This is loosely based on Little Red Riding Hood and Rapunzel, so you get an evil King, a hunter, a wolf, an enchantress, a princess and a tower. Oh and Tenten having fun with explosives. A fantasy!AU in a nutshell. ;) Well, those of you who have read one of my stories before know I never go for the typical fairytale, so... this is going to be so much more fun (I hope)! *nice guy pose* Enjoy! ^_^

Pairings: KibaHina (main), NejiTen (minor) and SaiIno (minor).

Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.

-X-

The Wolf smirked.

The sky fell in curtains of blood on the statue. Yet, it glowed unmistakable as the workers gathered around it, wide-eyed.

It was his message to King Hiashi; the princess sitting on his throne.

The statue of the princess trapped the sunlight, shining brightly in the middle of the city. The bronze melt in the warmth of the light and the blank eyes didn't seem as empty. The Wolf stood for the first time in broad daylight, anonymous among the horde of the peasants. He searched their face expecting the same rise he felt inside him. 'We are going to war, are you following me? This statue is meant to be broken and stepped upon, are you with me?'

"This isn't Princess Hanabi."

"It's the lost princess," they murmured and he pulled his hood farther on his face, clenching his jaw.

"The Wolf..." they hesitated, fear and excitement condensed in their tone,"it's the Wolf again."

He started walking away, his hands deep in his pocket. How ridiculous, how blind they were. He almost groaned when the guards halted in front the statue, barking sentences, contradicting one another. The princess was dead. The princess couldn't throne in the middle of the city, in a cascade of light. The Wolf snorted. He had thought they would bring it down. He had thought them had enough of the monarchs, lost princesses or not. He had thought, they were akin, brothers of bloody dust and despair.

He stopped, his boiling rage, making him lean back against a wall. He had smirked thinking they dreamt of freedom like him.

She wasn't hope. She was a princess, one of them. An empty soul with empty eyes.

In the darkness, the enchantress watched him sliding down the wall, his eyes glowing ferociously. He held his head and his ears picked on the cries of joy, the muted ascending surprise. Merchants and villagers ran past him to see the princess. Her blue eyes sparkled, her magic leaking out, as she twisted a lock of her blond hair between her fingers. No matter how much he fought with himself, no matter how many excuses he invented for giving the statue to the city, a part of him still hoped.

A part of him hadn't died in the famines of his childhood.

A part of him offered the princess back to the people.

She could read it buried in his mind.

"Once upon a time, a princess jumped down a tower and fell in the arms of a wolf," she lilted out, casting her own spell on the statue.

It grew taller and the peasants cried out, caught between admiration and fear. The ground trembled and a crown appeared on the head of bronze in a shimmering purple hue. Magic was to be feared, they had been told. Magic was hope, nobles had kept from them. The enchantress disappeared in blue sparkles, laughing lightly.

The rebellion started slow, timid, pushing against plate of armours that didn't resist, their eyes set on the glowing princess. Some of them fought. Some of them bowed.

Moments later, King Hiashi woke up to the howls of the Wolf, the prophecy of the Enchantress and the future betrayal of the Hunter.

-X-

The King

by Clementive

Dedication: This is for YukiTenVianey Team who have joined me in my fangirling quests on numerous occasions. Thank you to Vianey who has generously drowned me in fabulous fanarts. Thank you to Glacia who made every discussion we had had rational and amazing with her legendary sarcasm and analytical sense . Thank you to Ten who has filled my head with images of a tattooed Gaara when she wasn't making me laugh to death. This was supposed to be an one-shot but I got carried away and it will have a total of five chapters. Enjoy, my dears! :D

-X-

Hinata Hyuuga was the princess of a tower that pierced the thinnest layer of clouds. She was the princess of a sky that had never caressed her skin. Her confiding walls were too thick, the glass of her sole window, made unbreakable for the rebels her father feared.

She reigned alone, unreachable, from a tower bent by years of angry winds and crooked creepers.

She was the queen of the enchanted characters that lived in her books.

'Once upon a time,' Hinata kept reading, her excitement building as the princess was introduced in the story.

It was always about them, never about her or her tower. She liked it that way.

In her stories, the word 'princess' didn't seem as close to 'prisoner'. In her stories, there was never any tower or dungeon. Neji Hyuuga made sure of it when he chose her books. He would then slip them between the two loose slabs on the second floor.

