Welcome to a retelling of the classic fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, a NaruSaku AU fic entitled A Rose in Glass. There are other pairings (of course ^^) but it's mainly NaruSaku. Rated T to be safe for some blood, gore, and occasional swearing. Be forewarned, this fic will probably be slow and long and NOT the Disney movie version but a modified version of the original Beaumont with Disney and Robin McKinley influences. If it gets convoluted and confusing, don't hesitate to let me know ^^.
Finally Beta'd by the amazing and awesome Ginkan without whom I would be VERY lost!! Go read her stories and show her love because she's wonderful! ^^
Summary: Sakura is drawn to stories of a mysterious kingdom called Konoha, that seems to be only half-remembered in peoples' memories. When she takes her father's place in the Beast's castle, she slowly comes to realize a connection between the stories she likes so much...and the fox-beast who keeps her prisoner.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto (the cast belongs to Kishimoto-sensei), nor Beauty and the Beast.
A Rose in Glass
Chapter 1: Blood's Grudge and Legacy
Blood soaked into the silk of his sleeve, as sticky as tar against his pale fingers. The metallic tang of blood was like an overly thick perfume, permeating the damp chill of his workroom until he could hardly breathe. It was as if a strangling vine had curled around his throat and pulled tight as a garrote. But the pain and nausea hardly rivaled the hatred that curled in his gut. Even now, weak with blood loss, his vision dimmed with the dark emotion. Breaths coming in ragged gasps, he slumped against the rough, stone finish of his workroom, fighting the penetrating numbness in the arm dangling uselessly at his side.
"Anko…ANKO," he rasped, each word a mangled hiss. "ANKO!"
"Orochimaru-sama!" his workroom assistant cried, face ashen as she took in her master. How could they do this to him? He was the king's chancellor! Her mind raged as her nerveless fingers scrabbled across his work table, searching for any sort of cloth to staunch the blood that painted her master's chest and right arm. Even from a distance she could feel the stench like a physical force; there was blood on the wall, the floor, her lord's clothes, his hair. It was almost unbelievable that he could still be alive; sitting slumped against the wall in a pool of the vibrantly crimson liquid.
"Don't pity me!" he snarled as she knelt to bandage him. "I don't need your filthy pity!" He managed a sneer at her before his eyes glazed over with pain, not even noticing as Anko flinched from his venomous words.
"They laughed; they looked horrified," he hissed. "They mocked me, all except the king and my two friends," he spat. "And those three stood there in their self-righteous morality and had the temerity to look horrified! At me!"
His eyes blazed scarlet; his hand shot out to crush Anko's windpipe.
Her pupils shrank as her fingers scrabbled at the hand slowly, inexorably, overpowering her, heart fluttering hummingbird fast as terror flushed like ice through her veins. Anko's lips trembled with silent pleas.
Snake-like eyes slitted and, with disgust, he tossed the woman away from him.
Anko struggled to breathe as she lay like a rag doll on the cold, dank floor, a perfect bloody handprint marring her throat and terror thudding harshly in her chest.
=*~*~*=
It was a bright afternoon, golden, perfect. Hardly a day to be disgruntled, but the fifteen-year-old slumped in his seat was looking just that, blond brows irritable over his sky blue eyes.
"Naruto." The golden-haired boy twisted around in his seat, "Yeah Shikamaru?" his irritation plain in his tone and the spark in his eyes.
"You're being troublesome."
Naruto snorted rudely, turning away from his longtime friend, the utter lack of manners noted with rolled eyes by the blonde girl shifting from one foot to the other on the disgruntled boy's other side.
"I didn't ask for this," he almost whined, pointing – another etiquette breach – to indicate the high-ceilinged hall before them. "It's my birthday; I shouldn't have to be here!"
"So why are you?" the blonde girl asked, a friendly smirk teasing her lips as she flicked her ponytail over her shoulder. "Normally you'd have figured some way to worm out of this because you know the Lady Regent gives you way too much leeway."
The birthday boy slouched even lower in his seat, crossing arms over his chest as he sunk down. "Because it's my birthday, Ino," he explained in an aggrieved mutter. "Tsunade-baachan said I had to show I respected the people and the kingdom." Naruto sighed, running a hand through his messy golden hair. "It's not like I don't get it; I just hate court days."
