So here it finally is! After more than 40 days after I said it would 'come soon'. I'm horrible I know.
i don't know how there are still people out there believing in me and waiting for every chapter, but there obviously are a few.
Thank you so very very very much!

I've just only realized that this is actually my 50th chapter of this story. I should write some kind of special, but I really don't want to make you wait any longer.
So I raise my glass to all of you out there in the world who read these lines, thank you for coming this long long way with me!
Please stay with me a little while longer and stick to this story until the end. It really means a lot to me!

Thank you once again!


The Clan called 'Hatake'

Itachi and Seishi were quiet as their eyes rested on Sayuri. It was obvious that she wasn't really prepared to tell them her story, but she took a deep breath and started.

"Back then, when Konoha was founded, the Senju Clan and the Uchiha Clan teamed up with many other Clans in the region to ensure peace. For this sake they also asked the Konoha Tengu in the mountains to join their village and create a new bond between the demons and the humans. Up to this point the Tengu hadn't intended to have anything to do with the humans, especially the Shinobi, and of course they declined and chased them away ...", Sayuri made a short pause and grabbed Itachi's hand tightly.

"My mother, however, and a handful of other Tengu had liked the idea of living together with the humans. They were curious about them and wished to learn new things from them. So they left the mountains and headed for Konohagakure. But in exchange, they were banned from the mountains and were never allowed to return."

"So they were a part of the village from the very beginning?", Seishi asked. Most likely he just needed to ask something as self-explanatory as that to keep himself from asking a much more interesting question.

The foundation of Konoha had been over a hundred years ago. Just how old was Sayuri's mother? And what about her father?

"Yes … but they never used their demon forms and powers outside of the mountains. They just wanted to have a peaceful life together with the humans and they refused to fight. They gave themselves the Clan name 'Hatake' and worked on the fields, growing crops. The village accepted it, but then … the war broke out."

Itachi and Seishi nodded simultaneously. The war. Even though they had been so young, they both still had very vivid memories of the war. Horrible memories. Itachi remembered slowly … the day Konoha had been attacked and overrun … the day Sayuri's mother disappeared.

Sayuri took a deep breath and started shaking. There seemed to be a few not too good memories popping up in her head.

"The village was desperate. They asked our family to use our powers to fight the attackers. But mother declined. Not in hundreds of years they had used their powers in human fights and they didn't intend to start with it. The elders were furious and said, that if they wanted to stay in the village, they had to fight for it. Otherwise they had to leave."

Sayuri sobbed. Tears were running down her cheeks. Itachi wondered if he should interrupt her. The rest of the story was pretty much obvious by now and he didn't want her to agonize anymore. But then she went on.

"My mother and the vast majority of our family didn't hesitate too long and prepared their leave. But for some reason … father and Kakashi refused to leave. They insisted that they wanted to stay and fight alongside the villagers. Father and Kakashi had both been born in the village, so they felt a certain loyalty, but I didn't get it. I actually still don't. I wanted to stay with mother, wanted to go with her even though it meant leaving my home behind. But father and Kakashi wouldn't let me. They insisted that I'd stay with them in Konoha." Sayuri bit her lips and lowered her eyes. "To be honest, I still hate them a bit for that."

Itachi and Seishi exchanged gazes. This was the first time they heard something like that from her lips. She had always seemed happy with being here, living a more or less normal life among humans. Had all of this been just an act?

"My mother was furious. She didn't want to leave without her children. And what was even worse for her … leaving us in the village she had only one choice: She had to seal our demonic powers away to ensure we couldn't use them for the humans. In order to give us the chance to fight alongside humans, she had to make us human. It almost broke her heart."

Sayuri wiped her tears away and made a sad but serious face.

"She didn't have the heart to turn us into humans. So her seals had a back door, both for me and for Kakashi. I have already managed to break it, as you know … but for Kakashi … well, that's a different story."

She didn't continue. She was done. Seishi and Itachi were both slightly overextended with the situation as they didn't know how to react. Her story had actually brought up more questions than it had answered.

What exactly had happened to her father? How did Kakashi's seal work and why was it different from Sayuri's? And wasn't the behavior of her mother a bit … weird? It just didn't fit. What kind of mother would leave her family behind just like that, acting like she had sealed away their powers, but actually she didn't. And just how old was she?!

