Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Chapter 4: Consequences
If the bombs go off the sun will still be shining
The moon was the first thing she saw when her eyes opened. She came back to the world of the living in a daze of confusion and a world of hurt. She had no idea how long she'd been out. She blinked blearily to clear her vision and let out a wet cough. There wasn't a single part of her body that didn't hurt.
Slowly and cautiously she rose into a sitting position. That's when all of the night's previous events caught up to her and she fell back to the ground in a heap.
"Oh Kami." The words were croaked out.
In her mind, all she heard was a loud ringing. Her thoughts were drowned out by a dull throbbing. The moment she attempted to process a single thought, what felt like a sharp knife stabbed through her brain and everything blanked out once again. She simply could not comprehend the situation.
She struggled to her side and looked around with dazed eyes. Another cough, and blood splattered the ground next to her face.
With black spots filling her line of sight, she crawled at a snail's pace towards her cousin's body. She couldn't think about the pool of red surrounding Hinata. She couldn't think about how still she was, lying face down with her face turned the other way.
Each sluggish movement shot stinging pains throughout her body. She didn't even have the strength to turn her head to where she knew her brother lay.
She finally reached her cousin and sat up heavily on her knees. She could feel her heart thumping in her chest.
Hinata was unmoving. Her pale jacket was now stained a dark red. She realized belatedly that her knees were touching the pool of blood. It was still warm.
Her short, dark mop of hair was all she could see of the girl's face. It swayed in the slight breeze. She absently reached up to brush her own hair behind her back. It had come loose of its braid a while ago. She felt the breeze on her own face and scrunched up her nose when she realized her hitai-ate was not secured to her forehead like it was supposed to be. Her curse mark was on display.
In her mind, she remained blissfully unaware of the severity of the situation. Slowly, she reached out an arm. She latched onto Hinata's shoulder and began to pull. Her teeth clenched as pain filled her arm and she realized she didn't even have enough strength to turn her cousin over. With gritted teeth, she reached both her arms out and clenched the girls arm. She pulled with all her might.
Natsuka's eyes widened in horror when things plopped out of Hinata's midsection and slid out into the sand.
Oh. A flutter of alarm entered her mind as slowly, she began to really wake up. What she was seeing caused a flow of adrenaline to course through her bones, and her wheezing breaths became short and ragged.
Her cousin. Her cousin. Hinata. The heir was dead. The heir was dead. The trauma inflicted upon Natsuka's body hadn't allowed her to come to terms with the situation. Now she was. Hinata was actually dead. Dead. Her entrails were still sluggishly flowing across the desert floor. The entirety of Natsuka's legs were now covered in blood. Her eyes were glued onto the horrendous site before her and she found it impossible to look away. Her shaking arms slowly drifted to her face and covered her gaping mouth. Her eyes were wide as saucers. Distantly, she heard a high-pitched keening sound and realized it was coming out of her own mouth.
Then her eyes drifted up to Hinata's face. And if possible, the situation got a whole lot worse. Her arms fell to her sides as vomit spewed out of her and covered her lap. It had been an incontrollable reaction. Because there on Hinata's face, where two lavender eyes should have been, were two bloody and gaping holes.
The Byakugan had been stolen. And Hinata's body had been desecrated in the process.
That's when her strength really did give out, and she collapsed beside the dead heir, covered in her own filth.
Shinobi ambled around the former battleground, seeing to the wounded and cleaning up the mess. Kakashi Hatake and Might Gai were moving around frantically, looking for their students. It was still pitch black outside, but the sun would be rising soon enough.
"Kaka-sensei!" A shaky voice spoke. "Where's Sakura-chan?"
"We'll find her, Naruto. Stay put." The man's Sharingan was on display and he was looking rather haggard. Beside the Uzumaki boy lay his teammate Sasuke Uchiha. He'd passed out from chakra exhaustion.
Gai gave a few short words to Kakashi and blinked out of existence. He hadn't seen any of his students since the fight began. That had been nearly twelve hours ago.
