A Life in the Sun

Chapter 1: The Spiderweb


This time, Hinata is born when the leaves are just turning golden. Much too early, she comes out shaded in blots of blue and purple, and spends her first weeks in an incubator with a slim tube in her nose.

It's not until twelve weeks later that she can clearly take in her parents' features. Her mother's face is pale and tired, with dark rings under her eyes. She is still beautiful, at least to Hinata. It's remarkable how much of her mother's appearance she has forgotten. The brown mole on her left cheek, the lift of her slender eyebrows and the plumpness of her mouth- she'd forgotten all of it, left with only the impression of her mother's warm smile and kind hands.

Her father's face is less lined, less stern and he holds her like she means something. She can feel his chakra hovering by her side when she wakes in the night, even more often than her mother's. It is a surprise, and Hinata isn't sure if it's a welcome one. She has plans, and they don't include honoring her father and the clan. They don't include loving Hyuga Hiashi, who she remembers as an impassive statue, a haughty taunt frozen to stone in disappointment. It is a stranger's hands that hold her so gently to his broad chest.

She is assigned a caretaker the moment they return from the hospital, and after those twelve weeks where her eyes clear, Hinata recognizes her as well. Hyuga Reiko, a quiet Branch member in her late twenties who she'd lost touch with some years after her mother's death. Reiko had been reassigned, and Hinata later found out that she'd been killed in the invasion that interrupted her first chunin exam. She'd mourned the woman's in a distant way, occupied as she was with her team and their missions.

Reiko is the first person to see Hinata activate her Byakugan, when she is seven months old. The caretaker drops the bottle of formula she's holding and her own pale eyes grow wide and startled. Hinata has to let the power flushing through the veins supplying their clan's special vision go after a few short moments, shocked to feel how lacking her body is in chakra. But her activating their family's special sight plants the seed, at least. The seed of the Hyuga heir's genius.

This time, she's going to blaze through the ranks, and mostly not for any kind of selfish motive. Mostly not to prop up her pride, to make sure she never has to see herself as less ever again. Mostly.

She catches Reiko speaking with her father when Hiashi returns from a meeting later that night. "Are you sure it was a full activation?" She hears his stiff silk hakama rustle as he sits down. "You are aware that chakra-flares around the eyes are not uncommon for Hyuga children at this age."

"Yes, Hiashi-sama, I'm aware of that," Reiko says patiently, and Hinata wishes the door to her room was open so she could observe their expressions. She has a plan, yes, but plans had to change according to outside actions and reactions. She curls a tiny fist in front of her face and tries to will herself to remain awake for the duration of the conversation. "It was a full activation, without a doubt. Both eyes had two fully developed dynamic veins supporting the sight."

There is a thick, thoughtful silence and Hinata slowly evens out her breathing into a semblance of natural sleep when she hears the quiet rattle of the door to her nursery. Behind closed eyelids she feels her father's chakra like the flame of a candle in the darkness. He leans over her, and maybe it's only because she's spent a life under his severe regard, but she can feel the weight of his gaze on her even without looking.

-.-.-.-

Hiashi watches her and Hinata waits patiently for another month to pass before she one day, as he's picking her up, gurgles out a word: "Father!" He's too much in control of himself to drop her, but there is a ripple in his arms and he stares down at her with pure shock scrawled over his aristocratic features. She made him look at her like that, with astonishment turning into incredulous pride. She put that expression on his face.

He sets her to lessons the day after, and Hinata reabsorbs the basics of writing and speaking and masters hand to eye coordination. The clan has taken notice of her, word spreading from her various teachers and morphing until Hiashi is not the only one watching her like she's glowing.

When Hinata turns two, she's heard her father be offered the first sons of various prominent, wealthy merchant families with ties to their clan as her consort and knows that the civilian clans won't be the only ones interested in her. She'd expected this development, even if this didn't happen the last time until Hanabi entered adolescence and proved to be fairly competent in her role as the heir.

She plays go with her father, and watches his pale eyes sharpen as she challenges his strategies with moves far beyond what most of her peers can do. Hinata knows just how to toe the line between impressive and suspicious, and only plays like she knows Shikamaru-san could at this age.

She doesn't see her mother very often, as her days are devoured by one lesson after another, and that shouldn't be as much of a relief as it is. Her mother doesn't have the all-seeing eyes, but her gaze penetrates in a way her father's doesn't. It's like a vivisection. The irrational thought that her mother will one day stand up and declare her to be an imposter keeps her away even when she's not caught in the daily spiderweb of learning.

"Hinata," her father says one day, "It's time you entered the Academy." She has just turned four, and it's much too early. Hinata smiles like a flower with a poisonous center, and doesn't give any indication that she knows it's because her father wants to show her off. Rumors of her intelligence have spread far enough that the ninja clans have taken notice of it as more than just civilian gossip. There are tales about how she could rival another genius, born a few years earlier to the Hyuga's rival clan.