"So … your father was younger than your mother …?", Seishi finally brought himself to ask. According to Sayuri her father had been born in the village even though her mother had been one of the first to move here.

"Well yes … we Tengu age a bit … differently from humans. And my mother simply … took her time to find someone ...", now the holes in her story became obvious.

Either she didn't know it herself or she was hiding something from them.

"Sayuri … you said you would tell us the whole story! Now what is this about?", Seishi refused to leave it at that. Sayuri clenched her fists and looked away. What was going on?

"Isn't it obvious?", all of a sudden a voice came from outside the hut and a fourth person stepped inside, "It's just Sayuri running away from the truth, consequently denying it as she did for the past years ..."

Seishi and Itachi both forgot to breathe for a moment when Kakashi Hatake suddenly stood in their perfect, secret hide-out, glaring at them.

"I don't know what you're talking about!", Sayuri jumped up and shouted at him furiously, "Everything I said was the truth."

Seishi and Itachi exchanged a quick, panicking look. They didn't have any intention of getting caught in between a furious demon sibling battle.

"Sayuri, what is he doing here? Did he follow you?", Seishi asked her confused, trying to change the subject, but he was ignored.

"You need to cut it out already!", Kakashi's voice was as sharp as a Kunai. This argument seemed to be long overdue. "You have to stop over-glorifying mother and presenting her as some kind, loving woman, which she absolutely was not."

"Shut up!", Sayuri yelled at him, her hair turning fuzzy, her eyes red and her body somehow huger and huger as she screamed at the top of her lungs. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!"

Seishi and Itachi both stared at her horrified as they slowly shortened the distance between each other and increased the distance between them and Sayuri. They both had a sudden urge to hug each other tightly and hide in the furthest corner of the hut, but they fought it hard with their manliness.

They had never seen Sayuri like that, this furious … this frightening. Not even in her demon form.

"Sayuri, calm down and face it already. I seriously don't like to do this, but if you're going to continue to live this lie, I don't seem to have any other choice but telling you the truth." Kakashi wasn't frightened at all. Maybe he, as her older brother, had seen her like this often enough. Or maybe he couldn't afford even blinking when she was like that.

"FUCK OFF!", Sayuri screamed and got in position to leap at her brother as if she wanted to maul his throat like she did with the other guy.
Seishi's heart finally sank into his boots, but when he reached out for Itachi's hand, he grasped thin air. From one moment to the other, Itachi had jumped up and hugged Sayuri from behind, the blink of an eye before she would have jumped at her brother.

Her first reflex was to grab her sudden 'attacker' and throwing him on the ground, but she managed to stop herself mid-action and froze instead. Itachi took a deep breath and tightened his grasp.

"Hey, it's alright, calm down. Everything's just fine. There's no reason for you to rage like this. Just calm down and take a deep breath, alright?", he quietly whispered to her. Yet, he wasn't any less tense than any other person in the hut. It was such a scary atmosphere.

It took Sayuri a while to regulate her breathing, but slowly the electricity left her silver shimmering hair and her eyes got their usual color back. Her whole body shivered as she turned around and buried her face in Itachi's shirt, suddenly starting to cry. The storm seemed to relieve itself with heavy rain, instead of a deadly lightning strike.

"Wow … it seems to be really true what they say about you ...", Kakashi dared to speak again and looked at Itachi still with the same expression, but the little skin you saw on his face was as pale as a sheet of paper. "I guess I owe you my life ..."

Now Itachi seriously wanted to know what it was that 'they said about him'. Why would 'they' say it to anybody but him? But he couldn't bring himself to ask Kakashi now, who looked like he was about to loose balance for one second and slowly moved himself to a bench. He was obviously trying hard not to collapse.

Nobody knew what Sayuri would have done to him if Itachi hadn't stopped her, but seemingly nobody doubted that she would have killed him. Not even Kakashi, who had looked so confident when he had provoked her. Now he was looking like he had just had some kind of near-death experience.

Seishi looked at the scene in front of his eyes and barely recalled to breathe before it turned black in front of his eyes.