Around them, Anbu paced about. Checking the dead and taking statements. No one could deny the moment of relief they'd all felt upon seeing the elite shinobi arrive, but it'd been far too late. They'd shown up too late to do any good.
Kurenai flashed into existence a few feet away. A girl with twin buns atop her head lay flung over her shoulder. She sat her down gently on the ground and the girl blinked blearily and mumbled a few quiet words. She didn't appear to be coherent. Around them sat several other Genin. Shino Aburame lay unconscious, and next to him a small hoard of medics kneeled working on the body of Kiba Inuzuka. His ninken Akamaru sat a few feet away out of the way of the medics, whimpering.
"Gai-san has left the area to search for his students. It might be imperative to inform him that one has arrived here safely." An Anbu agent spoke up, angled towards Kurenai. She was too busy looking on at her own students with a despondent look on her face to reply, but she wordlessly took off again and disappeared from view. One of her own students was also missing.
Nara Shikamaru sat on the ground, exhausted but relatively unharmed besides a broken foot and shattered kneecap. His teammate Ino was asleep next to him. Blood seeped through the gauze of her hastily wrapped shoulder injury. Asuma was out looking for their third teammate, Chouji.
Farther out, Kakashi met up with Gai as they searched through bodies, looking for anyone who was still alive. Footsteps moved towards them and they both looked up to see Kurenai. "TenTen is alright." She said.
Gai let out a breath as a single tear fell down his eye.
She continued. "There are five Genin still missing."
Kakashi spoke. "We just passed Asuma. He had Chouji." He didn't mention how alarmingly pale and gaunt the young boy had looked. Right now, they had to focus on finding their students. Everything else could wait.
"Sakura, Neji, Natsuka and Hinata are still out there somewhere." It took them all a moment to process that statement, but when they did, each of their eyes widened. Not one, not two, but all three of the Hyuuga children were missing. At best, this was a terrible coincidence. At worst, it was a terrible discovery.
Kurenai spoke again. "The last time I saw them was right before that huge blast went off. It was impossible to see anything after that, and I had three of those bastards on my back." She let out a shaky breath as a terrible look came upon her face. "It's my fault."
"Stop it, Kurenai." It was Gai. He hadn't spoken until now. "It's not your fault. None of us knew this would happen."
Nevertheless, the Jounin were each beginning to get a very bad feeling in their guts. Something about this didn't add up. They were only just now beginning to realize that something far more sinister was going on. It was becoming obvious now that this hadn't been a simple ambush.
A single Anbu squad stood before several bodies. They'd been scouring the area for a couple of hours already, taking a death toll and searching for evidence to bring back to Konoha. They didn't expect to find two minimal chakra signatures this far out into the dunes.
The four nin came upon a rather disturbing site. Three small bodies and one larger one littered the ground. The amount of blood was remarkable. With his Sharingan activated, Itachi easily deduced that two of the children were still alive. He rambled out a short order to Hayate to begin working on one of them, the boy. His heartbeat was much too slow.
Hayate knelt beside the boy whom Itachi now recognized as Neji Hyuuga, and his hands lit up with green chakra. He began taking a diagnostic scan as Itachi moved to the other child. A girl. He frowned. It was the boy's twin, Natsuka. What were two Hyuuga doing this far out, isolated from everyone else?
"Itachi." Came Shisui's unusually solemn voice. He turned to see his cousin looking down upon the last smaller body. Genma was standing beside him. Shishui has his mask lifted over his face and was staring down at the body with red eyes. He had a strange look on his face. "Take a look at this."
"This girl needs immediate medical attention." He stated calmly. Wordlessly, Genma switched places with him as his own hands began to glow. Itachi moved to stand beside his cousin to see what had disturbed him so much. When he saw, his own eyes widened.
There was no point in wasting breath. No words needed to be said when they all knew that it was the Hyuuga heiress laying at their feet, eye sockets gaping up at them. The Anbu agents took no mind to the gore coming out of her middle. Their search and rescue mission had just gotten a lot more complicated.
Itachi allowed his mind to further analyze the situation. Something wasn't right here. He looked around and took note of every detail. The body of the enemy shinobi, a man, relatively free of blood. His eye's allowed him to see the man's disturbed chakra points. The Gentle Fist had been his end.