"Good, boy," a voice said tartly from behind him. "I was thinking I might have to beat the lesson into you, and I didn't want to do anything more strenuous on your birthday. Putting together the party was trouble enough." The speaker's chocolate eyes softened as they swept over her charge, a boy she had raised like her own son since his father had passed away nearly seven years ago.
He was the splitting image of his own father from childhood, she could attest to it; she had been a court mage apprentice during Minato's own teenage years. In face and form Naruto and his father's younger self could have been twins with the same messy blond hair, open sky-blue eyes. They both had that almost-too-wide smile that threatened to grin and cheerfully optimistic disposition. In personality they were somewhat different though. Then again, Minato had been raised under the care of his formal but loving parents until his mid-twenties. Naruto had never known the mother who had died giving birth to him, and lost his greatest hero, his father, at an early age.
And yet he had taken over the duties handed to him with a determination that had surprised Tsunade. Even she was unsure whether Minato would have had Naruto's strength of spirit in the face of orphan-hood and a sooner-than-expected rise to power. Then again, he had been a genius. He probably would have been able to handle it.
'And yet, whenever I reflect how well Naruto has done in the last several years, he acts like a spoiled five-year-old brat,' she sighed to herself, suppressing the urge to smack him one upside the head as she used to when he had been five. She contented herself with giving the boy's shoulder an impressively painful squeeze; Naruto winced, mumbling a quiet "ow…" as she let go.
"Now listen to your subjects' requests like the ruler you want to be," Tsunade commanded, hiding her pride in him with practiced ease. She glanced down at the prince's still pouting form.
"And stop slouching in your throne, Naruto-kun."
=::=
Naruto sighed, tugging the collar of his royal garb to get a little more air as he skulked in the shadows of the balcony, fiddling with the fox mask over his features until he had it pulled up so that he could see more than the almond-shaped eye-slits let him. "Who told the tailor I liked high collars?" he complained to the cool autumn night, not really expecting an answer. Hoping not to get one. Even an extrovert needed downtime. A little quiet on the secluded balcony wrapped in the scents of a nearby orchard was the perfect escape.
Not that he had any reason to want to escape his own birthday masquerade. The court had outdone themselves this evening, proof that the last three weeks hadn't been wasted. But there was only so much he could take of being chased around by noble girls and their marriage-minded mothers. Regardless of the fact that Tsunade was helping him rule Konoha as the Lady Regent until he turned twenty-one, he was going to be king one day, and that made him every girl's dream catch.
"Magpies," he grumbled, "I'm not some shiny crown jewel and I'll marry when I want to!"
Besides, it was always really awkward dealing with polite, demure, court girls since the only real female friend he had ever had was a girl who still called him "deadbeat prince" from time to time. Not your average noble girl at all; it was something he really appreciated about Ino, that opinionated nature of hers, even when he got on the wrong side of her scathing tongue.
And she'd saved him from enough pushy mothers and their timid little daughters to last a lifetime. He really did owe her one. Or two. Or twenty-six. He'd lost track of the exact count nearly an hour ago.
He shook his head fiercely, almost dislodging the gold and orange mask perched on top of his hair, trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. "Think about birthday gifts, that's gotta be better than Magpies!"
"Or," he let his lips curl into a soft, boyish grin, "A girl who isn't a simpering pushover. That would definitely be better than even birthday presents." A pleased hum echoed in the back of his throat as he began to imagine this unconventional woman. "I don't want her too serious," he told the darkness, matter-of-factly. "I get enough of that with Ino and Tsunade-baachan, and Ten Ten too now that I think about it," he said, naming the armory's keeper he had befriended a few years back. "I want to be able to make her laugh. And smart; she's going to be my future queen so she'd need to be intelligent. And strong. Eh… Not that she has to be that way physically, necessarily. But y'know, emotionally."
"My, my, I'm flattered. You seemed to be describing me to a 'T' there, and you said that was what you wanted in a future queen?"
Naruto whirled around, one hand gripping the smooth marble banister, the other groping for a weapon that wasn't there. That's the last time I listen to Kiba when he tells me I don't need to wear my sword on my birthday because "Come on Naruto, who's going to try to attack the crown prince on his birthday?" he griped mentally.
"Who's there?" he demanded, still tense for action though he'd dropped his sword hand in an effort not to let it show. "Stop hiding!"
