hiashi looked at Hanbi and Neji, and seemed incapable of speaking. Neji opened his mouth, his face going pale before he managed to speak the words. "I am to marry Temari of Suna. And Hanabi is to be betrothed to Kankuro, her brother."

"They are the most powerful family in Suna," Hiashi said into the silence that followed. "We should be pleased with this arrangement."

But even her father could not keep the bleakness from his tone.

Without thinking, Hinata threw her arms around him. He went stiff at first. Then he reached up, very carefully, and placed his hands on her shoulders, as though afraid he might break her.

Hinata found herself sobbing, but for once, she did not feel as though she had to hide her emotions. Everything she knew about the world seemed to have changed in just one moment. She was to marry Sasuke, her love's best friend and former rival. Her father had just apologized to her, and now he was hugging her for the first time since her mother's funeral.

"Hinata, Hinata, please don't cry." Hiashi was crying too as he stroked her hair. "I will send you away if I have to. I will not allow them to do this to us."

Hinata broke away, experiencing a sudden burst of reckless courage, the like of which she had only felt Naruto was in danger. "But we can't all run away, To-sama." She looked up at her cousin, thinking of how he could not meet her gaze that morning. She knew he did not want to marry Temari of the Sand any more than she wanted to marry Sasuke. "If they have to go through with it, then I will too."

Hiashi eyed her with surprise. "Hinata, they will do their duties. You were always the softest of my children, and the Uchiha is a monster who murdered his own brother. He will – "

Hinata interrupted him, her voice low but not at all weak. "I may be the softest," she said, "but I can endure." She refused to break eye contact with him, even when she saw the regret that her words caused him. "I will do my duty to the clan."

Her father gazed up at her, eyes alight with awe. "You'll marry the traitor?" he asked her.

Hinata stood. "Only if you will free one of them instead." She gestured in the general direction of Neji and Hanabi. "Now, tell me. Where do you keep the awamori?"

-----------------------------------

The cherry trees lining the street below the Hokage's tower were in full bloom. The wind was high, bringing a storm, and the petals fell down like rain, filling the gutters with pink.

The Hokage was speaking, her words brushing over Konan like a weak breeze. She caught snippets of words every now and then. "....for your own good…decision was not made in haste…we would be pleased to have a former student of Jiraiya's…"

It had been like this for so long. Two years, Nagato had been gone. And with him, her sanity.

When your reason for living is gone, but you are still breathing, what do you call the state you are in?

It cannot be called life.

"Konan." Tsunade's sharp voice broke through Konan's fog, giving her a rare moment of lucidity. "I need to know your answer. What do you want to do?"

Konan stared back at her, helpless. The Hokage's face brought back memories. Rain, Yahiko and Nagato. The Sannin, traveling through their country. The night Nagato had discovered his Rin'negan, and she'd hidden in the shadows, watching.

She had loved them so much. Her teammates, and Jiraiya too. In her memory of that fateful meeting, there were two strangers. Orochimaru, who was long dead, and the woman before her. Of the six, only the two of them remained.

Jiraiya had taken them in, had taught them ninjutsu. He had taught them how to survive. But after Nagato had died, and Konan would have taken her own life just so that she would no longer be alone, Tsunade had stopped her, and had granted her sanctuary.

Even though she could remember very little of the past two years, she knew the Hokage was doing just as Jiraiya had done. Trying to teach her how to live again.

"I'll do anything you ask me too." Konan's voice was weak with disuse, but earnest.

"Yamato." Tsunade turned to look at the man standing beside her desk. He wore an ANBU vest, and his forehead protector extended downward to frame his face, giving it a square-like appearance. Konan looked at him vaguely. He was staring straight ahead.

"I will do my duty to Konaha," he said crisply.

"Very well." Tsunade's frown was deep, as though she had just finished with an unpleasant business. "The wedding ceremony will be held tonight. I will need your signatures now, however, so that I can present them before the council."

It was only then that Konan began to grasp what was going on. "Hokage," she said. "What –"

Suddenly she felt like she was surrounded by a flurry of movement. Like wings. She remembered how she used to make wings of paper around herself, how Nagato had called her his angel. She had worshiped him like a god. But gods could not die.

Konan gasped and opened her eyes. She was standing in the same place, in the Hokage's tower. Tsunade was leaning forward, a thin stack of papers in one hand, brow wrinkled in concern. A glance at the man showed Konan that his face had not changed, but his eyes, at least, had turned to her.

"Konan. I know this is a hard thing to ask of you, but the village elders will have it no other way." She looked deep into Konan's eyes. "This is the only way you can stay."

Konan felt the fog began to come back over her, as she felt her heartbeat quicken. Understanding moved back out of her grasp, but she understood that what the Hokage had just told her was bad. If she could not stay here, where else was there to go? Nagato had always been by her side. The dark shadow she always knew was there, somewhere behind her. But now he was nowhere. There was not a place in the world where he could be found, and so there was no place that she could go.

"No," she said, her voice surprising her with its desperate pleading. "I don't want to go."

"You don't have to," Tsunade said with an odd expression that Konan later came to understand was one of deepest pity. "Just sign the papers, and you will be a citizen of Konoha."

------------------------

Shizune peered into the doorway of the Hokage's office. It was dark inside, though it was still late afternoon. The clouds had taken all the light from the sky, and the rain outside the windows formed a nearly opaque curtain. The day's business had been wrapped up, but Tsunade was still seated at her desk, staring straight ahead. That was unusual, especially in such a peaceful time.

"Tsunade-sama." Shizune spoke up to be heard over the hammering of the rain on the roof. "Are we done for today?"

She felt Ton-Ton wriggling in her grasp, impatient to be home. Tsunade turned to face her. Shizune knew at once that her senpai was not in a good mood from the worry lines on her forehead, the pinched look to her face.

"No," Tsuande said. "Send for the next batch. I want all of this mess over with as soon as possible." With a sigh, she leaned back into her chair, stretching. "Would you see to it that my ceremonial robes are laid out? I have a wedding to attend tonight."