What didn't make sense, however, were the two small puddles of blood a few feet from the dead man, closer to the children. They looked strange, as if bodies belonged over them but were no longer there. Itachi's eyes tightened. He knew that a single shinobi could not cause this much damage to three Hyuuga, even if they were all Genin.
And to add even more confusion to the chaos, there was something else that Itachi couldn't make sense of.
Only the heiress's eyes had been ripped from her skull. The twin's eyes remained perfectly intact. Even stranger, both of the children's hitai-ate lay at their feet, covered in dust. They'd fallen off, or been taken off. Itachi knew the latter was more than likely the correct scenario. Both of the Hyuuga's curse marks were prominent dispays of ink on their foreheads. This did not bother Itachi; he knew they were branch members.
What bothered him was the fact that whoever had committed this atrocity had decided to only take a single pair of Byakugan eyes when he could have had three. By the looks of things, once the status of the twins had been discovered, their eyes had no longer been wanted. This was problematic, because only a very few select people were supposed to be aware of the mechanics of Byagukan eyes. Only a very few select people were supposed to know that should a branch member of the Hyuuga clan die, their eyes would consequently be destroyed.
Itachi, who when faced with a problem could usually come to a logical conclusion within a matter of minutes, was stumped. Whoever had done this knew far more than they should. And besides that, they hadn't killed the twin Hyuuga's when they easily could have. If they knew that the eyes would be destroyed upon death, why did they bother keeping them alive anyway? Wouldn't it have made more sense to kill them and make sure they were out of the way?
If possible, the lines on Itachi's face deepened further as he frowned. This situation was becoming more and more puzzling by the minute. He sighed as he thought about what would be done about the dead heiress.
Just then, a gurgling noise came from the girl. Genma had pumped enough chakra into her system for it to start flowing properly again, and she was waking up. Itachi felt a brief moment of sympathy for the girl and silently thought that she'd come back to the world of the living far too soon.
With a hacking cough, Natsuka awoke for a second time. With blurry vision she saw a figure crouched over her. She feebly flailed around for a moment as she struggled to breath properly.
"Easy." A gentle voice said. Natsuka finally took a second to focus on the blur kneeling next to her and realized it was unmistakably a Konoha Anbu agent. Her brain caught up with her body and she forced herself to still her unsteady movements.
"You're ridiculously low on chakra kid. Pretty sure an elderly civilian would have more than you do right now." The agent, definitely a man, continued speaking in a friendly voice. His palms were settled over her chest, flowing green with healing chakra.
Natsuka was failing to appreciate his attempt at humor, and said nothing. Her eyes had drooped to their usual stoop and she looked about ready to fall asleep when the agent reached a hand up and lifted off his mask.
Startled, she glanced at his now uncovered face. He had straight brown hair that fell below his ears, and straight eyebrows that slashed over his chocolate brown eyes. She distantly noticed that he was rather handsome. His eyes looked up into hers now, and he had a stern look on his face.
"I don't know what happened here, kid, but it was real stupid of you to let yourself get all the way to complete chakra exhaustion. Can't defend yourself if you've got nothing left."
She merely blinked droopily at him. She wondered if it would be socially acceptable to go to sleep right now.
As if he could read her mind, he frowned. "Stay with me kid. You're gonna be just fine after we get you patched up. Everything's gonna be alright." His voice had a soothing quality to it, but Natsuka was not fooled.
And she was beginning to get really fed up with everything. So she threw caution to the wind and let herself go.
"Anbu-san." She began. And wow, was that her voice? It was a pained sounding croak, barely above a whisper. "While I deeply appreciate your attempts at lecturing me, I am really not in the mood for it right now." The Anbu slowly retreated his healing hands from her and sat back on his hunches, as if sensing the dam cracking open inside of her.
"What I would appreciate is a damn time machine to take me back to before all this shit happened. What I would appreciate is for you to get out of my face." Slowly, she painfully raised herself up, first onto her backside and then after a few seconds onto her feet. She pitifully fell back onto a knee, but forced herself back up. The Anbu remained crouched in front of her and Natsuka was disappointed to note that she was only about a foot taller than him in their current position. He blinked up at her but didn't say anything. It only spurred her anger further.