"Hiding, your majesty? Mitarashi Anko never hides." The laugh made the hairs on the back of his neck tingle. It was dark, almost too rough to be a woman's, and condescending. The kind the Magpies would give him while they pushed their shy-faced daughters at him. It made his skin crawl. "I was merely waiting for the right moment."
She stepped into the moonlight.
Naruto's cerulean eyes darkened, a frown creasing his brow as he took in the intruder.
Rich, violet hair framed her face, drawing the gaze to her startlingly dark eyes. Her body was wrapped in ebony silks, a gown that accented her pale, pale skin. It glowed luminescently in the deepening evening, and with a flinch of shock he realized she gleamed in the moonlight because her skin was chased with the scales of a snake.
"So, my prince, were you thinking of proposing tonight?" she teased, slinking forward as graceful as a cat. "Or were you thinking only of stringing me on?" Her cold fingers walked up Naruto's arm as he backed away into the hard marble of the banister, wary of her advance.
"Forgive me Anko-san, I didn't intend to imply a proposal," he apologized, stiffly, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise like an animal's hackles. "I have to return to my masquerade."
"Why, Naruto-sama," the woman murmured, laughing huskily in his ear. "This is a cold welcome."
"I have no wish to marry yet," Naruto replied; frown deepening as he backed away from her.
A smirk swept over her features and she shed the sultry look she had been turning on him. "I told Orochimaru-sama you wouldn't be seduced by me," she laughed. Her dark eyes slitted like a snake's. "All the better. My other orders are more…fun." Those sable eyes hardened into shards of obsidian, and her plum-colored lips turned down from their arrogantly mischievous expression into a grim line.
"Take my master's vengeance, and as you writhe in agony, curse your father for your fate!" she spat, snatching a blood-and-violet amulet from around her neck to smash into the back of his left hand as it rested on the marble banister.
Swirls of blood red, black, and violet blossomed as the glass amulet shattered, fragments embedding into the back of Naruto's hand and Anko's palm. Blood comingled as the spell flowed from the snake woman into the prince.
A cry of pain forced its way out of Naruto's throat as a searing burn embedded into the marrow of his bones, like his bones had turned into lava and his blood into molten metal. His vision blurred, nausea rippling in his gut. His flesh felt like melting wax, bubbling and frothing until he fell to his hands and knees as nausea forced blood into his throat.
"Naruto? NARUTO!"
"Tsu-Tsuna…." He gasped, crimson liquid painting his lips.
"Too late, Tsunade-sama, Jiraiya-sama," Anko laughed raspily, pale face growing more ashen as her lifeblood seeped out of the poisoned wound in her hand. "Orochimaru-sama sends his love."
The court wizard and lady regent stiffened, frozen by the familiar name as they watched in horror as the prince coughed blood onto the white marble, red splatters a chilling contrast to the pale stone.
"What is this?!" Tsunade demanded, lunging for the swaying woman in ebony. "What have you done to him?!"
Anko giggled mockingly, miraculously dodging Tsunade's grasp as a thin dribble of blood coursing down her cheek from an eye, a black tearstain in the moonlight. "Orochimaru-sama sends the prince a birthday gift. He shall be no longer human but take on the form of a hideous beast!"
She waved a hand at a crimson gleam that began to emanate from Naruto's bleeding wound, coalescing into a rose with petals of the same rich color as the liquid that oozed from the ragged gashes in his hand. It floated up between them, a silvery sheen swirling around it until it settled, a rose in a gleaming glass bell jar seated atop a small, round table. "The rose will bloom until the prince's twenty-first birthday where the final petal will fall from the stem and he will DIE!"
She laughed madly, bloodshot eyes darting from mage to regent and back. "Not that it matters, the people will kill their own prince, not knowing he is trapped in that beast's body, or someone will carelessly touch the rose of his life force and kill him, before he turns that age anyway! Take Orochimaru-sama's revenge, fools, and despair!"
Tsunade lunged for her again, and the woman fell limp into her arms. She snarled angrily, setting the woman down onto the marble floor as Jiraiya approached the groaning prince.
"She's dead," Tsunade spat. "Damn Orochimaru!"
"Enough, Tsunade-hime," Jiraiya called softly, a single point of calm amid the swirling chaos that was Orochimaru's spell. "Naruto-kun needs us."
