A/N: This story hit me after around three years of inactivity. It came along the voice of the singer Djordje Balasevic, with those songs that sound happy to the ears of strangers but taste so bittersweet to those that have lived what he writes about. I always thought that there must have been so much tragedy in Hyūga Hiashi's life, even more than what was depicted in the manga and the anime. And I felt it is the same case with Inzuka Tsume. Kiba once said, with a bit of humour, that she had made his father literally run away. And somehow, it couldn't be just as simple as that. And what about Hana, with her long glossy brown hair, her eyes so soft and deep, and her calm demeanour? She is so unlike her whole clan. I felt there could be a nice story, a sad, tragic story that left living protagonist, scarred and broken. It is greater than anything I have ever imagined (not that that is much though).
Warning: I am rating this story T for now (it is definitely an M though), because I want it to be read, not because I am a great author, I simply am not, but just because it flew outside of me and gave birth to itself (and well I doubt a lot of people are looking for M rated Hiashi/Tsume). I feel like I have not even written it by myself and that it desires to be read and maybe cried upon and maybe just patted on its head. It seems this story wants to be comforted. Therefore, there is no place for social values in this story. It is the story of a man and a woman that have a six-year gap between them, that are living in a time of war where everything goes too fast and that find themselves choked by their responsibilities as heirs.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto (I haven't even read a chapter or watched a show for 2 years at least).
:: Prologue::
The soft rain caressing his skin, his smouldering skin covered in invisible scars. He had loved the rain back then, when he had had still enough hope to whisper passionate obscenities laced with something as frivolous as love. Whispering to an ear, gently covered by the softest, harshest locks of brown hair his lips had ever brushed over. And she would always laugh, that feral yelp of a beast coming to crash on his eardrum.
"Kiss me, kiss me till I want to vomit" she would answer, aware that it would have cooled down the pretentions of any man but him. She could not cool him down with words when her wild laughter filled his whole being with the promise of maddening delights. And whenever such words would cross her callous, chapped lips, her teeth, with their canines as sharp as kunais – no, as a butcher's knife, would come to assault him, leaving bruises, cuts that faded leaving nothing but heavy, invisible scars, to be borne for the eternity of a human life.
Konoha's streets were empty. Rainy days were not ones to attract crowds. But this street, so narrow, made of razor-sharp rocks that would cut the feet of strangers, had never really attracted crowds. Yet he ambled across this path, this long path of wrath and misery, always gray and abandoned. The smell of poverty slithered across his haori, made of raw silk, the best that could be found. He did his best to restrain his weakness that expressed itself in the form of a shiver of disgust. Years of luxury and praises had made him very easily moved by what he was always taught to consider as shame. How long has it been since he had been able to bow his head to an elder, whatever his status in this rotten, broken society was? Oh how she had loved him for that. She was so strong, he remembered, that she never had the need to filter and veil her emotions and sentiments. They had never been a weakness to her, as they were to him. Whenever he would bow to an old woman, wearing a crumpled, torn yukata, calling her obaa-san, with respect due to a Hokage or an ambassador, she would kiss him with the tip of her lips. A velvety caress full of sadness at the idea that one day she would become an old woman as well, broken and bent to the ground and that he would bow to her with the respect due to a Hokage or an ambassador, judging her by her years and all she must have accomplished. And she did not cower away from him; she displayed her emotions to his eyes, to the eyes of the world. And he did not let judgement blind him as it did today, he offered his hands to all the dirty children in the streets, to all the peasants and beggars. He had changed though. She had not.
He stopped his steps. In front of a great, gloomy iron gate, held by aged, crackled walls. In red her name overhanging, as a sentence of death, a phlegmatic judge, eyes sightless to all the sentiments that their beings had harboured. However, in the end, it had been his name, burning and icy, that had cut the red thread that had been linking them since the first time she had launched herself at the neck of another man.
"You have to lift your arms like this. Yes, like this, higher! And now twirl! Good! If we do this plenty of times, the rain will become stronger, even stronger and stronger and it will wash away all the bad feelings, and the dirt and the sadness ..."
"And kaa-san will be happy, ne, nee-san?"
"Okaa-san, might not be happy, otōto, but the rain will help her fever, it will battle all the fire inside of her body, and the tears will mingle with the droplets. She will be better and it will hurt less ..."
"Promise, nee-san, promise me that after the rain it will be better. Everything will be better."
"It will, if we dance and if the rain becomes stronger. So strong that it will engulf us whole, otōto. And then, we will be reborn again. It has to be better."
Children. He turned his head towards them, his hair so heavy, as if attempting to persuade him not to look. What would children be doing, in the middle of the rain, at this time of the day, their little feet bare on this sharp path of wrath and misery? His eyes locked with hers for an instant, before a cloak of brown blurred her image.
She turned, she twirled. Under the rain, biting, tearing rain. Oh memories. The crimson, threadbare at some spots, cheap fabric of a yukata, damp and clinging to prickly shoulders of a child. A fog around her whole form. Her feet, small and blushing from pain and cold, stepping from one side to the other, making circles, half-circles, kicking and curving. Her yukata opening around her knees and becoming a round, crimson hibiscus, giant in the fog.
Her name rang in his ear, a feral laughter was hoped to be heard. Staggering, he approached that devil that crossed time to come haunt him once again. He walked tiredly through the rain, his glance blinded for the second time of his life.
They noticed him. The girl that danced as a ghost through those crystal droplets that were finally bringing his sanity down and this other little, unnecessary thing by her side, that mocked her movements. They both stopped at the sight of this newcomer, stranger that appeared as an oni from the abysses.
The hair was too glossy, too shiny under the rain. It was not edgy and sharp, like barbed wire. It was not a demon of time after all.
