A Life Best Forgotten
Short Summary: Hinata Hyuuga-Uchiha stands alone as a paradox of strength and weakness, a fragile girl who had nearly been surpassed by her younger sister in the way of family honor. Hinata, a girl who had finally won out by marrying into one of the richest families in Konoha. Now she stands firm as the sole female heir of the Hyuuga family fortune, and side-by-side with the male heir of the Uchiha legacy. Any children produced by such a marriage would be above all reproach; it was truly an awe-inspiring match. The only problem is, one fateful encounter has left her devoid of all her memories from the past five years. Now Hinata Hyuuga must return to a life of grandeur that she does not remember, accompanied by a cold and heartless marriage. Where will the roads of destiny take her from here? Perhaps into the arms of another man, defying everything that her entire life stands for? What will happen to Hinata when she is forced to chose between extreme misery and extreme happiness?
A/N: It's late here, and it's been such a long time since I've posted anything on this site, or even thought about it, but the inspiration for this story hit me out of nowhere like a brick to the chest and I had to get it out! Well here is chapter one =) I hope it doesn't bore you to tears. I know you all want to get to the romance and to get in on the dirty scoop of Hinata's life at home with Sasuke (wut?) haha. Don't worry, chapter two will not disappoint. Also, I apologize in advance for any small typos. And, and, and! I really actually enjoyed writing this chapter. Usually writing about missions makes me crazy but this time it was really fun. Enjoy!
Chapter One
Three pinpoints beneath her bare feet. Two on the left, one on the right, but she knew that she must not falter. Three tiny jagged pebbles digging into the rough underside of her feet. Hinata emptied her mind and held her breath. She mustn't move an inch for fear that she would make a sound, or draw attention to herself. The thing waiting in the shadows knew all about her; knew who she was and why she was here. Maybe it could even smell her. But no, she couldn't afford to be frightened now. She had to think. And those three tiny pinpoints were pricking into her skin enough to draw blood.
It had been two long and lonely weeks with only Kiba and Shino as her sole companions. But even as quiet and surly as they could be, they were still better company than the husband she had left behind at home. When the opportunity had finally once again arisen for Hinata to hone her skills as a practiced ninja, her husband Sasuke had encouraged her to leave with no more than a few short words. He hadn't even turned to look at her. Though this was hardly Hinata's first S Rank mission, she still had found it absolutely dizzying the way that Sasuke had nodded her off as she had walked out the door that day. She had even filled him on the tactical outlines and advantages of the mission. As risky as it was, Sasuke had listened with that crease in his brow and a frown on his face, nodding every so often, with not a care for Hinata's safety. He hadn't even bothered kissing her goodbye.
And what reason did he have to? she had wondered later. She was not exactly the most submissive wife, nor he the warmest husband. They hadn't even shared a bed in three long years. How trifling a title "husband" or "wife" must really be.
And so Hinata had left following his example – without a backward glance. And she had run straight into this terrible danger, even more than anybody had initially expected. A water demon had long been prowling a lake deep in the forests of an island of the Land of Water. The entire island had long been abandoned by its inhabitants for the demon that lay in wait. The demon was of the name Mizuchi, and he scoured the island every night to make sure that none had returned. He had flooded all the villages with tsunamis and swept the debris out to sea centuries ago. The Land of Water had always been content to let Mizuchi have his island, for they believed that respect for the ancient god-like creatures was vital for human survival. They had always believed that it was essential to live in peace with such creatures, for the humans were not sharing their own world, but rather the demons were sharing theirs with them. They had been a smart people. Once.
After generations of the same belief system, a new and young leader had been raised in the Land of Water. Some would call this young leader spiteful and selfish, for he had revolutionary ideas to change the entire country to his own liking. A man who was little more than a boy always looking for the easy way out. With the ever rising population of the Land of Water, he had decided that it was long past time to invade Mizuchi's territory once again, and take back the island. The ninja of the land had all refused to take part, however, and the young leader had had no choice but to call for aid from another. Somehow, the job had landed at the Leaf Village's doorstep, and their Hokage Tsunade left with assembling a team. Hinata had long since felt her skin crawling with the need for an escape from her life of empty grandeur, and though she was an elite ninja, she had had to beg for the job. She was an important woman now after all, with a lot of very hefty responsibilities, but eventually the Hokage had relented.
And so three teams had set forth from Konoha. After a long journey across the open seas, the three teams had said their goodbyes to one another. They had planned on moving in on the beast from three vital points of the island – the north, east, and south. How could Hinata have known then that it would be so long before she would see any other Hidden Leaf shinobi again? Excluding her fellow teammates of course.