Tsunade crouched down beside Jiraiya, feeling lightheaded at how surreal the situation seemed. On the other side of the glass, Naruto's birthday masque continued, the strains of instruments floating through to the darkened balcony where the prince coughed up blood and growled in pain. Jiraiya's hands skimmed Naruto's forehead, glowing pale silver with power as he tried to deduce the spell's mechanisms.
He shook his head, frustrated and dejected. "I'm sorry, Tsunade-hime, Orochimaru…he knew what he was doing. I can't undo this spell."
"Nothing? Jiraiya, please…there has to be something!" Her hands fisted in his robe as she begged into his shoulder, hating this moment of weakness. But Naruto was as precious to her as her own son or grandson. She couldn't let him fall to this fate without a fight. "Something, anything!"
An idea blazed into her mind and, before even giving herself a moment to consider, she jerked the necklace over her head and thrust it into Jiraiya's hands.
"Your family's heirloom?" Jiraiya asked, stunned. The jewel pendant was Tsunade's family legacy, a powerful magic amplifier that drew on the wearer's desires. Tsunade had never found a need to use it and so it had languished for decades, until now.
"Concentrate on Naruto," Jiraiya instructed quietly, wrapping Tsunade's hands around the jewel. "A curse this powerful, you can't eliminate it, you can only change its course a little. Keep that in mind. This is your family's magic; you must be the one to channel the spell."
She nodded mindlessly, already focusing all her being on the unconscious boy.
Naruto.
He was…so like his father; strong at heart, determined, diligent at the duties he held for the kingdom he loved. Since childhood he had wanted to be just like his father, the king of a prosperous nation, the beloved leader of a people that loved him. Even now, bound by law to be merely a prince and ruler only in name of the country that was his birthright, he strove to be the best that he could. Almost too hard, except that his determined personality was tempered with a delighted love of being able to enjoy life. And perhaps that was what made him such a beloved prince, already much prided by the people of Konoha. Everyone drew on the strength of his heart.
A heart's strength…a heart's desire….
"Naruto-kun…has the strongest heart of anyone," Tsunade murmured, pulled into a semi-trance as the necklace's magic coiled tendrils of power around her and the boy. "He would fight this spell, he would say that anyone can change destiny, and find a way to live…. Orochimaru tried to make him hated, hated by everyone in Konoha…hated enough to get killed because the people wouldn't see him and only a beast. But. It. Shall. Not. Be!"
The light of the magic thrashed around her, faster now; cocooning her with blinding aquamarine threads so bright she could no longer see the boy lying in front of her. "Orochimaru might have made you look hideous on the outside, Naruto," she said, her hazel eyes flashing with determination, voice sharp. "But Naruto is still Naruto, no matter what you look like on the outside. And there will be someone who will see that. There must be someone who can see that. And if she can love you for who you are, not what you appear to be, before the last petal falls from the rose, you will be returned to your true form as a human prince and no beast."
Tendrils of magic flowed from the necklace, from Tsunade and Jiraiya, from the very air around them, sinking bit by bit into the prone figure of the unconscious prince until his very skin crackled with the power of the spell inside him.
With a cry that was half snarl, Naruto arched, reddish fur bursting out over his flesh, morphing him as it enveloped his body.
Tsunade, drained from her magic working, could only watch in horror as the boy was changed before her eyes from a human to an anthropomorphic nine-tailed fox beast.
"You did well, Tsunade-hime," Jiraiya whispered as he held his shell-shocked childhood friend in his arms. "Naruto-kun will break the spell."
She nodded wordlessly, slipping her necklace over the beast's head.
Jiraiya turned away, leaving Tsunade to her quiet grief, bringing his hands together to begin forming the seals of magical transformation.
"So that Naruto is not hunted by his people out of their ignorance, change the palace and it's surroundings into a mansion and its people into the objects and furnishings within. Make it impenetrable to anyone of less than pure intentions, the wards of the place tied to Naruto's heart," Jiraiya commanded, forming the last seal.
Trembling hands fisted into his robe, and Jiraiya pulled Tsunade into his arms as the swirling mist billowed about them in the very beginnings of the transformation.
"We've given Naruto the chance he needs to live, Tsunade-hime," Jiraiya murmured reassuringly into her hair. "We've done all we can. Now…we must trust him."
In his arms, Tsunade nodded.
=*~*~*=
"I'm adopted," Sakura said, a touch bluntly, correctly interpreting the book seller's quizzical expression when she introduced Hinata and Hanabi as her younger sisters.
