Above the heavens were a cathedral of stars, smeared with the colors of the fireworks in standstill. It was quiet in a way they had not heard before, with even the grass and the trees silent, unmoved by any breeze. The air hung dead and although he stood with shoulders relaxed and smile gentle the underlying threat of being in Lord Tsuku's presence still grated like the edge of a knife to skin.
Together, with their fingers tangled and their breaths short they faced this creature so clearly not the same as them. Sasuke positioned himself between Hinata and the god, an instinct that he felt was one part naive, two parts impossible to deny. He would rather die first than see that thing lash out at Hinata and rend her apart.
"You need not fear me." The god whispered, voice tender enough and yet too melodic to be assuring. He raised his hands in soft supplication. "I came at the sound of the shatter."
Behind Sasuke, Hinata pressed a hand to her collarbone where the pain gnawed an endless growing hole, her wince miniscule but caught by the pale eyes of the Moon god. "Yes." He nodded. "I heard you both- but most importantly." He turned his eyes to the children asleep in their nest of roots, mouth turning down as he gazed upon them. "I heard them."
"It is not often a single heart shatters twice on it's timeline, and with such force. Let alone two hearts at once." He drew a long breath before turning back to examine them where they stood. "How are the children here?"
"You tell us," Sasuke's soft growl came with the memory of whose fault this all was. "You gods are the ones in charge, no?"
Tsuku's back straightened at the mention of his siblings and then his eyes closed as he sighed. "I had hoped dearly that they would not be mentioned by your lips, but alas…" His eyes flickered over his shoulder to the cherry blossoms holding perfectly still at his back.
"You best come own your messes, Brother, Sister. Or they will think you cowards for hiding away."
"Always teasing." The voice that said this made both shinobi flinch, their hands filling with knives pulled from hiding places in their clothes although what use they would be against the creature that stepped from around the sakura tree they could not guess.
He was luminous in his darkness, a pit of glowing black that all shadow reached for. Ever moving he shifted as the ocean danced. He was an endless swirl of deepest blue with limbs and face to boot as he smiled at them, offering a view of a mouth too crowded with teeth for them to comprehend.
"Shut up." Another voice snarled, the gravelly tones mixed with the female lightness jarring as a molten shape came up behind the first. "I am sick of this game. Let it be over."
"Game?" Lord Tsuku sighed, hanging his head for a moment in either shame or consternation or both. "I see nothing of a game in this."
Turning to Hinata and Sasuke standing with the stillness only terror and courage can bring forth Tsuku waved first at the darkness to his right. "My brother, Lord Susa God of the Seas."
Waving to the ever bubbling pillar of lava on his left he sighed. "My sister, Lady Ama Goddess of the Sun."
"Before the world was made, I was born." Tsuku continued, "To hold back the seas that would come, so the earth could still breathe, and so that when the sun was placed in the sky the flowers would grow." He pressed his hands to his armored chest then. "I am the eldest, and have been busy with the responsibilities which have seemed urgent in the land of Suna where a war still tries to rage." His pale eyes slid to Lady Ama. "Even when sacrifices were made to secure peace."
Ama's glowing gaze did not deign to look back, turned resolutely away. Even smoking like the mouth of a spewing volcano the set of her jaw could be seen through the dark, the stubborn flatness of her lips telegraphing her disdain.
"You smell of a spirit I once loved." Tsuku accused softly, eyes flickering from her to Lord Susa. "Where is Neji Hyuuga?"
"Mmm…" Susa hummed, walking towards the Uchiha and Hyuuga trembling before them. He towered several feet above their head as he approached, arms linked at his back, eyes tracing the elegant line of Sasuke's jaw, the beautiful slash of Hinata's exposed collarbone. Made of the elements of water and lightning they were a thunderstorm in two bodies, and for that alone he would make all the same choices again.
Even with the pain it had caused.
Even with the pain it would cause his brother.
"He is destroyed." Susa finally breathed, "Sister darling found him vexing when he did not comply to help her rip their hearts apart."