Two short days after the split, Hinata and her team had finally reached their destination at Mizuchi's island. The island was much larger than she could have ever imagined it would be in her mind – how in the world were three small teams of ninja supposed to conquer all of that? But it was also so beautiful. She stepped out on the soft sands of the beach for the first time and assessed her surroundings. As a ninja, she was trained to see everything around her while only looking at what was actually important, but as a young woman who had once been a romantic at heart, she saw the place as an island paradise. The sands were white and the forests were all kinds of green and the ocean water was as clear as the sky. She inhaled the smell of the wild – the salty scent of the ocean on the breeze, the damp greenery of the forest floor. And that night with the stars lighting up the entire sky, she thought to herself that even being here and knowing that soon she would be face to face with the god-like water dragon Mizuchi, she could live here forever and never return home. There were no crowded cities and harsh streetlights to block her view of the sky from here. Here she was independent and strong and her options were limitless.
That first night had been the easiest of all the following nights. With all of the rumors they had heard from the people of the Land of Water about the demon monster prowling at night, there had been no sign of Mizuchi. Even so, the ninja were careful and quiet, silently and swiftly converging in on the meeting place in the very center of the island. The center of the island was supposed to be the demon's place of power – the great lake that was Mizuchi's true home. The plan had been to wait and watch. Look for weakness, a chink in the armor so to speak. But even after crossing all that land, after hours on their feet through the trees in the night, there had been no sight of the water demon or of the other two teams.
Hinata and Shino and Kiba had waited in silence by the clear lake all that night, but there had been little more than a ripple on the surface of the water. There had been no unusual sounds in the darkness of the forest. No water demon making an entrance. Their teammates had not responded to the agreed upon calls. Just nothing. But for the first night that was not so strange. Any number of problems could have held up their teams, and as for the water demon, perhaps he had finally let his guard down and was content that the humans were never coming back. Was he there, in the depths of the lake, she wondered?
When the sun had risen, the team had found a nice tall tree in which to camp. Kina and Hinata had settled in for sleep while Shino kept watch for the first part of the day. When Hinata had woken later, nothing had changed. Just a bright sunny day in the land of paradise. She had taken the next watch.
Night had fallen again, and still noting. For a week the days crawled by like this. No sign of any demon, water or otherwise, and no sign of the other shinobi either. They days were long and the nights were longer, and with every passing minute the three ninja became more and more agitated, more aggressive toward one another. They were all starting to wonder about the validity of this mission, and the whereabouts of their fellow ninja. Then, on exactly seventh night that marked a week since their arrival, something changed.
One minute the three ninja were staring through the brush at the lake water, and the next, there was something… in the air. A ripple, a change of mood. Hinata's eyes had become very heavy. She blinked several times to try and stay conscious. Had that been movement under the water of the lake? Was she starting to hallucinate now? But after a moment the thought left her, and she forgot about it. Her arms and legs, her entire body felt so heavy. She could barely lift her head much less care about… what was it? She had lost her train of thought. Hinata glanced over in her peripheral vision and saw that her two teammates were both sound asleep at their posts. That was odd. They didn't usually sleep at night here, only during the day. But her head was falling to her chest. She was so sleepy. Finally she couldn't fight it anymore. Hinata settled her weight against the bark of a tree and fell into a deep sleep.
Hinata had had a terrible dream. When she woke some hours later, with the moon much higher in the sky than it had been before, she was fully conscious in an instant, and she was alone. Her ninja calm battled fiercely with her instinct to panic and scream. Hinata's five senses immediately came alive as she activated the Byakugan and examined the world around her, which had all at once come alive with the sound of frightened animals. Was this it? Was this the time?
Three pin points. What had happened to her shoes? Her feet were bare and cold. There were extra shoes in her pack. She felt three rocks beneath her feet, stabbing her, but she couldn't worry about that. Something had been out there, something big moving through the forest. Mizuchi was out there. Probably looking for her. She knew better than to move or make a sound.
Suddenly something had come flying out of the forest toward her, and hit her square in the face, and Hinata had lost all consciousness once again.
The next day she woke to Kiba nursing her back to health. Her jaw had nearly been broken, her nose definitely had, and according to them she had been asleep for two days. Neither of her teammates seemed to be doing so well themselves. They were all bruised and bloody, and none of them could figure out what had happened to them that night. Had the water demon Mizuchi finally shown himself? Had he been trying to show them that he could play with them as easily as a cat could with a mouse? Had it been he who had put them to sleep? And what had the dreams meant? The three of them had collaborated their stories. The dreams had all been flashes of frightening images; nothing that had really taken true form, just vivid shapes and colors of violence and anger. Was Mizuchi angry now that the humans had come back to invade his home?
