At age eight, Uchiha Sasuke lost his clan.
It wasn't anything as unfortunate as a compound fire or anything as bloody as a clan massacre.
It was much more simple, much more tragic: He was disowned.
You don't deserve to be a Uchiha, his brother had told him, phrasing it much more clearly than his parents had. Not when you're this weak. Don't dare claim our name when you can't even activate the Sharingan.
At age eight, Uchiha Sasuke was no longer Uchiha Sasuke.
Just Sasuke. Simply because he couldn't change his eye color.
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At age eight, Hyuuga Hinata was not Hyuuga Hinata.
She was Kurenai Hinata, had been Kurenai Hinata for quite some time ever since her father decided she was not fit to be an heir and had simply shifted her along to somebody else in private.
Hyuuga Hinata was declared dead exactly a month after the exchange had taken place, and Kurenai Hinata, daughter of the young and widowed Kurenai Yuhi, was all that was left.
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At age ten, Sasuke had gotten used to wandering around villages, more or less ignoring the mess of the military wars that plagued each one.
He trained relentlessly, could hunt and fend for himself remarkably well. He was strong, stronger than any ten-year-old (that didn't happen to be his genius brother) had any right to be.
Only, looking at the mirror, Sasuke knew what awaited him.
A dark-eyed boy whose name was Sasuke and never, never Uchiha.
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Hyuuga Hinata had been shut indoors all her life, been shushed by countless branch-house servants and been hugged too little to develop much of a personality. Few knew what she had looked like; even fewer cared.
Ten year old Kurenai Hinata was unexpectedly shy in contrast to her mother. People often told her she was pretty, but it was a shame she had ordinary brown eyes instead of her mother's startlingly beautiful red ones.
When Kurenai overheard these comments, she only glanced at Hinata's dejected back and whispered not to worry, she looked just as beautiful as her (real) mother.
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At twelve years old, Sasuke knew too much of the world.
Still wandering from village to village, he saw the world (as he used to know it, he distantly thinks) crumble into the misery he inhabits now.
He's not as weak as to think it's because he's lonely or because his life is messed up.
No, he frowns, it's because although he was used to the military wars before, he can't help but get a sickening feeling in his stomach because of the civil uprisings that have started, because of the random families—innocent families—persecuted within each new town he visits.
As far as he knows, the only thing these victims have in common are unusual ninja techniques.
Somewhere inside him, an eight year old's voice says it's not fair.
He shushes it, of course, telling it it's weak for trying to get involved.
He refuses to answer, however, when it asks him if he isn't scared as well.
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At twelve, Kurenai Hinata was an innocent snowflake in the heartless winter of the world.
Her mother (had she ever had another?) was kind to her, as was the rest of Konoha.
They were a peaceful village, except for the little incident that had apparently happened all the way back before either Hyuuga Hinata or Kurenai Hinata were born.
Kurenai Hinata knew nothing of civil war and little of prejudiced hate—only what she could see of mistrust and dislike in the villagers' eyes, when they looked at the one boy, the one everyone hated and she had grown to watch.
Why do they hate him? she had asked her mother day after day after day until she yielded. Her mother had seen a lot of the world, Hinata reasoned. She should know why.
Because he's different. He has power they can't obtain or control, her mother had finally said. Some people even want to kill him for that.
And to Hinata's confusion, Kurenai held her to her closely, worry shaking her mother's body.
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By age fourteen, Sasuke no longer wanders from village to village.
He lives in the forests now, not depending on anyone's kindness, not asking for anyone's approval.
He is weak in nobody's eyes except his own, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
It's because he hates people, he tells himself, because everyone is bothersome and stupid and corrupt. Not because what he's seen has become so disgusting and meaningless and corrupt that he doesn't want to put the pieces together, doesn't want the reality of what has happened—what will probably happen—to sink in.
Absentmindedly, almost brokenly, Sasuke lives in the forest and waits for red eyes.
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By age fourteen, Kurenai Hinata has been acting as a medical-nin outside of Konoha for over a year.
She sees her mother only on weekends now, trying to stretch herself to meet the demands of the civil wars, the result of angry civilians and vengeful shinobi and corrupt leaders and self-interested ninja clans. Not everyone, she's learned, has had it as good as Konoha.
She is a good shinobi, everyone tells her, the type that would never harm an innocent person, even if she is a little weak-willed now and then. The type that would never break a rule. Honest.
She's broken a rule before, she's breaking one now, she wants to tell them. She shouldn't be healing the bodies she occasionally stumbles on, nearly mangled, too wounded bodies with almost broken eyes that belong to not-so-innocent ninja clan members with bloodline jutsus like her own clan surely must have.
Hinata heals them anyway, leaves them in a secret place—she's always been good at finding places no one else can see, for some reason. They won't notice, she tells herself.
After all, who could keep track of four or five children?
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At age sixteen, Sasuke can no longer keep himself from putting the pieces together.
The laws ordering the execution (massacre, large-scale murder) of all clans with Kekkai Genkai reach even his ears, and he knows Konoha, as little as he remembers about it, will probably be no exception.
He is much too weak to return even now, he knows—pathetically weak, abnormally so. But out of sixteen years of life, he's only lived eight of them as a Uchiha.
He figures he's more or less earned the right to die as one.
He heads to Konoha, determined to know whether at least that much will be granted.
He reaches Konoha and finds out he's too late to even get an answer—too undeserving for fate to award him one.
At age sixteen, Sasuke is once more an Uchiha, eyes the color of his family's blood, tomoes swirling in confusion and wrath.
At age sixteen, eight years too late, Uchiha Sasuke gets his Sharingan. In a strange twist of fate, he finds he can't remove it at all.
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At age sixteen, Kurenai Hinata has realized she cannot put the pieces together when it matters.
Out of the twenty wounded she's found so far, only three survived. The laws against them are harsh, and they have no freedom to live the life Hinata thoughtlessly preserved for them.
They are grateful of course (one has even been strong enough to leave), but she can't help but wish that she was stronger. Her inability to do anything but watch them suffer is almost too hard to bear.
She should be suffering alongside them, but she can't.
Fate has judged her too weak and cushioned her with the life she lives now. Or so she thinks, until she sees Naruto and hears his speech before taking down a Jounin named Neji with long hair and grey eyes.
At age sixteen, Kurenai Hinata finds her ninja way.
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It is shortly after this that, at age sixteen, still in Konoha, Uchiha Sasuke and Kurenai Hinata meet for the first time.
Author's Note: So yeah. Wrote this while somewhat sleepy in the wee hours of the night. Feel free to let me know if the plot is nonsense, if you have difficulty following my muddled writing, or if, against all odds, you happen to like this little plot bunny. =P I'm in that not-too-confident, dusty-writing skills mindset right now, so knowing this doesn't suck (or hearing how it could suck less) would really be helpful. :D
Anyway, thanks for reading this far? For those of you still hopeful on seeing me update my other stuff, I swear I'm working on it. :)