Mother had long months past stopped walking. Dressed in endless white, Hinata found herself thinking of snow even though the days were warm as her baby sister grew bigger within Mother's expanding womb.
On the engawa they sat together, cushions supporting her mother's back so she need not even sit up to face the fragrant vignette that was the Hyuuga gardens.
In the quiet broken only by the rhythmic calm of the tapping suzo and the whistling breeze Hinata sat with her small face pressed to her mother's thin yukata listening to two heart beats. One, the baby who swam within, and the other her mother's.
"What is it like?" She whispered, smiling with eyes closed as the baby within her mother's belly gave a kick that knocked on her cheek. Separated only by their mother's skin, Hinata felt as her heart swelled within her. In there, a creature grew which she loved deeply and wildly. It made her want to flap her arms, it made her want to cry.
"What is what like, my darling?" Mother whispered back, closing her eyes herself to listen to the quiet of the spring day.
"Being a mother."
This was not the question that had been expected. Hinata felt it as her mother opened her eyes and straightened to look upon her. The curiosity felt uncouth then, with her mother's blatant surprise on her face and so Hinata ducked her head, neck heating to red as she shook her head. " . I… I was just-"
"It is… " Her mother began, ignoring her objection as she often ignored her stutters, her nerves. "It is wonderful and terrible, at once. It is… like having your heart torn from you...a heart with it's own will, and own mind and own life, but still your heart." She smiled sadly then, as she often did when looking upon Hinata, even when she stroked her hand over her small cheek.
"Always still, it remains your heart."
Hinata breathed out, thinking about the baby and how one day it would walk and talk and play. How one day, they too would be beside her in the training room with the tutors and the teachers and Grandfather, ever watching.
And suddenly she understood.
How wonderful, how terrible motherhood could be.
What have you done?
Hinata's arms were tight. Hina tried to breathe and found it impossible, all the breath she wanted was just out of her grasp. Her lips parted and desperate they clawed feebly at the air unable to win against the knots.
And there were many. Knots of her fingers, tight on Hinata's sleeves, knots of her hair, tangled in her face, twisted with the salt of her tears, knots in her throat, choking her to death.
Sasu was crammed in Hinata's embrace with her, tangled limb to limb and heart to heart as he sobbed her name again and again in a lament she did not understand.
"Hina, Hina, Hina…why..?"
In her mind the question echoed. Terror rippled up her spine and as her pale gifted eyes took in the shadowed faces of strangers all around she knew there was an answer. An answer she did not want to admit to, did not want to know.
What have I done?
"Father please…" Hinata's broken voice was only half the chaos. The other half was the ever buzzing whispers of the crowd, the whistling erupting mess of fireworks ripping into the sky and setting the whole of the heavens into a war with the stars.
"Sasu…" Hina's whimper went unheard, even as she tried and failed to free herself, gripped ever tighter to Hinata's shaking, crumbling body.
"Sister, I beg you." Hinata's sobs came with a torrent Hina at first thought was rain, or the lights from the fireworks coming to touch her but which she realized when she looked up was a river of tears, pouring from the milk white eyes of the girl who she was starting to realize… was herself.
Across from Hinata the ghost of her mother stood, bedecked in jewels, glittering with a golden beauty that was too terrible to look upon for it was and was unlike her mother. The curve of her spine as she gazed on them was that of a scythe and though her hands pressed to her mouth it was the anger among Hanabi's tears that cut the most.
"How dare you speak to her?" Grandfather's voice came last among all the others in Hina's small ears. It came after her Father's whispered disbelief, after Hanabi's hissed and silent sob. It came heralded by the growing hive buzz of all the crowd judging and lamenting. It came brutal as the fireworks ripped apart the sky.
"Grandfather, I beg you would listen please… I would never- I never-"
Hina watched, feeling Sasu's hands gripping her tighter and tighter, his nails digging into her small arm in desperation, shooting pain through her skin as realization so long coming settled ever more heavy upon her small shoulders. "Hina, we have to run. We have to run now!"
What have I done?
Hinata was her. Hinata was herself, grown and tall, beautiful and quiet and sad. Beautiful and quiet and alone.
So then… Sasu was…
Sasu was...
Slowly, Hina turned her face to him, to see what she had always known and never acknowledged. His face, like Sasuke's face but tear stained and panicked, pained. They were not to show themselves. From the beginning they had been warned to stay hidden, to stay safe, to allow their elder selves to return them home. She had not believed it. This was too pleasant a dream to be true, the stakes too high for her to face. But it had all been true. She had failed.
Now, she had-
"You have ruined this family's name!"
It made sense that this would come from the source of all her nightmares, that the dread which had eaten away at her sleep, made her mouth stutter, and her memories of her mother taste bitter with a tang of shame would come from him: Grandfather.