"Sakura-neesan…" Hinata protested softly.
"It's okay Hinata-chan, it saves time in the long run," Sakura assured her, brushing imaginary dust from Hinata's shoulder to distract the younger girl from her distress.
"Sakura-neesan is right, Hinata-neesan," Hanabi agreed from the worried girl's other side. "By explaining things up front, Sakura-neesan is keeping gossip and speculation from spreading about the…possible legitimacy of Sakura-neesan's birth."
Sharp child, the bookseller cum librarian noted. She might be young but she knows how things will look. Politically minded noble for all she dresses like a merchant's daughter. And she was right. Anyone who saw the three girls standing side by side wouldn't be able to help but wonder if their father's late wife hadn't perhaps been familiar with another man before Hinata had been born. Sakura and her younger sisters looked nothing alike.
Both younger girls sported their father's pale lavender eyes, the color in them as faint as the tint of a moonflower, and hair as dark as sable. Sakura was all bright colors where her sisters were monochrome. Her hair was a blush-rose hue, cut slightly uneven as though the person handling the scissors had been nervous, or an amateur. The longest ends brushed the crimson shawl pulled around her shoulders. But it was her eyes that really drew her observer's attention. They were green as emeralds and aspen leaves. The colors that might have clashed on another seemed appropriate and even natural on this girl.
"New faces, have you traveled far?" she asked, motherly instinct making her unwilling to let the girls wander back into the marketplace bustle just yet.
"A little," Hinata answered shyly. "We moved inland from the coast."
"From the capital, perhaps? Our small town must seem pretty boring after the excitement you'd find there," the woman laughed, brushing hair out of her dark vermillion eyes.
"Not at all," Hinata protested, flushing a deep crimson. "I…I think it's very…picturesque. It's…calming…."
"Kurenai," the bookseller supplied, realizing what Hinata was looking for. "Please call me Kurenai." She glanced at Hinata's blood and adopted sisters, one idly scanning the passersby, the other gazing hungrily at the dusty display of books in the shop window. "Are they not very talkative to strangers?" she asked, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
Hinata giggled, blushing a bright pink as she attempted to stammer an explanation. "S-Sakura-neesan loves books and Hanabi-chan t-takes a while to feel familiar with others, Kurenai-san."
"Well then," the dark-haired woman smiled, "Come inside. I have books enough to interest Sakura-chan, and maybe Hanabi-chan will feel more comfortable indoors." Kurenai's eyes softened, "And you can meet my son."
=::=
"Kurenai-san, tell us about Makoto-kun's father, please?" Hanabi requested when they had settled inside the bookstore with tea.
"Hanabi-chan," Sakura protested, running a fingernail nervously across the smooth surface of the teacup in her hands. "Don't be nosy." Except she couldn't really say that since she was curious herself.
A man filled the portraits ranged about behind the bookshop's counter nearby, love filling his gentle brown eyes, obvious in the way he smiled at the woman he held in his arms. The last likeness of him also featured a pregnant Kurenai. The remaining sketches were solely of Kurenai and her son.
"It's alright, Sakura-chan," Kurenai assured the seventeen-year-old, taking a sip of her tea, the picture of calm relaxation. She glanced over at the three-year-old curled up on a step stool with a picture book and smiled a strange, sadness tinted, smile.
"Asuma was my husband; Makoto is our only son. He…I believe he died…a few months before Makoto-chan was born, in the downfall of Konoha."
"Konoha?" Sakura asked curiously, feeling a tingling thrill run up and down her arms. Something about the name seemed to call her, alluring and strange.
Kurenai nodded, setting down her tea to fold her hands in her lap. "Konoha is – was – a small, prosperous country east of here. Three or so years ago something happened, an assassination attempt, I'm not certain. But great magic happened and the palace, the capital city of Konoha, all of it disappeared that night…along with my husband." The woman stared off into the past, her vermillion eyes filled with a faraway look. "I never saw him again…."
"We're…so sorry, Kurenai-san…" Hinata apologized, tears brimming in her pale eyes. "We shouldn't have…"
"It's alright," Kurenai reassured. "I have Makoto-chan. I only regret that Asuma never saw his son…and Makoto-chan never knew is father."
"Can…can we visit you again?"