"You two are really … amazing ...", he shook his head in disbelief. Sayuri had just been so scary and furious, he had been about to shit his pants. But these two had somehow been able to deal with it, Itachi even held her in his arms. He would have never been able to do something like that.

"She's just scared ...", Kakashi shook his head and sighed, "scared that I destroy her view of the world."

Itachi slowly caressed Sayuri's silky hair as she continued shaking and crying her eyes out of her head. How many years did he know her already? They've been a couple for two years now and still he knew nothing about her. Still she managed to show him sides of her he had never thought that they were there and of which he had preferred to stay oblivious. And yet the feeling of holding her never changed.

"Yeah … we're all scared. Scared that Sayuri will kill us all!", Seishi joked, but it wasn't funny.

Kakashi threw a killing glare at him and Itachi squinted his eyes.

Sayuri just flinched and cried even more in his arms. Itachi put one hand on her shoulder and another one on her hip. Then he carefully lifted her up and carried her in his arms back to one of he benches.

"There, there. It's alright." He sat her on his lap and continued caressing her hair. "Everything's alright."

It was like caring for a baby. Sayuri jumped from being a wild, raging dog that was ready to kill anyone who drove her in a corner, to a tiny, vulnerable puppy that needed some patting on her head.

"Sayuri, I'm sorry, but it's time for you to hear the whole truth", Kakashi finally dared to speak up again, somehow recovered from the first shock. "It's time for you … to grow up."

Sayuri wouldn't look up. She still buried her face in Itachi's shirt, piercing her fingers in his back. She was clinging to him so tightly, as if she was afraid he could just disappear.

"Hey, Sayuri, it's okay", Itachi took her face in his hands and forced her to raise it. Their eyes met and Sayuri's tears slowly dried as her body still shook from her sobs. "No matter what this 'truth' is he's talking about, I have one truth for you as well."

He wiped the last tears from her face and let his thumb slide over her lips. "I love you."

"Oh my gooood!", Seishi wouldn't let that beautiful, romantic moment last more than 2 seconds, "That was so gay right now … it almost felt like you were saying it to me."

He shivered and pulled faces like he had just thought of something seriously disgusting. Then he paused for a moment, stared in the air and then at Itachi with huge, inquiring eyes.

"Would you consider saying it to me once? Just once?", he asked him, dead-serious.

Itachi didn't need to answer, because the pissed and unnerved expression on his face already shouted 'Heck, no!' louder than any voice would ever be capable of.

"Fine ...", Seishi averted his eyes and pouted. "I was just kidding anyway."

"Wow …", Kakashi followed the dialogue perplex, "is this the normal communication standard here? How could I ever leave my sister alone with you?"

"It's just him who is completely insane!", Itachi quickly countered, tightening his grasp around Sayuri as if he was afraid he could just take her away and leave.

But then suddenly a weird noise broke through the even weirder situation and everyone was quiet. It started with several desperate gasps for air, followed by suppressed snorting and finally Sayuri couldn't hold back anymore and broke out into laughter.

She laughed so hard, Itachi had to hold onto her otherwise she would just fall and drop on the floor, most likely continuing her laugh attack there. It was such a mad transformation from the screaming fury to the crying baby and now to the almost unhealthy laughing.

She reached out for Seishi's hand, who took hers and let himself be dragged closer to them. He, too, had a huge smile on his face. Did he make these weird jokes on purpose?

Sayuri slowly calmed down again, panting for air and threw her arms around Seishi and Itachi simultaneously. After she had caught her breath again and finished laughing, she finally was able to talk again.

"It's okay now, Onii-san", she smiled. "I don't need mother's love anymore. I managed to love on my own."

Kakashi's visible eye rested on his sister and had a sad look, but somehow also relieved. After all these years she had finally given in, but still he didn't know what he should think of her talking about love while hugging two guys. And what made it even worse, these guys were and Uchiha and a Hyuuga.

"Well then … I'm really sorry that I have to say it … but it's true that mother never really loved neither of us. We had always just been her tools …", Kakashi started and paused already. It was hard to figure out where to start. And no matter what he said it would only make it worse for Sayuri.