Their secret game only lasted three years before the King noticed the uneven joint during one of his visits.

The floors were now smooth under her bare feet, the past crooks and roughness imprisoned in a thick layer of concrete. King Hiashi had told her of rebels that could kill her in her sleep as she had watched horrified, her only solace taken from her.

Neji hadn't visited her since. Her father also took him away from her.

Her father's cold voice ripping her enchanted world apart, Hinata had nodded, as she always had, her head full of princesses that were free in other worlds. Angrily, she had thought: 'Why not me?' Disgruntled, Hiashi had called her weak and innocent. Hinata had murmured that she was a princess, with the same dull fury, her blush masking it.

Hinata was always blushing, shuttering on an anger that sometimes transpired in her jerky movements only to die in the middle of her room, unseen. Unreachable. She was a princess of broken movements and unthinkable faults.

King Hiashi never seemed to hear her above her shutter. She wasn't a prisoner, he was protecting her, he often lectured, his hands firmly on the golden knob of his cane. She never saw the difference but she nodded, her blood hammering her skull.

Men worked on the tower regularly, reinforcing it as she grew up, alone and shunned from a world that her father described as chaotic. She was too weak for the real world, he often said looking around her prison for a hint of defiance. His cane would nudge the cushions spread on the floor. Nothing.

Her books lied underneath her mattress.

King Hiashi always came on Sundays, his escort snaking between the hills that surrounded her tower. They looked like ants, she would say to herself aloud, giggling. The echo of her laughter was always raw, sliding across the impenetrable walls. No one ever answered her.

Because that was what it meant to live in the tower.

Because that was it meant to be safe.

Hinata bit her below lip, her widened eyes running across the glassy page. She knew of princess that morphed into animals. She read them, sometimes even acted, their names falling uneasily in her mouth. Laughing, happy and free, but there was still the blush. She was still herself despite the pretence. One role after the other, she had aspired to be the princess who had a fairy godmother, the one who bathed in sun rays as she explored the world riding an elephant and the one who stayed frozen beneath snow only for the charming prince to wake her with a gentle kiss.

Straightening her lilac dress, Hinata glanced over at the thin elongated window that didn't allow her to see much of her world. Her long hair swayed across her shoulders, cascading freely around her body, but she yearned for more. What about her fingers feeling the texture of the trunks? What about the wind plastering her dress against her body? What about the taste of rain? She dug into her books for the feel of the wind in raising spring, the gentle rustle of shimmering lakes and the incoherent windy dance of red leaves in dying summer.

She offered her pale face to the light filtering through the window, her thoughts dulled and uncomfortable. The excitement was fading, she only felt loneliness.

The warm colours of the setting sun exploded on the sky and she rose from the cushions of silk. If she had the choice, she would paint the sky from beneath, vibrant blue and swallowing her whole, the feel of grass tickling her ankles.

Hinata sighed. Her father would come the next day and she knew there was no such thing as a choice.

Softly, she closed the book, running her hand one last time on the picture of happy princess opening the ball with the prince.

She wasn't that princess.

-X-

Her braided hair rested heavily against the nape of her neck. Hinata forced a straighter uncomfortable pose against the back of the chair even if her father's eyes remained on the plate in front of him. Whenever his pearl eyes fell on her face, her body seemed to break under the strength of his stare. Dry-mouthed, her words would quiver in the familiar silence of the tower. Instinctively, she would see the weight of the kingdom trapped in the crow's feet at the corner of his eyes without grasping its meaning. The King carried the whispers of secrets chambers under his cloak; political intrigues merging with famines. Eagles and wolves.

It suffocated him, sometimes. It scared him, always.

Hinata would have had to know of such things to hear the wails that echoed softly to his ear whenever he set his eyes on her. They reverberated, incessant and breathy. But she knew nothing of his world.

"There was some disturbances at the market place today," King Hiashi watched her closely, delicately pressing the napkin to his lips.

"I'm sorry to hear that, father," Hinata whispered, blushing brightly as he continued to scrutinize her.

When she looked up, her fingers stopped playing with the hem of the tablecloth. She blinked slowly, recognizing fear on his ashen face. It was foreign, curving his lips and narrowing his eyes. For once, she didn't find it on her own face when facing him. Stiffly, he nodded gesturing for a servant to step forward with the pitcher of wine and it was gone. She looked down, forcing her hands open so they would fall neatly on her laps.