"How can you be so cheery! Don't you understand? Look around you, you fool!" Her voice was rising in volume and taking on a crazed edge. She leaned over the crouching Anbu, her face inches from his.
"They're all dead! Everyone. Everyone! She's dead!" She even poked a finger at the man's chest. He still didn't react.
"Where were you!" She straightened up and twirled around in a circle, flailing her arms out wide in a gesture to the other ninja standing around her, whom she'd only just now realized were there.
"You stupid bastards! What are you gonna do, huh? Help us out? It's over, in case you morons couldn't tell! Done. Finished." She crossed her hands in a zigzag motion. "Way to show up late for the show!" She let it all out in one big breath.
Shisui was flabbergasted. He couldn't recall the last time he'd seen an angry Hyuuga. Oh wait, he never had.
"I wasn't trying to defend myself, you idiots! I was supposed to protect her!"
All of Natsuk'a anger drained out of her in a fickle second when she saw her brother.
"Neji." She whispered. She immediately ran to his side. Or tried to, at least. She fell to her knees halfway there and crawled the rest of the way. When she reached his side she grabbed his face with weak hands. "Neji. Neji. Wake up Neji."
"He's going to be fine." Another Anbu agent spoke to her. He was kneeling next to her brother, glowing palm hovering over his ravaged arm. This one hadn't taken his mask off. "His injuries are mainly external. Other than that he is suffering from extreme chakra exhaustion, like you are."
Natsuka merely blinked at him and looked back down at her twin. Then she froze. The curse mark. Neji's curse mark. It was just… there! For the whole world to see. She felt an overwhelming sense of urgency and looked around frantically, eyes searching every direction.
Where was it? Where was it? Tears began to fill her eyes. There was a tap on her shoulder.
She turned. Another Anbu, this one also with his mask off. She didn't have the energy to be surprised that it was an Uchiha with a gentle look on his face, holding her brother's hitai-ate and her own in his upheld hand. She hadn't even thought about her own headband, until now. She reached a tentative hand up to her forehead, only to feel bare skin. He glanced down at the headbands, and then back up at her. Take them, he seemed to say.
So she did. Snatched them out of his hand, to be more precise. Then she hastily, but gently, wrapped her brother's hitai-ate around his head before messily doing the same to her own.
Cover your shame.
All at once the energy she'd felt from the adrenaline coursing through her system during the momentary lapse of anger drained out of her. For the first time since waking, she risked a glance towards her cousin. Her dead cousin. The dead heir. Hinata's empty sockets looked up at the rising sun. They'd never blink again. It was a sight that Natsuka knew would haunt her for a very long time.
And for the third consecutive time, she passed out.
She woke up the fourth time in a new place. A bland, white ceiling came into focus. The hospital, no doubt. She glanced down and saw that she'd been dressed in a white hospital gown and had wires hooked into each of her arms. A heart monitor stood a few feet away. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Then, again, everything came rushing back to her. The heart monitor began beeping in quick succession as her blood pressure climbed. An older looking nurse rushed into the room.
"Oh! Goodness dear, you'll have to settle down!" But she couldn't settle down. Her breaths got faster and faster, and the nurse was saying something but she couldn't hear it. Then she felt a prick in her arm, and a quick sting.
She fell asleep yet again.
When she awoke again, she forced herself to remain calm. She felt like death. There was a crick in her neck and it cracked when she looked around. She noticed that her hospital room was empty of furnishings save for a bland looking armchair. And in said chair was her brother.
"Neji." She said.
His pale eyes opened and he blinked rapidly. He'd been asleep. When he saw her, awake and conscience, he stood up and walked over to her bed.
"Suka." He returned the greeting.
And for a long while, they just stared at each other. Remembering everything that happened, everything they'd done. What they'd failed to do.
"Are you alright, aniki?" She finally spoke, voice frailer than it'd ever been before. He was dressed in hospital garb like herself.