"Please…" Hinata was collapsing. As her knees crumbled to the ground, her arms began to release. It was all the worse to not be so tightly held in her embrace. Horrible, to face the eyes and the mouths and the buzzing words and Grandfather's ancient and brutal shape without the strength of her protection.
"You have ruined your only sister!"
Turned away, Hina could see her, the shape that was her mother and was not, pressing her face to a young redheaded man's chest as she sobbed out her pain.
"You have broken your father's trust!"
Father, gray and pale and sick, washed out in the mourning color of pale silk. Hina's eyes ate him up, leaning heavily against the sakura tree her mother had loved so much, trying and failing to breathe.
"You have spit at the affections of the Kazekage! You have humiliated us in front of all the village!"
And the crowd, with the myriad of blue and green eyes, brown eyes, familiar faces warped by time and space, their shock and disbelief evident but more importantly their disappointment.
Always… she was a disappointment.
"Shame!"
Grandfather loomed high then, flanked by the glittering sparkles of the fireworks and stars, the blooming glow of the sakura's lanterns among it's boughs. When his hand landed on Hinata's shoulder to shake her Hina felt the scream rising in her throat, the backpedal motion of her body desperate to get away from him only managing to shove her and Sasu in a heap behind Hinata's bowed back.
What have I done?
I have… ruined everything.
Grandfather's hand never reached Hinata's shoulder. He arrived in a lightning flash to join the fray, glowing as brightly as chidori shrieked from between his fingers and though she could not see his face the shock and fear that flashed through everyone's features made Hina think it was a blessing.
Sasuke's voice, so long the source of so much comfort grated with the savagery he threatened, sending Grandfather stumbling back in shock.
"Touch her, and I will rend you apart."
The softness of his face was suddenly overshadowed by the crimson glow of the eyes she had once likened to roses. These were not roses, however. Furious and pained the eyes that stared forth at the crowd and the withering thing that was her Grandfather could only be likened to blood.
What have I done?
He had failed.
Sasu could not stop the weeping, despite the shame. With all the eyes upon them and Hina limp and yet frozen at his side he could do nothing to stop the avalanche of screams that rose around them.
He had failed, failed, failed.
"Stay hidden." Sasuke had said, his dark eyes stern, his voice firm. "Stay hidden, or we will not be able to send you back."
It would have been easy to think that perhaps going back home was not what they wanted. Here they could be together in a way they had never before enjoyed. Here, Hina was with him day and night, an endless repetition of the dreams he had indulged in as he watched the stars from his bedroom window.
But dreams, all dreams have to end.
Sasuke's arrival made the ground shudder beneath their feet, and with a gasp Sasu dragged Hina back a step, watching as the crowd, and the old man with the cane stumbled back.
He had never seen him like this.
Darkness cloaked him even though above the fireworks shattered and screamed, and below in his hand a star seemed to fight to be free. The screeching hiss of a thousand hawks rallied as he faced the Hyuuga old man that had only moments ago threatened towards Hinata and made Hina scramble back.
"I won't hesitate to end all of you, should you come close to her again."
This was not the voice of someone he knew, and certainly not a voice he could say he could own. This was a monster's promise, a monster's natural state of being.
Sasu had never thought he might grow to be like this.
"How dare you-" The old man gasped, his stumbling feet leaving him weak kneed and leaning heavily on his cane. From the crowd other white eyed pale faced men came to steady him, although their hands looked ready for more than just supporting as they faced the hissing thunder in Sasuke's fingers.
"Sasuke!" A new voice called from the crowd, and although all other eyes turned to look at the blonde man who stepped forward Sasuke did not seem to care to follow. Focused as he was on the Hyuuga elder before him trembling with rage he did not deign to turn his head.
"Sasuke, stop." The blue eyes of the speaker flickered to Sasu then, freezing there with something that looked too much like pain for Sasu not to recognize it rapidly. "The children are right behind you. Sasuke, please-"
He didn't have to finish. Hinata's hand was suddenly gripping Sasuke's, pressing into the chidori he held with a trembling palm more powerful in its ability to stop him than most shinobi in attendance. Sharply, Sasuke's glowing gaze turned to her, freezing at the sight of the tears that poured down the length of her face as she shook her head.
"No." Delicately, and shadowed by the sudden death of the chidori in his hand she pressed her forehead to his wrist, shoulders shaking with the pain she could not fathom ever outgrowing. "They are my family...Sasuke. They are-"
"No longer." Grandfather's snarl came fast, his cane rising to point at them as though to launch a spear. "You do not deserve the name Hyuuga. You do not deserve our trust. You are as the Uchiha were, unfaithful traitors all-"
"Enough!" The shout came hoarse and pained from Hiashi, the snap like a gavel to the soundblock. "This party is over. The Hyuuga have much to discuss, and you-" Hiashi focused pointedly at Sasuke. "You best disappear as you are so capable of. For all our sakes."