Turning sharply to Lady Ama, Tsuku's breath left him in a hiss. "Destroyed?"
"It is not my fault." Ama began, her tone petulant. "They are so very stubborn!"
"You destroyed him." Tsuku whispered still. "Again?"
"We signed the wager with our names. If I lose he gets full reign. Again." She snarled this, eyes glaring loathing at Susa so fixated on Hinata and Sasuke. "The price was so heavy for this peace and prosperity. I did not want to-"
"I paid the price." Tsuku lifted a hand to stop her. "You broke my favorite to save your fox and now he rules and peace is restored, so why would you-" He stopped, lifted both elegant brows as he realized. "You were bored."
"It was supposed to be an easy win." Ama grumbled. "It should have been simple for them to fall in love, is that not what we all agreed? That it was a shame their destinies were disrupted by our plans for peace?"
This finally drew Sasuke and Hinata's gaze, snapping their attention from the monstrosity of Lord Susa's proximity like the impending wall of a tsunami wave to Lady Ama. "Destiny?" Hinata whispered. Just as softly Sasuke breathed, "Disrupted?"
"Many lives were disrupted." Tsuku admitted softly. "You often get ahead of yourself, Sister."
"Stop it. You are always so condescending." Lady Ama turned away. "Anyway it's too late now."
"Mmmm." Susa hummed, sounding unsure. "Not anymore."
"You, Sister as the youngest would not know, or perhaps remember." Tsuku stated, walking towards Sasuke and Hinata slowly, shooing the darkness that was his brother away from them with an elegant wave of his hand. "But to break a human heart like this…." he reached forward, asking permission with his eyes that Sasuke found himself nodding to despite himself, "...is one of the many things we must never do."
His fingers hovered for a moment over Sasuke's chest, following in time with his breath and with a smile that he offered in kindness he pulled.
The god's palm came away with a tangle of threads in glowing crimson and gold, the mess tethered to Sasuke's chest like sinew attaches to bone. It hovered in the air and took only a second for it's even beats to throb visibly among the disaster of gold and scarlet string.
The gods quiet serious faces matched as they examined Sasuke's heart before them, exposed in all its vulnerability in the dim glow of the garden's light.
"A matching pair." Tsuku whispered, his tone morose as finding cancer in a bone as he pulled Hinata's heart from her chest to find it similarly shredded.
"I told you." Ama's hiss was despondent as it was childish. "It's too late."
"No." Tsuku shook his head, white eyes glowing by the pulsing light of Hinata and Sasuke's hearts. In silence the two shinobi examined themselves and all their wounds, unable to comprehend the ever beating life within such mutilated things.
"We must go back."
Lady Ama's darkness and fire flared. "Back?"
Quiet as a summer storm, Lord Susa smiled wide.
"Yes." Tsuku flicked both wrists, tucking the hearts away within Sasuke and Hinata's chests with an effortless twist, like a key. "All the way back."
Lord Susa's smile grew.
"No." Ama stormed forward a step, stopping only when Tsuku faced her head on, hand on his katana offering reasons for caution.
"No?" He asked. "You would leave them like this? Broken and with their choices removed?"
Lady Ama flinched.
"Two more broken for my growing pile?" Tsuku questioned. "Two more of my favorites sacrificed so yours can rule?"
"And besides all this, you would leave them…" he turned to the children asleep at their feet. "...you would leave them shattered?"
Lord Susa finally spoke, his amusement thinly veneered with gentleness. "What kind of a goddess would you be then, Sister?"
"A broken one." Tsuku answered for him. "No, we go back. Or rather ..." He sighed, turning sadly to Sasuke and Hinata where they stood, wise in their silence. "The children do."
"Fine." Lady Ama snarled, turning away. "Bully my peace away, if you must but-"
"Do not be childish, Sister dear." Lord Susa snarled back, like a pair of nipping pups they turned, fading into the shadows of the sakura tree. "Win without cheating, this time."