It was at that time that the three ninja had honestly considered aborting the mission. Even for an S Rank, this assignment was crazy, and without the help of the two other teams there was almost no point to carrying on alone. They would go back to the mainland, they finally decided, to ask for more help from the village. Or to at least report in on their progress, or rather their lack of progress. Even beaten and dirty as the three of them were, they had spent the day flying through the trees with revitalized hope. Finally they would be doing something. Finally there was more than just sitting and waiting. However when they finally made it back to the place where they had oh so carefully hidden their boat, they found the thing completely destroyed. Their escape back to the mainland had been torn to rubble as if a great force had smashed into it and ripped it apart. If there had been weather severe enough to cause so much damage to the boat, the surrounding beach and trees all should have been torn apart as well, but that was not the case. Mizuchi may as well have left his signature in the sand.
Of course, the possibility of being stranded had been accounted for, and the necessary equipment for survival and rescue had been given out to each of the three teams. But the emergency pack that they had carried along with them was considerably lighter than it had been the day before. Hinata hefted it from around her shoulder and realized this at once. She had not noticed earlier when they had been on the move, but now it was obvious. Some of their equipment was missing. Kiba and Shino both stared darkly at her as she relayed this to them. Hinata had been the one in charge of the emergency pack. She should have noticed these things earlier. Still, with what the three of them had been through the two nights before, neither of them could really put the blame on her, and as true ninja should they counted their blessings and went about their business. What was the next step in getting off the island? They could send a messenger bird. If they could find such a bird on the island. They scoured the wreckage of their boat for a flare, or a radio, anything, but came up short again. Nothing to be done about that.
Eventually they decided that the next step was to find the other teams. Go to the places on the island where they should have arrived and try to trace their movements. The three of them headed north first. It would take at least an entire day to reach the other side of the island, and they were all exhausted and sleep deprived, but after what had happened before none of them felt like sleeping. They paced themselves as they crossed the island, each of them wondering the same things – what would they find when they reached their destination? They didn't stop until they found what they were looking for – which was exactly what they had all three silently suspected. The wreckage of another boat, identical to their own on the other side of the island.
Kiba, the only real talker of the small group, cursed loudly, and kicked a nearby piece of metal from the rubble. "Dammit!" he shouted, and began stalking back and forth in three long strides, exactly like a caged dog might do. As Hinata watched him in her own shocked state, she thought idly that she could almost see a dog's tail on his backside, wagging furiously. "Well," he finally said, still angry, "at least we know that they're on the island somewhere. At least one of the teams made it."
"We're not alone," Shino agreed in his quiet tones. The words should have made them all feel better, but a chill like cold ice water being thrown from a bucket went through their little group. If there were any other shinobi on the island, where had they been all this time? Why hadn't they met with them by now?
Night was falling, and they all three desperately needed sleep, though none of them wanted it. Despite the dangers, they set up in a tree once again. Shino and Kiba both offered for first watch, but it was Shino who won out with his calm nerve and cool logic. Kiba settled in next to Hinata. She didn't think any of them wanted to be so far apart from one another. Not on this night. There was a water demon out there in the night, and they were alone and all but unprotected. At this point, whether awake or asleep there was little they could do in their defense now. Hinata thought this as a sort of comfort, but it only made her feel so much worse. Trapped with no way out, she thought. So eerily similar to her marriage back home. So different from the expenses and comforts she had grown accustomed to. To think, just a few short weeks ago she had been at home, sound asleep in her too-big bed with its fluffy white sheets and soft down comforter. Warm in her bed. Cold in her heart. So similar. So different. Hinata drifted while she thought this.
Suddenly she was wide awake. There had been a sound. Hadn't there been? Somewhere. She couldn't remember well enough to pinpoint it, but she had definitely heard something. She slowly opened her eyes. Her eyelids were heavy again, and she found she couldn't turn her head. A sharp stab of fear suddenly struck through her heart. Not again, she prayed. Not again.
She could just see Kiba's motionless form lying next to her against the tree. She wondered if he were conscious too, like she was, and unable to move. Her limbs were so heavy. Her body felt like it weighed a hundred, no, a thousand pounds. She couldn't even twitch her pinky finger. With the way her head was tilted, she could not see any part of Shino, but she wondered if he were asleep again under Mizuchi's spell. Suddenly there was a blast of air to her left. It swept through her body in a hot, humid breeze, and it was very unnatural. She realized at once what it must be. The breath of a demon. A very large demon. Mizuchi was there, and he was probably staring directly down at them.
Suddenly Hinata felt the breeze again, and it made her sick. Was his nose that great? Was he really smelling them? How big was Mizuchi? How powerful? There it was again. Images. They weren't in her mind, not completely. They were more like… there, in front of her face. Flashed of red, hatred, and violence. Anger above all. Mizuchi was so angry with her race, he had to be. They had come here to take his island. He had warned them before, only to find them here, trying again.
Her eyelids drooped low again. Against her will, Hinata fell into a deep sleep.