"Neji sends you his best regards, as always."

"Why doesn't he come anymore?"

Hiashi glared at her and she bit her below lip, blushing and uncomfortable under the unflinching white colour. She knew she was overstepping; her father hated questions that reached beyond the limits of her tower. It was his way of chaining her, protecting her.

"You have no idea what it takes to rule a kingdom, Hinata. You are foolish," he snapped before taking a sip of wine. "Neji is captain of guards, now, and part of his duties is to stop the rebellions. He doesn't have time to entertain you."

"I don't understand wh-what the rebels want, father," she murmured and jolted when he slammed his glass on the table.

The wine dripped on the tablecloth, snaking its way towards her in an ugly pattern.

Hinata trembled, her hands quivering before her lips. She had never seen the savagery inside him snapped before. The silence crept underneath her skin and stilled the tension in the guards surrounding them.

"What do you know of the world, Hinata?" King Hiashi asked coldly, roughly pulling at the napkin on his laps.

He wiped his hands, his glare still unwavering, as servants hurried around them.

"Nothing, I apologize, father."

Her glance fell over the emptiness of the second floor. She could enter the dinning room only on Sundays. She never saw the cook or servants when her father wasn't present. She never saw anyone. Hinata wanted to repeat it again and again, her voice growing: she knew nothing of the world. She wondered if it were like a tower but with vaster limits, if there was such a thing as freedom.

"Men only fight for one thing, power."

Hinata glanced up, her exhales compressed in her chest, waiting for him to continue.

"And peasants die for freedom."

"Aren't peasants men, father?"

"No," he pushed away his plate, his lips twisted in disgust. "They are dogs, Hinata. Nothing more. Dogs trying to be wolves, do you understand?"

He left her alone with what was left of her meal. Quietly, she watched him climb down the stairs, the sun already a bright halo around him. She sighed standing up as servants hushed her deeper inside the tower.

They locked the door behind her.

-X-

King Hiashi put his gloves on, remembering the softness in Hinata's eyes. 'Aren't peasants men, father?' The muscle in his cheek twitched. Hanabi was stronger even if she were younger. She snarled like him, held nobles firmly in her grasp. They breathed when she told them to. They laughed when she allowed them to. Hanabi was his daughter, not Hinata with her quiet gestures and erased self.

"Sai!" He coldly called, spinning on his heels as his horse was brought to him.

Yet, there had been a growing impatience among peasants, quiet rebellions and unleashed anger. The Wolf, they called him. He shook his head, quivering with rage. The statue of his daughter was still burning in his memory; throning in the middle of the capital. What an abject gesture it was to show his weakling of a daughter to the world. The Wolf would pay, he vowed. He had had soldiers knocking it down, but there had been mutters falling into the ears of his spies. The princess was alive. The heiress. Their saviour.

Hope.

"Sai!" He shouted louder, his voice drenched in icy rage.

Hinata was a sheep, she was no wolf. He had cherished the thought that the tower wouldn't stop her, that one day she would grow to destroy it and oppose him. She hadn't. Hanabi would have.

Sai dropped to one knee, his hunting bow held firmly at his side. His cold velvet glance rested on the ground, his attire of a hunter fading in the high herbs. His bird chirped aggressively, flapping his wings, but Sai remained impassive. With disdain, King Hiashi turned away from the animal and its unsettling yellowish gaze.

"Did you find something?"

"There are no tracks around the tower except our own, Your Majesty."

King Hiashi mounted his horse, his escort falling suit around him. The only thing he enjoyed about Hinata was how easily he could control her. How easily he could lock her up in a tower and pretend she didn't exist.

"Hn. Whoever this Wolf is... hunt him down and kill him. Don't bother bringing me his whole body, just the head."

-X-

Neji Hyuuga's office bathed in the quiet shadows that the night and royal secrets eagerly drew on his features.

Tenten Hyuuga stretched on the cushions, her hands falling on her growing belly. She breathed deeply, glancing up at the chandelier hanging above her. The sound of the a quill running across papers filled the silence between her and her husband. Sometimes, she felt like the second woman, the one that wasn't the country, the title, the throne. She shared him with duty. She shared him with peasants crying out in protest, pain and hunger.