"Father-" Hinata tried, feeling the grip of Sasuke's hand ever tightening on her own.
"It is too late for that." Grandfather stepped between Hiashi and the four creatures who so destroyed his family name. "The decision like the shame must be public, and we all know what the decision must be." His eyes flickered from Hyuuga to Hyuuga, the nod he offered an order unspoken.
"The Byakugan eyes are ours alone." Ignoring Sasuke's loathing stare he nodded at Hinata. "You we will brand, but the child…" He glanced back, in time to see the other young Hyuuga men reaching for the unsuspecting children at their back. "...the Hyuuga child is ours."
The shriek that came out of the young Uchiha would have woken all three gods, had they been asleep. It was both pain and horror, panic and hate. The thrashing limbs of his young body like those of trapped wild things, wriggling to be free.
Susa watched with eyes a black so deep nothing glowed within them, starless and silent he waited.
At his side his sister too watched. Lady Ama was all calm coolness, beautiful as an empress, shining like a star. The veneer however was thin, for in her eyes the raging fire of her determination feasted on the pain before her, ignoring all the shattered hearts, the torn threads of relationships forged through grief, love and laughter and most importantly time.
Oh, how she so often forgot time, Lady Ama. She who ruled endlessly from star, to star, to star.
Time was something Susa was well familiar with, on the other hand. He did a lot of waiting, a lot of watching as life rebuilt itself from the cleansing destruction he wrought before another cycle began again.
Time was something he understood deeply.
"Any second now." Ama whispered, red lips deepening from a pale pink to a crimson red slowly bleeding to black as victory flirted with her patience. "Any second-"
Susa closed his eyes against the sight of the little Hinata reaching desperately for Sasuke, her apologies for failing him ringing as she thrashed to fight the arms of the Hyuuga that pulled her away.
It was a shame, to see so much pain. So much sadness.
Hard things, he knew were necessary for growth. Hardship was required for resilience, and to an extent pain was required to know joy.
But this….
He shook his head, and sighed deeply, exhaling stardust and pearl dust and lament. There had been no other way.
Ama was right, however. Any second and…
He listened as the panic and fury turned to horror as many Hyuuga arms pulled them apart, like untangling the molecules that made up one heart.
And as they shrieked out each other's names he listened. Not to the roar of the ocean that ever rang in his ears. Not to the fireworks exploding in the heavens but to the creaking bending sinew that was their hearts breaking.
Two more, to join the pile.
Two innocent, and too young.
With eyes closed and still he heard the violent shatter as Sasu's and Hina's own hearts tore, joining the clapping thunder of the fireworks finale spraying everything in gold and silver, fitting colors for the one he was sure was now to come.
"Wait." Ama hissed, just as Lord Susa smiled.
"Is that…" His sister continued. "...a crane?"
When Susa's eyes finally opened there was indeed a crane, right in the middle of the crowd. It stood tall on it's long elegant legs, it's gray white plumage too bright to not be glowing in the dim evening light.
For a moment it appeared that no one else could see the creature which had decided to enter into the human fray. Soon enough however, it was clear that the exploding fireworks in the sky, the ripples in the pond and even the petals falling from the cherry blossoms had frozen in place. In one blink, time so much on the Lord God Susa's mind had stopped.
Delicate as a lotus flower opening its petals to the moon the crane unravelled, it's feathers smoothing into the white samurai armor of a handsome warrior with a face too beautiful to be a man's and too wise to be young and too savage to be a woman's.
Long dark hair trailed to the floor as he examined the world around him in full standstill, reaching languid fingers from his sheathed katana to the frozen petals caught on a wayward breeze before him.
Lord Susa was not surprised. No one in all the realms could have avoided hearing that shrieking agony. Certainly not a god.
It was their job after all to manage the scales of justice, to keep things fair, to protect against possible sins committed on those who could not protect themselves.
Those, like children.
Soft, as the cutting edge of a knife on a throat the Lady Goddess Ama drew a breath and exploded into rage.
The world had ended.
Sasu's screams, Hina's pleading apologies were too loud for her ears. The feelings they inspired too big for the pieces of her heart already torn to shreds too small for mending.
There was nothing worse, or if there was she could not think of it. Hinata watched, worn out and exhausted as the men and women she knew and whose features she shared took Hina's body in their arms and pulled to take her away. She was too Hyuuga to be near a child with Sasu's dark eyes. Too like them to be allowed to be contaminated by their sharingan sins.
Hina's screaming made Sasuke turn, made his body taut like a bowstring pulled but he froze. He froze at the sight of Naruto's face gazing upon him, blue eyes beseeching and confused.