"Hey, who are you, jii-san?"
A dwarf came to take place in front of him, tiny fists on his waist, looking up with a smug expression. It was a boy with slitted pupils and full of courage. The type that would die young, a smile stretched across his lips at the thought of a princess he would have never conquered.
"You are Hyūga-sama, am I right?"
The apparitions stretched one of her ethereal hands and placed it upon the shoulder of her acolyte in mischief.
She pushed her junior into her own bow. She was respectful, a calmness and coolness escaping her being. She was not her. She was not her. How he had wanted for this child, a little child at that, to be her under the rain once again!
"What the hell, nee-san! I don't want to bow to this old fart, don't even know him ..."
Even if these children were too young to present the traditional tattoos of their clan, the feistiness in this little boy, who could have been disposed of in a flick was enough to label them.
She straightened from her bow, raising her eyes to him without any fright. Her eyes were not normal, at least not for her clan. The pupils were not slitted as those of that imp that glared at his elder without any shame. In fact, they were completely invisible in the dark depths of her orbs. It was so unusual; in fact it was absolutely not characteristic of her clan.
"An older sister should apologize for the bad behaviour of her junior."
His voice kept the composure that his new attics did not seem to present. What would the people say if they knew that he had escaped the guard of his very own servants to sneak out under the rain? What would she have said if she had known that he now cared about the image others had of him? She already knew. She saw him every other day, darting her slitted, dark, warm pupils, so similar to those of this impolite brat, at him and crying silently at everything they had lost and at everything they had not won. It is easy to lose, he knew, it is to not win that truly hurts.
"My otōto is free to say whatever he pleases and if he feels like he must apologize, he will do so."
Such coolness, such polite bluntness covered under a mundane smile that suited anybody chilled him to the bone, not that it was something he was not used to as it was his very own trademark. But to believe that a daughter of such family, renowned for its short-tempered sons, would brush it off with such strong elegance, her voice even and uninterested, enraging!
He extended a hand from under the sleeve of his haori and grabbed her chin fiercely. She did not budge nor did she seem perplexed at his act. The one she called brother however emitted a guttural sound that resembled a dog's growl.
'Another rabid dog, how filthy ...'
Since when did such reflections become his daily companions in age?
"You as well should learn that some remarks can be accepted from adults but not from children, girl. Name?"
"Get your filthy hands off my sister, old man!"
Just one glare from the side was enough to mate that puppy that had dared exhibit his baby fangs at him. It cowered away at once, its neck burying in his shoulders. It was not a damp and lost man those two little monsters were facing now, it was a specimen of a lost race of men. Just one glance was enough to make all walls crumble.
Tightening his grip on the girls jaw he raised an eyebrow, expecting the same fright to deform her features. There indeed was a shiver that crossed her nose and made her scrunch it for an instant, yet it was not terror of the unknown, it was only acknowledgement of an elder, in her very own unique and poised way.
"Inuzuka Kiba and Hana."
As expected. That kid Kiba was a real poster boy for the Inuzuka clan. Nevertheless, an unbreakable knot formed itself in his throat, cutting his breath. Paroles from the past came back to him.
"Woman, if I ever have a child from you, her name will be Himoto."
"I will never have a child from a man like you, and if ever the unbelievable happens and a mistake is made, well ... he will be named Kenshi."
"Why would you name a child 'swordsman'? What a way of pressuring a little boy to become an ANBU ..."
"Mister ANBU, you will be the pushiest father that exists on this world! There is no need for a name for that kid to become an ANBU, if he has you as father ... And anyways, what type of name is that, 'Himoto'? 'Origin of a fire' ... What fire? Pretty suggestive if you ask me ..."
"What does a fourteen-year-old brat like you even know about those 'suggestive' things?"
"Hahaha ... More than this twenty-year-old grandpa ... Do you think your ANBU boyfriends would appreciate to know when you lost your virginity?"
It had only been with her that he had been able to have such meaningless conversation, only with her, since the very day they met. Even with the age difference, it had never meant anything in the end.
Yet, this boy was not named Kenshi but Kiba, Inuzuka Kiba, her first son. And the girl with that expressionless, composed glance of hers, that sly pupilless pool of shadows was not Himoto, but Hana. Hana, heiress to the Inuzuka clan.
He released her chin, letting his hand fall to his side. His eyes were unreadable and the rain drowned them. If he had not been known enough, one could have thought that he was crying.
The soft long locks of brown hair, the eyes and the height of this child that never had peeled off her eyes from his, everything betrayed the sin.
"It is amazing how filthy Inuzuka can be. For an heiress such as you, to be permitted to escape the watch of guards and play in the mud at such time, under such weather. It is to be expected that such a clan cannot gain any respect ..."
He had wanted to hurt her, to see the Inuzuka in her. He had wanted an outburst to appease him, to make the taste of bloody sin leave his tongue. Yet, the only thing he managed was to provoke this other insignificant second-born that took a step forward, roaring like a rabid beast. If the arm of the girl had not wind around that uncontrolled puppy's neck, he might have been bitten.
A snarl of abhorrence crossed his lips. Sin tasted horridly bittersweet. He turned his heels, jaw clenched not to howl to the moon that started appearing through nightly clouds. There was not enough rain to wash away all the pain and the sadness.
"You see, otōto. I told you everything would change, all of a sudden. I was right wasn't I?"
"But nee-san, he said he hated us."
Her laughter was not Inuzuka either, as he heard it from afar, when he had already reached the end of that long path of wrath and misery.
"But he talked to us, he did not ignore us."
And the last thought he had, the last sinister thought before turning the corner was:
'Hopefully those children will not blabber about me. Nobody would believe them anyways."