Hinata has no plans whatsoever to be caught up in Itachi's life. She knows what he will do and why, and approves. She will not interfere. Also, the temptation of his serpent little brother being so close by… Keeping herself from acting would be near irresistible, and she can't afford a slip-up like that. She has to be strong enough to stop him, later.

So Hinata enters the Academy, and burns as brightly there as she did in the compound. The teachers praise her like she's a diamond in a basket of pebbles, and as she takes care not to offend anyone, everyone wants to be her friend. She makes a lot of good, useful acquaintances. Especially with the clan heirs, though she makes sure to never be the one making the first overture.

She'll need their regard in the future, but not only theirs- she is not so foolish as to assume that connections in the civilian world are unimportant. They too are on the village council, and they have their own kind of power. She surprised that so few of the other clan heirs seem to realize that. The daughter of the Otono clan has the ear of the daimyo's youngest son, and the daughter of the Tachibana clan has traveled to every port in Fire Country with her wealthy merchant's family. The son of the leader of the old Uzuki samurai family has highly placed cousins in Iron Country's ruling body.

Hinata weaves her webs, and her pale eyes watch the threads soar and spread outwards. Like ripples on the water, or new branches on a tree.

"Hinata-chan," calls six-year-old Ino, high voice childish but uncharacteristically respectful. "Wanna come to my place and play?"

Hinata smiles, thinks, the Yamanaka has always been involved with the T&I. Thinks, there is no greater source of information that that department. She knows they'd never let anything slip, but that doesn't mean she'll never have use of such a connection.

She goes with Ino to her house and is formal but childishly warm to her parents. Ino's mother is a civilian ikebana artist named Keiko with scarred hands and a deep voice. When Ino wanders off to the bathroom, Hinata spends a few minutes speaking quietly with her about flower arrangements.

"Hinata-chan, do you want to see the garden?" says Ino when she returns, and they all trot off into the Yamanakas luxurious backyard. The scent from the flowers that cover everything in the garden is overwhelming, and Hinata consciously keeps herself from tucking her nose into her collar. She follows Ino around the yard, and the blond girl makes her a bouquet with such enthusiasm that Hinata's appreciative smile is entirely unfeigned.

When a Branch house servant comes to retrieve her late in the afternoon, Hinata thinks that the Yamanakas are surprisingly warm to be an interrogator's family. She also carefully folds the thought of Inoichi's deep water gaze into the back of her mind, to remind herself that even though she's lived twenty-six years and possesses knowledge of future events, there are people here with more knowledge and experience than she. People who see deeper and whose reach stretches farther.

The days and weeks and months pass and she plays often with civilian children and learns civilian secrets; plays occasionally with shinobi children and learn less than she wants but enough, and slowly the world around her expands and twists into the beginnings of an information network. She plays go with Shikamaru and asks about the deer; she eats lunch with Chouji and asks about food pills; she skips rope with Ju-chan of the Tachibana clan and talks merchant routes. All discreetly, and always with an hourglass in the back of her mind, the sand draining towards the bottom of the two cups as her time at the Academy draws to an end. Hinata is seven, and all her peers are several classes below her.

She passes by stands on the Konoha market and people wave to her not because she's the Hyuga heir, but because she's played with their children or the children of someone they know. People not only watch her like she's radiant, they watch her with honest smiles in their eyes. It's wonderful - it's novel - it's smothering.

The day she gains her headband is the day her father begins to speak to her like an adult. Triumph is a living thing inside her every time Hiashi looks at her and sees her. Her mother watches with disapproving eyes, and Hinata doesn't care because Hanabi's birth didn't end Hisoka's life this time. Her mother loves her helplessly and wishes she could have been a child for longer, but she has Hanabi to dote on and Hinata hopes that is enough.

"You're like a little adult, Hina-chan," says Hisoka one day, stroking her hair. Her eyes are melancholy and the fingers that card through Hinata's hair are hesitant. Hinata smiles up at her, showing off the gap where her one of her front teeth used to be. Hisoka laughs. "Did it finally fall out, then?" she asks and Hinata nods.

It's a lie. Her first C-rank went the way of all C-ranks: south. A medic healed her cheekbone and jaw fracture, and had to pull the tooth out as an infection had begun to take root in her gums.

"Let's put it under your pillow for the toothfairy to find," Hisoka says, even though she knows it's too late to have Hinata believe in such a fairytale creature.

"I lost it," somewhere far away from Leaf. Hisoka's gaze grows sad and strangely heavy, and she presses a kiss to the crown of Hinata's head before going to find Hanabi. Hinata looks out at where they play in the yard, listens to her sister's shrieking happy laughter and rubs her thumb in the hole where her tooth used to be.


A/N: And here is the first chapter. Present tense as her new life begins, because I think it works for this story. What do you think of Hinata and her plans? Of her relationship with Hiashi and Hisoka?

This was originally meant to be a one-shot, but once I started writing it wouldn't stop growing. I'm aiming for a ~10-shot or so, if there's enough interest in the story. The chapters will be shorter than what I usually write, just to give you heads up.

(Thanks goes to Against-The-Current for her thoughts and help!)