Most importantly however, his eyes were pained.
"Sasuke…" At Naruto's side Sakura stood with her face pressed to her husband's shoulder to hide her tears, and behind them the endless crowd of people who had believed that he had changed.
Again, the disappointment hardened Naruto's face. And how could it not, with Sasu screaming bloody murder as Hina's clan ripped her from his arms. "How...could you do this?"
Hinata's sob at his side came with a shake of her head and though she rose trembling to her feet she did not look at the Hokage, not even at her Father turned away with tears on his face or her sister unstable in Gaara's arms. Her eyes were for Hina, for Sasu as their small bodies fought to stay together even as grown men pulled them apart.
"Please... Don't separate them!" Hinata stepped forward, flinging her hands over her face as the echoing crack of Hina's heart shattering ripped through her own body, just as Sasuke too breathed in the pain of Sasu's heartbreak.
It was because of this that at first she did not see the way time slowed and stopped. Like the trickle of a river giving way to drought the flow of life inched to a standstill until even the children stopped screaming, and the breeze itself paused it's flow.
Standing in part thanks to Sasuke's grip at her waist Hinata let her hands slide from her eyes to her mouth where a cry was kept in by her fingers.
The fireworks above stilled with all the crowd as well, smeared like paint across the navy blue canvas of the night sky so that Hinata shuddered and gripped Sasuke all the tighter at her side.
"What…?" Sasuke began, looking back down as a breeze dared to flow through the garden, heard clearly in the unnatural silence as it rustled in a whisper through the sakura tree. Petals lifted from the branches, dancing in a swirling wave of perfume through the night air.
Hinata blinked, and blinked again for though her eyes told her what they saw her mind could not believe as each petal touched upon a person's skin they too dissolved to petals on the breeze, looking mildly concerned, but not altogether startled as they disappeared.
"H...Hanabi-" the startled step Hinata took towards her sister and Gaara was useless, together the Kazekage and the Hyuuga heiress examined their own hands, watching as their fingers mottled and crumbled to petals and they were altogether tugged away by the breeze.
"Do not be frightened. Privacy is needed for this conversation. They will be fine in the end."
Sasuke's hand gripping hers kept her standing as they turned together at the sound of the voice. Dressed in the ancient heaviness of pale ivory samurai armor, with the draping darkness of black hair sprinkled with stars he was as beautiful as he was terrifying.
Crimson lips smiled in what might have been an effort to comfort as he rested a hand on the katana at his hip, and eyes pale white examined them intently for a moment longer before turning to the children huddled together at Sasuke and Hinata's back.
"Even for you…." He murmured gently, lifting a hand to Sasu and Hina. "...this is an adult talk."
The creaking twist of roots beneath their feet made Hinata and Sasuke stumble back a step. They watched in stunned silence as the children succumbed to sudden sleep, caught as they fell from standing into the rustling nest being made of the sakura tree's roots, overgrown in seconds with a carpet of soft moss and a blanket of petals to cover them where they landed.
Finally finding his voice Sasuke pushed Hinata back behind himself, eyeing as the creature he was not sure was a man crouched down at the children's resting place, stroking their foreheads and cheeks gently with his gloved hand.
"Which god are you?"
The samurai smiled again, and as his eyes turned to look over his shoulder at him the flash of the moon made them glow bright, their depth immeasurable as the galaxies in the night sky.
"Always, the Uchiha are so very clever. It is for that that I gifted you Tsukuyomi, did you know? You know better than to ask me what I am, even with my disguise so carefully thought out. You already know." He stood and turned to face them slowly, the way one would approach a wounded and scared dog.
"I am known as Lord Tsuku to you… God of the Everlasting Moon."
Hello dear ones,
Thank you so much for your ongoing support of this story, and the kind words which are always left for me in response to updates, and sometimes just because. I have received some in the middle of some very rough moments the last few months and I can honestly say they are a blessing you guys will never fully understand. I know the ending for this story is dragging, and I apologize for that. I wrote a long thing about why I took so long to write this, explaining the many psychological hurdles I faced but let me suffice to say instead that this is very hard for me. Harder than it's been for awhile, to write. So please excuse the shortness of the update, the slowness of the updates, and the likely terrible writing that has resulted as I find myself really wrestling with this. I am hopeful the next chapters will be easier to write. this one in particular did a number on me. Much, much love to you all Inky P.S I am extremely unsure about the way this story has decided to go. It wants to do something I am not 100% sold on. But I can only fight the muse for so long. I am tired, and want to move on from this so- here we go. If the ending of this story is not to your liking I am so sorry. I just watched the last instalment of the Star Wars saga and I too am feeling hurt over stories. Please know I did not mean to disappoint anyone!