Kurenai's eyes were soft as she brushed her fingers against Hanabi's damp cheek. "Whenever you like, little one."
=*~*~*=
"Sakura-neesan?"
"I'm coming, Hanabi-chan," Sakura called with a laugh as she hurried down the stairs to join her fifteen-year-old sister in the front hall, almost flying down the stairwell. She glanced at the banister, her temptation to slide down it bright in her emerald eyes. Her lips quirked with a smile as she surveyed the bland look that crossed her younger sibling's face. "What?"
"Sometimes, it's hard to remember that Sakura-neesan is almost twenty," the youngest daughter said, serious and grave. But she smiled and pulled on a cloak with an impatient gesture to her oldest sister, and years of living with her told Sakura that Hanabi was excited and in a hurry for all her seriousness.
"I know, I know, I'm – oh good morning Father," Sakura said, greeting her father as he exited his room with a kiss on the cheek.
Hyuuga Hiashi smiled as his eldest and youngest daughters hurried out the front door. "Goodbye Sakura-chan, Hanabi-chan," he called after them.
"Where are they off to?" he asked as the front door shut somewhat violently behind them.
"Kurenai-san's bookshop of course, Father," Hinata laughed as she appeared from the house's kitchen. "The two nearly live there!"
Hiashi's lavender eyes softened as he appraised his middle child. The last two and a half years since their move to the small, provincial town they lived in now had been unexpectedly unconventional. Debt had taken away the family's dukedom, their lands and holdings, and in disgrace he had been forced to take his children into the country as a poor merchant to live in this last house of their lands. He could only be thankful that gossip hadn't traveled here to turn the town's inhabitants away from his children.
It had been unexpectedly nice to be accepted at face value.
The family was much different now than it had been during their golden years as the most powerful family of the nation besides the royal lineage, yet Hiashi couldn't bring himself to feel too much regret. They were…happier here, he felt.
Quiet, compliant Sakura had taken a job under the tutelage of the village's aged herb-mage, Chiyo-baasan, who had spotted her hidden talent in healing magic, growing into a self-confident and now somewhat outspoken nineteen-year-old girl who was renowned for both her compassionate heart and sharp tongue. His youngest, a brusque and curt fifteen-year-old, had softened, partly due to the fact that social pressures had lessened in the rural setting, partly because of the motherly love and kindness showered on all three of his daughters by Kurenai. And shy Hinata…
Hers had been perhaps the biggest change.
Hiashi blamed himself for not realizing it when they had lived as nobility; the pressures of society had been greater for Hinata, greater than even what Hanabi had felt, because she had been often outshone by her intelligent – if adopted – older sister. As the true eldest of the main Hyuuga family, she had felt unnecessary in the face of her intellectually charming older sister and socially talented younger sibling.
The same could not be said now.
The middle child had developed into an accomplished young woman, as assured in her place in their new and humble, provincial world as her sisters. They had learned, early on when they couldn't afford even a cook for their new accommodations, that Hinata could cook, and mend, and keep accounts, and in general run the household as she had never had a chance as a duke's daughter. Hiashi knew she felt indispensible to the family now, and no amount of persuasion could convince his middle daughter that she had been just as indispensible to them before their debt and destitution.
"And what are you to amuse yourself with today my dear?" Hiashi asked, warmly wrapping an arm around his middle child.
"I thought I could visit Gai-san and request another delivery of wood before winter snows us in," Hinata said, smiling up at her father. "It's been getting much chillier lately."
"I must remember to send out for sides of ribs and beef haunches earlier this year," Hiashi said, almost as a side-note to himself. "I hope we can avoid being snowed in as we did last winter."
"Father, that was hardly your fault," Hinata protested with a gentle laugh; this was an argument they had repeated many times over the last few weeks as the leaves of autumn had gathered at their doorstep. "It was so warm the week before the worst frost that we all thought fall had come again."
"Nevertheless, daughter," Hiashi replied with a laugh of his own. "I would prefer not to have Hanabi recounting to us tales of cannibalistic men on their becalmed ships every evening over dinners of potato stew. Sometimes I almost wish I could ask Kurenai-san to restrict her reading material!"
Their laughter subsided as father and daughter settled into comfortable silence, one quietly contemplating his child as she in turn contemplated if they would need more supplies than they had already stockpiled in the cellar to last out the winter.