She was both jealous and proud; a dangerous feeling, she knew. An even more dangerous game in a palace frozen by an era in which magical beings were chained and weak princesses confined to towers.

"Tell me this is safe," Tenten whispered, turning her brown glance towards her husband.

Her hands stopped on her belly and she felt it pulsing. Life. Love. Neji and her. But court was all about pretence. She would feign disinterest when they were together in public, his hand discreet on her waist or ghosting over her neck.

It was all about finding the perfect mask and wearing it with the right jewelry.

The quill stilled above the papers and she heard him stand up, his nervousness compressed in his elegant gait. She didn't glance at him when he kneeled next to her. She left him her hand out of habit, her lips still set in a firm line.

"I promised to protect you, I meant it," Neji began slowly, his index tracing her high-cheek bone. Her face glowed, yellowish but warm, surrounded by chandeliers and trembling flames. "I didn't know he would put a statue in the middle of the city. I would have stopped him if I did. He's moving too fast."

They could be executed if guards were leaning against the door. They could die, the thought spun in his mind, his jaw clenching over sacrifices he wasn't certain he would make. Neji tightened his grip on her hand bringing it to his lips. Tenten craned her neck, her warm stare clouded as she pulled him forward.

"Isn't it freeing her moving to fast too?"

"No, freeing her is what is right."

He pressed his cheek against her belly, breathing in her floral scent. Underneath it, lay the faint smell of black powder and he almost smirked. Slowly, her fingers ran through his hair; a quiet apology. He closed his eyes, the heartbeat of their children beating between them.

"Tell me you won't take the fall if something goes amiss." She pressed her lips against his ear and her hair slipped out of her strict buns when he reached forward to caress her cheek.

With him holding her, she could pretend she didn't share him with a kingdom.

"I won't."

A snarl ripped the quiet shadows.

The flames protested, screeching, when a tall man opened the secret chamber behind the desk. He was a wolf made of steel with a skin the sun had scorched. His dark glance narrowed falling on their embracing form. Slowly, Neji raised his head gesturing towards the desk. Tenten froze, watching the broad shoulders stiffen, his nostril flare. 'He is an animal,' she thought amused and Neji's arms tightened around her.

The Wolf stepped in, his hand falling on the sword on his hip. A taunted savagery devoured his face and he growled lowly. His body couldn't blend in the elegance of the carpet or the gold of the clock behind his head. It quivered, uncomfortable.

"We were supposed to be alone." The vastness of the room swallowed his deep voice as he glanced around him, seemingly trapped.

Tenten threw back her head, startling him as her laughter filled the room. The corner of her eyes wrinkled, her glance sparkling with the blunt brutality the Wolf remembered seeing in the portrait of her father. She sat up, smirking, and the stilled laughter rung croaky and cold to his ears. His glance fell on the dagger she was twisting easily between her fingers.

Had she not been a woman, she would have been a hunter.

"My husband impregnated me with twins," she said and Neji kissed her cheek, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "He doesn't get to lie to me if I get to be this fat."

He stepped out of the darkness and his face fell into place, the chandeliers licking hungrily the shades between his canine teeth and red tattoos. She cocked her head on the side, recognizing him from the portraits on her father's desk. He was on the wanted list. He was already a prey in a golden world he didn't understand.

Tenten smiled cryptically, leaning back against the cushions. She threw the dagger up, catching it easily. She would enjoy watching the hunt.

"How do you plan on doing it?" Neji asked lowly pointing once more at the velvet purse on the desk.

"Like a dog digging for its bone," he grinned wolfishly, his fingers timidly feeling the soft texture of the purse.

He licked his lips and Neji wondered for the first time if he hadn't made a mistake trusting a peasant to take care of the line of succession. He watched him under the dimmed light, toying with the pieces of gold. Tenten's hand fell on his bicep and he relaxed slightly. Wolves were replaceable, after all.

"Now, show me on the map where the princess is." His eyes glowed and he fought to remain impassive.

He could smell their distrust, their presumption sickly emanating from them. Inwardly, he howled. The Wolf didn't want a new queen, he wanted the end of monarchy.

He wanted their end and had they been wolves, they would have smelled it on his skin, musky and dense. But they were eagles that believed in their own fairytales.

He didn't.

He stopped believing in anything long ago. He stopped being Kiba Inuzuka long ago.

-X-

Please take the time to let me know what you think. ^_^

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