He let out a deep breath. "I'll live." He lifted an arm. The arm that'd been broken. It was bandaged, but looked to be intact. "The hardest part was putting the pieces of my arm back together, but they did all that while I was asleep due to chakra exhaustion. I woke up two days ago and have been stuck on bedrest since then." He looked rather put-out at that last part.
"Where is everyone else? TenTen? Gai-sensei?"
"Both fine."
She was about to say more, ask more, when he spoke again.
"Natsuka… the funeral. It's tomorrow."
She didn't need to be a prodigy to know what he was talking about. The twin Hyuuga siblings looked at each other with wide, frightened, and distraught eyes.
"What… what.. how long have I been out?" She finally asked. She let her head fall into her hands. What a mess things had turned into, so fast.
"A week." Slowly, Neji leaned over and draped an arm across her shoulder.
"Has, you know, has.. has he spoken to you?" Natsuka's voice had become a weak, shrill sound.
"No. I have not seen him. He didn't.. he hasn't been to the hospital." Neji spoke with now gritted teeth.
Deep down, a voice inside Natsuka could only hope that this would be the most difficult conversation she ever had to have. But she knew the worst was yet to come.
Her brother lay his head down on her shoulder, and they remained like that for a long while. Her sitting, him standing. Neither speaking.
"What's going to happen to us aniki?" She spoke after some time. "I'm scared, Neji." It wasn't something she'd easily admitted. Fear was one emotion she'd barely felt out on that battlefield. Terror, maybe. But the adrenaline and panic and chaos hadn't allowed her any room for pure fear. She hadn't had time to sit around and contemplate about being afraid.
But she did now. And she'd never felt such fear.
Neji ambled up into her bed without a word, with much less grace than he was used to. He wasn't even close to a full recovery yet. They lay side by side. "I can't answer questions I don't know the answer to, Natsuka." She took a moment to really look at her brother. Neji had aged years in the span of a week. He looked thinner, as if he hadn't been eating, and paler than usual. And worst of all, he had the most desperate, despondent look in his eyes.
They didn't talk again after that. After hours of staring at the wall blankly - something Natsuka used to sneer at when she saw Hinata doing it – they fell asleep and didn't wake for a long time.
The next day, a funeral was held in Konoha. It was for a shinobi. Just one, a little girl. A picture frame stood on top of the casket. It was of a young girl with lavender eyes and short navy hair.
The Hokage spoke, but Natsuka hardly heard a word. He said things about what a travesty it was, what a great loss of potential it was. How devastating the loss of such a young life was. She let her head fall back and glanced up at the sky. Not a cloud to be seen. The sun shone with a brightness that made her eyes water. The sky was not mourning today.
She looked back to earth, back to the sea of black surrounding them. Neji stood next to her, in his own mourning clothes. The twin's stood alone. Almost every important ninja in the village was in attendance. Their Jounin sensei, plus several others. The Konoha 12 in its entirety. The Konoha 11, now. Members of the four noble clans; the entire Hyuuga clan. And the Nara's and Yamanaka's and Inuzuka's. Even a few masked Anbu stood in attendance. The death of a clan heir was a big deal, after all.
Natsuka had been avoiding looking in a certain direction. But there was an itch in her soul, and she felt a pair of familiar eyes locked onto her. The Hokage was still speaking. Natsuka lifted her eyes, already knowing what she would find.
Hiashi stood directly in her field of vision. She hadn't seen her uncle since the morning they'd left the village. Neither had Neji.
They all knew that an inevitable confrontation was going to occur. The only question was when. It hasn't occurred yet because the Hyuuga clan head had not stepped foot into the hospital throughout the entirety of his niece's and nephew's stay.
Natsuka's heart was beating in her chest.
Thirty-seven signatures.
He was just staring. Emotionless.
Protect the heir.
Despite the lack of expression on her uncle's face, his stare unnerved her to the core and gave her chills to the very soles of her feet.
Facing Hiashi Hyuuga was not something the twins would ever be prepared to do, but they'd been forced to now.
Protect the heir.
They hadn't. And they would pay for it.