"Father, do you mind greatly that Sakura-neesan, Hanabi, and I spend so much time out of the house lately?" Hinata asked presently, noticing that her father was watching her still.
"No, Hinata-chan," he answered her, his large and work-worn hands patting her head as he had when she was very small, before her mother had died. "It gives me a chance to work my way through the creditors' letters without worrying you girls."
Hinata sighed, "Father…."
Hiashi chuckled. "We are pulling out of debt slowly but surely and our life here is not terrible, is it?"
"Hardly, Father," Hinata reassured him, smiling her calmest. She wrapped herself in a cloak from the closet by the door and let her father walk her to the front gate of their modest, two-story residence. "I'll make sure the we return home by dinnertime."
"Good. I would hate to have to eat my own cooking," her father replied, laughing as he waved his daughter off.
=::=
"Why Hinata-chan, blossom of endless youth!"
"Hinata-chan?" Sakura pulled herself from the book realm of magic and valor she had been immersed in all morning to scan the street. Gai-san's exuberant cries were hard to ignore, even for someone like her who tended to get lost in the fantasylands of books at a moment's notice.
Through the window she could see the older half of the village's courier service gesticulate wildly at her sister, managing to convey through gestures – he now spoke at a level that she couldn't hear behind the thick glass of Kurenai-san's shop – his joy at being of service.
Sakura giggled to herself as she tucked a bookmark between the pages of the book in her hands. While Hinata had become much less withdrawn in their years since moving to the village, Gai-san's effervescent personality could still be a bit much from time to time.
"I should probably go rescue her," Sakura murmured mischievously as she set her book down and made for the door.
"Leave Gai-san outside please!" Hanabi and Kurenai chorused from the back of the shop where they were taking tea.
Neither had any problem with the outgoing courier; both were truly on friendly terms with him and his son, Lee, but Gai's natural manner had caused havoc in the quiet bookshop on more than one occasion and last time the afternoon tea had taken a very large turn for the worse. He had been consequently, if secretly, banned from the store ever since. Sakura would have felt more sympathy for the man if he hadn't knocked her into a passing poultry cart that day. She'd been picking goose down out of her hair for a week.
She was contemplating the best way to turn the man's attention away from her sister when a flying watermelon did the job for her.
"Gai-san! Watch out!"
She gasped as the man twisted out of the projectile fruit's trajectory with practiced ease, wrapping a long arm around Hinata's waist to twist both of them around, pulling the young girl away so that watermelon shrapnel splattered only his uniform when the ballistic fruit made abrupt contact with the side of a nearby stall.
"I'm so sorry sir, miss, forgive me!" a gangly, bespectacled man cried, several steps behind his fruit and bright red with anguish. "I…I lost control of the cart and…."
"No reason to be flustered," Gai reassured him, smiling his nicest. "The lady and myself were unharmed."
The man spluttered, still crimson and tripping over apologies as Gai tried to calm him and the scene drew a crowd in the middle of the marketplace. Hinata, unused to all the attention, flushed redder than the fruit vendor and vainly tried to extricate herself from Gai's grasp.
"Please, Ebisu-san, there is little harm done."
Kurenai's lilting voice of reason floated above the marketplace noise, quieting the onlookers. "I'm certain you meant no harm and both Gai-san and Hinata-chan are fine. In fact, I don't believe Hinata's gown is even stained so please don't let us detain you from your work." It was gracious but a clear dismissal nonetheless. Spectators flowed back into the usual market traffic, leaving only Gai, Hinata, and Sakura at the bookshop's doorstep.
"Gai-san, I hope I'm not being rude," Kurenai added when Ebisu made his last apologies and left, "but I think all the attention has embarrassed Hinata-chan. I really must take her inside."
Gai nodded cordially, brushing stray watermelon pulp from his cuffs. It wasn't until after Kurenai had led a rather stunned and quiet Hinata indoors that he noticed a familiar face practically burning holes into his back with emerald green eyes.
"Can I help you, Sakura-chan?" he asked jovially, turning a too-bright smile in her direction. The expression faltered and died a little under the nineteen-year-old's scrutiny.
"Were you ever a knight, Gai-san?"
"Now what could give you that idea?" the green-clad courier asked with a laugh that sounded a tad forced, even to him. "No commoner can become a knight!"
Sakura narrowed her eyes. "Gai-san, please give me some credit. I have been training under Chiyo-baasan as a healer mage for over two years. The way you moved when you rescued my sister from that watermelon, it's obvious that you've been trained to fight."