"Our mother wasn't that kind of person that … knew emotions like love. Actually there was only one emotion she was truly familiar with and that was hatred. Deep, deep hatred towards humans. And especially … you."

He looked at one specific person in the round and everyone flinched, and stared confused, when they noticed to whom he was referring.

"Huh?! Me?!", Seishi was shocked and turned pale. "Wh-what? I … I don't even know her, I mean … I wasn't even born back then, come on! I realize that there are a lot of women out there who have developed a certain kind of … resent towards me … but Sayuri's mum?! I swear, I never …!"

"No, not YOU!", Kakashi interrupted him, slightly pissed and also afraid he would delve into this topic even more, leaving behind some horrible pictures in the mind of every person present. "I'm talking about your family!"

"Ohh!", Seishi put his hand on his forehead, "Of course! My family!" He nodded understandingly, than he paused and cocked his head. "And what exactly does my family have to do with this again?"

Kakashi sighed. He wasn't used to Seishi and his … special behavior and he figured that this story would take longer than he liked. But maybe he had at least found a good point to start from now.

"What exactly do you know about the history of your Clan? About the source of your bloodline limit?", he asked him.

Seishi didn't quite understand where this was going. He crossed his arms and patterned Kakashi sceptically. "Well, to be honest … nothing. I've cut my ties with my Clan after my parents died during the war … the main family has pretty much started ignoring my existence. They didn't even bother to put a seal on me."

He pointed at his forehead, but it was hidden beneath his headband anyway. Kakashi still stared at it and seemed to get caught up in his thoughts.

"What do you know about it?", Seishi became impatient and uncomfortable by being stared at with this weird expression and decided to wake him up again.

"Not much either ...", Kakashi admitted, "I just know what my mother said … that your Clan are descendants of … a certain Tengu's faux pas. And your Byakugan is what happens when you mix demonic blood with human."

"What?! That's the first time I heard something about that!", Seishi flinched. He, having demon blood flowing through his veins? What was that about?

"Kakashi ...", Sayuri got really pale and looked worried at her brother, "you know more about that than you admit right? What does that have to do with mother and … with us?"

Kakshi sighed and took his time to answer this question. He had always avoided thinking about it too much, but now was the time he had to. To find the truth about their story.

"The woman that was the first human with supernatural powers – the Byakugan – was the illegitimate daughter of the Tengu king Sojobo and a human. Our mother's sister", he forced over his lips.

"Tengu king?!", Seishi blurted out. "So … you're part of the 'royal family' then? Sayuri's … a princess?"

Itachi followed the conversation with great interest and looked at Sayuri, who was still lying in his arms. "Did you know that...?", he asked her.

Sayuri shook her head. "It's the first time I'm hearing about it."

"I don't know her name, I don't know who she was and what she did", Kakashi ignored them and continued his story, "I just know that my mother hated her. She always said, that she had disgraced her family and her father and had done something horrible to them and the whole world. That woman is long gone now,for many centuries, but mother could never get over it and swallowed her hatred and her thirst for revenge."

Kakashi shook his head and shivered a bit. There seemed to be a lot of bad memories associated with these words. Sayuri, too, was cramping her body and biting her lips. What she was hearing right now didn't fit the idealized picture she had of her mother, to which she had clung so tightly throughout all these years. It was all falling apart in front of her eyes.

"This revenge was one of the reasons mother had joined the Konohagakure project back then. The first time she saw a Hyuuga, she knew that they were descendants of her sister. She saw it in their eyes. And as they were joining the village, she had decided to join it, too. To slowly annihilate the remaining proof of her father's shame from the inside."

"But that doesn't make any sense!", Seishi spoke up. His face was pale. "Why would she go through all of this trouble? Why wouldn't she just kill everyone with her own hands if she was such a powerful demon? And … what exactly did she plan … to annihilate us?"

He obviously didn't like the idea of a crazy demon woman trying to slaughter his family. Which was understandable somehow.

"A Tengu would never dirty his hands with human blood. They're too proud for that. And my mother especially. But she didn't need to. She simply sweet-talked and manipulated the main family branch and managed to plant a ticking time bomb in your Clan's customs. I'm sure you understand what I'm referring to."

Seishi gulped and mechanically reached for his forehead. He understood it immediately. The seal that was forced on every Clan member except for the main family.