How much time had passed? What day was it? Kiba. Shino. She needed to… tell them… something. What had it been? It had been something very important. Something she had felt through her entire body with an urgency that could kill her. What had it been, indeed?
Her eye lids fluttered open. That sound. It was so loud. She could hear water everywhere, and she felt so weak and dirty. It was dark where she was, and there were no stars above her to light the sky. There was something wrong with that. For all the nights spent on this island, the stars had always been there to comfort her. But now she was in the dark. Hinata slowly moved her hands, examining her surroundings by touch. Even if she were strong enough to activate her Byakugan, she doubted that she would be able to see a thing in this kind of darkness. There were wet rocks all around her, under her and beside her. They clattered and clicked together as she disturbed them, but that was nothing compared to the roaring of the water. She could hear the sound of the water but she couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Her head was spinning, and the sound was as if it were converging on her from all sides.
Then there was another sound. A sharp hissing sort of sound, and more rocks moving against rocks, more water moving. Instinctively, Hinata's head snapped up to the direction of the sound, though in her heart of hearts she knew she didn't want to see whatever was making those noises. Even as her head came up, she prayed that she wouldn't see a thing in the darkness. And dread filled her as she stared directly into two impossibly huge yellow and glowing eyes. They were identical to the sharp, slanted eyes of a cat – they even glowed the way a cat's eyes do in the darkness, but each eye was at least twice the size of her head. Here she was at last, facing the demon she had been sent here to kill, and she knew in that moment everything that she had feared about this mission before. She was completely and totally inferior to this great, god-like beast of power. Even with her teammates she had been as alone as she was now. None of them had stood a chance.
Hinata closed her eyes, praying for the darkness once again, and curled in on herself. Waiting for this nightmare to end, waiting for death.
"Come now child," rumbled a very deep voice in the darkness, and the sound sent terror crawling through her bones. The voice was coming from inside her head. "You are blind like a child in the womb. Let me show you what I see."
In her mind's eye, a picture blossomed. The image was all shocking blues and greens and grey, every detail sharp. She could see her own small body, covered in bluish sand and dirt, curled up on herself on the ground. She was so tiny, like an ant compared to a human. All around was rock and water. They were in a cave deep underground, surrounded by a large black lake with a very small waterfall trickling down over the rocks. That was the sound, she thought. The sound of the waterfall was echoing all around. That was when she knew that this was Mizuchi's true home. His true place of power. And there was her own tiny body down below, lying there so small and defenseless, so close to the edge of that great black lake that it made her shudder with fear. Not wanting to see anymore, Hinata opened her eyes again and the image was gone.
"The water frightens you?" the beast asked with a kind of malice. "Of course, everything frightens you pitiful humans." Hinata swallowed hard and kept her eyes open, but her face down. "Speak!" the creature roared.
Hinata jumped, and sat up slowly. Trying to swallow her horror, she looked back into those huge yellow eyes. "We are not so afraid," she whispered. "Not of everything."
"Just stupid then," the monster growled back.
"Yes, I suppose we are," Hinata said quietly, more to herself than to the beast. It was true. How stupid poor, pitiful, tiny humans could be. They would do this, run headfirst into a losing battle. How stupid. How stupid. And now she was alone with her nightmare, and she was so frightened.
"I have looked into your heart, child," Mizuchi whispered in her mind. "You appreciate what others do not. You did not come here to kill our Mother, as so many others before you have done."
Mother? Hinata wondered. Another image came to mind then, but it was a memory from her first day on the island, conjured by the beast. White, beautiful sands. Green trees. The smell of the forest. The stars in the sky. Other memories followed swiftly, each one cutting like a knife. Flashes of grand parties and dresses made of fox fur that she had been made to prance around in, harsh streetlights, busy towns bustling with people and electricity. Killing our Mother, he had said. She understood now. Killing his island. Killing the world.
"No," she agreed. "I have not."
"You despise your pathetic life," the demon crooned. "I could end it for you right now, if that is what you wished. Out of the respect you have for our Mother I can at least grant you a swift death."
Hinata's mouth went dry. She didn't want to die. She just wanted to get out of this cave and far from this island. She wanted to abandon her duty as a ninja forever and flee for her life. She felt at her sides and realized that she still had all of her weapons on her. But any of those would only be a needle point prick to such a large monster, even if he felt it at all.
"How vain," Mizuchi snarled, and suddenly there was that hissing sound again and one of his great eyes was just mere inches from her face. The movement startled her. Without a thought, Hinata used the one hand she had had on a shuriken and stabbed at that eye.
The sound of the demon shrieking in pain racked her body with a strange pain of its own. The sound was deafening. Let me die, she thought. Now, I really do want to die. Please let me die.
"Not yet," another voice hissed somewhere in her mind. "Not yet child." And Hinata was lost to the world.