"Ah well, that's true I suppose," Gai said, rubbing the back of his neck in something akin to embarrassment.
It surprised Sakura; next to nothing seemed to faze the exuberant courier, but this conversation was apparently doing just that.
"My childhood playmate was noble-born, a baron's son," Gai confessed. "He was the independent one back then and I the on-again off-again rival and best friend who chased after him. So when he left our hometown to become a knight at the capital, I followed and enlisted in the army."
"And…?" Sakura urged, curious. Gai had grown quiet but by the way he stared, lost in the past, she could guess there was more to the story than what he was telling her.
"And there isn't much more to tell," Gai replied, smiling in an uncharacteristically soft way Sakura had never seen before. "Kakashi became a knight and I rose in the ranks of the army and while I was away with my son to pay our respects at my mother's funeral, our kingdom disappeared."
"Our kingdom…" a cold thrill flooded her veins. "Konoha," Sakura breathed, sinking down to sit on the bookshop's doorstep, goosebumps running up and down her arms as she whispered the name of the nation she had heard only a handful of times since her arrival in the small provincial country town.
Gai nodded. "I am not an Otohan as everyone in this village assumes," Gai said, trying to tint his words with amusement. "I tried to find it again but…" he trailed off, dark eyes shadowed. "But, Sakura-chan, don't worry," he reassured, noticing his young companion's expression. "Lee and I have a good life here! And being a courier is good work." He laughed, patting the girl's head as if she were his own daughter, mindless of the slightly irked look that crossed her face at being treated like a twelve-year-old.
Sakura was considering whether or not to further question Gai about Konoha – she'd heard so little over the years about the mysteriously nonexistent country – when the decision was made for her with the advent of her two younger sisters exiting the bookshop with Kurenai and Makoto in tow.
"Sakura-neesan."
She brushed dust from her gown as she rose and turned a bright but meaningful smile to the courier. "Thank you, Gai-san, for the interesting story. I'd love to hear more of it another time."
"Of course, Sakura-chan," the man replied. "And Hinata-chan, I'll send Lee by with a bill for firewood later this week," he promised before letting the trio of girls go.
If Sakura noticed that he seemed relieved to see them off, she kept it to herself.
"Sakura-neesan, I have the book you were reading earlier," Hanabi piped when the three were clear of the marketplace and headed up the winding road that would eventually lead to their house. "You must have been really distracted to leave it behind."
Sakura flushed, feeling her skin prickle hot as she accepted the volume from her younger sister and tried to ignore both her and Hinata's curious glances. This almost never happened.
"I-I guess I was…distracted?" she finished lamely. "Gai-san was telling me about his past."
"And how is the book you're reading?" Hinata asked, sensing her sister wanted a change of subject. She smiled serenely as Sakura threw her a look of thanks.
"It's wonderful!" Sakura bubbled, happy to talk about a safer subject. She didn't want to worry her younger sisters with her strange fascination with the mysterious kingdom of Konoha.
"It's about magic and romance and enchantments, and a prince who longs for a princess but doesn't even get to meet her until the end of chapter three…" Sakura's comfortable ramble about her latest book sped their way home.
By the time they rounded the bend in the road that split off the main street to their house the air of discomfort around Sakura had lightened though she was unable to fully banish Gai and Konoha from her mind. But even she forgot them when they noticed their father standing, unusually pale in the fading light, at the front gate. It wasn't unusual for him to come out to greet them, but the look in his eyes was grim.
"Father?" Hinata asked as the girls sprinted the distance between them.
"Sakura, Hinata, Hanabi, please come upstairs with me," Hiashi requested, his pale lilac eyes as grave as the day he'd informed them of their poverty. "I've received a letter from the capital."
As they say, we authors thrive of reviews, so click that button! Thank you ^^
I'm also open to suggestions about what the enchanted people in Konoha end up being transformed as, especially Shikamaru, Kiba, Shino, and Asuma. And a name for the kingdom the Hyuuga family's a part of (it ISN'T Konoha) and a name for the kingdom's capital as well as the village they're living in would also be SUPER helpful! If I end up using your suggestion you WILL get the credit for it ^^ thank you for your help in advance ^^
The muse would appreciate your cookies ^^ and thank you for reading this monstrously long chapter ^^