"I don't get it …", Itachi returned to the discussion. "What kind of time bomb?"

Kakashi didn't say anything and looked at Seishi. He wanted to leave the decision to answer this question up to him.

"The main branch of our family … is subjugating the branch families by putting seals on them in order to control them …", Seishi mumbled and stared at the ground, "The relationship between the family branches had never been good because of that … but one day the branch family surely won't put up with it anymore and something horrible will happen. The Clan will fall apart at some point if it continues like that."

All eyes rested upon him, worried and shocked. The seal the branch family of the Hyuuga Clan was cursed with wasn't a big secret to the rest of the village, but that it was that bad …

Itachi felt slightly ashamed about it, but it somehow delighted him, that other families also had their … issues.

"It's not like I really care too much!", Seishi felt the gazes on him and tried to fake a smile, "I don't care about my Clan anyway. Just like they don't care about me!"

Even though what Seishi said was the truth, the mood wouldn't change a bit. The fact that Sayuri's mother had been the mastermind behind all this cruelness and madness that was going on for generations now left a bad aftertaste.

Especially Sayuri had a hard time coping with what she just heard, becoming smaller and smaller and trying to dissolve into thin air in Itachi's arms.

"You said that was just 'one of the reasons'", Itachi broke the awkward silence, "Where there other reasons for her to join the village?"

Kakashi hesitated for a while before he answered. It seemed that now they were getting to the interesting part.

"Well … revenge wasn't the only reason why mother wanted the Hyuuga Clan gone ...", he started.

"Great ...", Seishi mumbled to himself. He was sick of hearing all of that, but he wouldn't stop him.

"As I mentioned before, mother and her sister were the daughters of the demon king …", he ignored Seishi and continued, but still reluctant, "Tengu become very old, as I think you've already suspected, but they aren't immortal. One day Sojobo's time will come and then there has to be a successor to take his place. Mother, as the elder of the sisters and the full-blooded Tengu, has had no offspring throughout many centuries. If Sojobo had died during this time, the succession would have fallen into the hands of her sisters descendants. Into human hands. Mother had wanted to prevent this with all her might. It would have been a catastrophe if the new king was a human. And even worse for her, it would have meant that the position of the high priestess would have vanished. It's impossible for humans to become one."

"High priestess?", Itachi immediately asked. He had been able to somehow follow up with what Kakashi had been saying, noticing that he was deliberately leaving the fact, that he was the official successor of the Tengu king, unmentioned. But that part about some high priestess brought up some new questions.

"The high priestess is something like … the spiritual head of the Tengu. She's the first female offspring of the royal family and the most skilled and powerful when it comes to handling Chakra. The current high priestess is mother … and ...", Kakashi suddenly stopped, his eye glued to Sayuri.

He didn't need to say anything, everyone already knew what he was thinking. Just like Kakashi was the guy who would have become king some day, Sayuri was to become high priestess.

"So this is it, huh?", Sayuri suddenly raised her head, her eyes starting to light up again in a slight glimmer of rage. "Finally, you're spilling the true reason why you wanted me to stay in this village."

Seishi and Itachi quickly exchanged a glance and then looked at Kakashi, who closed his eye, thinking of what to say next.

"You're right. It's just like you suspect. We wouldn't let you go with mother and forced you to stay, so that she couldn't make you the next high priestess", he told her as calmly as possible, but of course it wouldn't make Sayuri stay calm.

"You've got no right to decide that!", Sayuri jumped up and shouted at him again. "If you want to run away from your responsibilities, then do so. But who are you to make this decision for me? Who ever asked me what I wanted?"

"You were three years old!", Kakashi stood up as well and became louder, "you didn't know about anything and you believed every word mother told you. We couldn't let you decide this yourself. You don't even know what being the high priestess is all about!"

"So tell me then! What is it all about?", Sayuri was furious again, as if someone had pushed a button. "Being the strongest and most respected woman in the tribe? You didn't want me to be something like that?"

Kakashi cramped his fists and took a deep breath.

"To become the high priestess you have to go through 300 years of training first. 300 years of isolation in the woods, until you killed off every single emotion inside you and became one with the nature", Kakashi looked at Sayuri determined and strict, "I've never regretted it for one second that I prevented you from this fate and you will certainly never hear me apologize."

All of a sudden everyone was quiet, you couldn't even hear them breathing anymore. It was like the silence crept from the outside in the little hut, from the trees and the grass of the forest outside, it reached like shadowy claws at them.

300 years isolated in the woods? Sayuri couldn't breathe anymore. So this was the fate her mother had decided for her? The fate Kakashi and her father had tried so hard to keep her from.

Sayuri's face went as white as a sheet of paper and she was about to faint, when she felt a hand touching hers. It was Itachi, who looked at her worried, but somehow delighted.

"I'm really glad, that you are here with me now, and not somewhere else all alone", he told her.

Sayuri gulped, tightened her grasp and threw herself around his neck.

Kakashi watched her with a sigh. So this is where it had come to. His own sister, hating him and shouting at him, almost killing him and then becoming putty in an Uchiha's hands. Maybe he went somewhere wrong after all.

"So there you have it. The truth why mother didn't properly seal our powers away and fully turned us into humans. It had never to do anything with 'love'. If she truly loved us, she would have set us free." Kakashi just stood there for several moments, closed his eye and turned to go.

"You're surely taking the easy road there", Itachi suddenly addressed him before Kakashi could leave the hut. "Saying something like that ..."

Kakashi stopped and turned around, looking at Itachi sceptically, who was still holding his devastated sister in his arms. "What do you mean by that? Do you have a different opinion?", he hissed at him.

Itachi took his time to think about a way to phrase his answer. "I think that … even though some parents act selfishly towards their children and try to push their ideals on them … it doesn't mean they don't love them. I believe it's very hard for a parent to understand, that his child has his own will and won't follow the path he has wished for them. And some just can't. But does that really mean that they don't love them? I don't … at least I don't want to believe that. I refuse to."

Kakshi stared at him and sighed resigning.

"I don't know what's going on in your family, Itachi, but I don't think you can just … well, but maybe you're right. I'd like to believe so, too. Would be nice."

It was that one moment in the history, that Itachi and Kakashi actually felt like they were on the same wavelength. Indeed, it was a short moment and a somehow very creepy one, but it should be noted that it existed. Their eyes locked for a moment, and maybe Kakashi even smiled slightly beneath his mask, until Sayuri remembered, that there was still one question left, that hadn't yet been answered.

"But what is with father? Why did he abandon us after all? Why did he take his own life and left us all alone? Would you say, that this is 'love'?", she almost choked on the last word.

Itachi and Seishi flinched. The story of Konoha's white fang, who deliberately abandoned his mission to save a comrade and only earned hatred from the village for that. They say he killed himself because he couldn't take the guilt and the hostility anymore and left his children behind.

It had always seemed strange to them, that a man that was widely known for his strength would go that way, but it seemed even weirder now, after hearing who – or rather what – he actually had been.

"Sayuri ...", Kakashi gulped and clenched his fist. He didn't seem to be surprised about this question, but still didn't know how to answer. "Let's stop this for today. We can talk about this later."

"But …! I finally want to know the whole truth!", she shouted at him.

"Are you sure?", it wasn't Kakashi who asked her, it was Itachi. He held her in his arms and looked worried. "Are you really sure you are ready for the truth? Do you think you can take it right now?"

It was already too late now to hide the truth anyway. It was lingering in the air, slowly sinking in in the minds of every person present, but no one dared to even think about it, let alone speak it. Sayuri, also, knew it very well already, but she still refused to let it in her heart.

Itachi was right. She wasn't ready. If she heard it now, it would completely break her.

"Please don't force me to say it, Sayuri. Not today.", Kakashi mumbled and finally left the hut.

It had been clear, that Sayuri wasn't the only one who had a hard time handling all of this. Kakashi didn't look too good either. What a horrible family drama. And Itachi had thought he had it bad.

But as far as he could recall there hadn't been something like a suicide in his Clan. Or rather a tragic death that has been declared a suicide, even though it was something completely different.

No one said anything anymore after that, Seishi left without a word about half an hour after Kakashi and Itachi continued holding Sayuri in his arms until she had cried herself to sleep.