It did not escape Sasuke and Hinata that regardless of the outcome, it was still their game to lose.
Once upon a time, when they were a little younger, but not unwise they had felt death come for them. What most people thought about death was darkness, perhaps pain, certainly fear. But a thing which is so constantly a hair's breath away often becomes less frightening and more exhausting for people like shinobi.
On bad days, it almost sounded kind, dying.
For the first time ever, Hinata thought it would have been better to end with the slice of a knife.
The Lord Tsuku was not unkind, although his sympathetic gaze upon them was like being pitied by a viper with fangs bared. Gently, he reached a long elegant hand with nails too long and jagged to be for anything other than gouging and stroked along Hinata's rumpled bangs, smoothing the worried brow beneath.
"You are both clever enough to know what it is that must occur now, I am certain."
Sasuke's grip on Hinata had not ceased to grow tighter as the gods spoke, and as her arms tangled with his and her knees failed they crumbled together to the grassy floor of the Hyuuga gardens. It did not feel the same, this dying. Before, when medics had had to put them back together as they crawled bloody and cold from battles to their village it was the chill and the darkness that had lingered in their memories. The feeling of numbness and panic that fluttered at the base of their throat as realization that perhaps they would not be okay bloomed like the blood stains on their clothes.
This was altogether different. Everything felt alive and aware as a raw nerve, Hinata's tears on Sasuke's cheek where she pressed her face so hard stung, the tangled fingers of Sasuke's hands at the base of her neck pulling on her hair as if to grip her to him before she was torn away.
Crouching before them the god was a rumbling tiger with morose eyes. Gently his fingers slid from Hinata's forehead, to Sasuke's chin.
"You now have two options…"
"It doesn't matter." Sasuke interrupted, feeling the touch of Hinata's lips on his collarbone where she buried her face into his neck, the frantic grip of her hands at his clothes whispering in the unnatural silence of time standing still. .
"Oh?" Tsuku cocked his head minutely to the right, examining him with the quiet pride of a parental figure. "Is that so?"
"Keep them here, and destroy our past." Sasuke began, the knot in his throat threatening to choke him.
"Send them back and we have no explanation for anyone." Hinata pressed her forehead hard to Sasuke's own.
"We were never going to survive this, were we?" Sasuke's question was only for confirmation, and Tsuku's quiet gaze was all he needed to know with certainty that he was right.
"I am afraid not, and that was Lord Susa's goal all along. You are...different than you were meant to be." Lord Tsuku smiled sadly. "The Goddess Ama was so focused on peace that the collateral damage did not register. She is the youngest of us, and earnest. Perhaps too much so."
"Disrupted destinies." Hinata breathed, pale eyes examining the god through her tangled hair and Sasuke's protective arms. "This life never felt quite… right."
"No." Tsuku shook his head. "But that leaves the final choice, one you must make."
He stood, towering above them before drawing his katana in a smooth pull. Looking up he lifted the blade and with an elegant flick of his wrist released on of the many hanging cranes above to land in his palm.
"It is… an unfair gift in exchange for the sacrifice you must make." He sighed, crouching back down as he studied the rumpled piece of origami stamped with the Hyuuga and Uchiha crests. "But it is a gift owed to you. For the folding of one thousand cranes…" He fixed Hinata with a smile. "For saving my darling moon. For upholding the name of Tsukuyomi as both elegant and fierce." He nodded at Sasuke.
"I will grant you one wish. Choose it wisely."
Hinata listened to the beating of Sasuke's heart beneath her ear, that broken and shredded thing which she wished so much to mend. Inside herself the same pain flared and died with each beat of her pulse and before Sasuke could say anything she reached out to the crane the god held on his open palm.
"I want… " she breathed, her voice shaking as she glanced back over Sasuke's shoulder to the children nestled together in each other's arms.
Sasuke's gaze followed her own, and together they turned back to the crane she cradled in her hands, at the symbols of their houses paired in the darkness of the paper, at the eternity and wisdom which the crane represented.
"I want them… to remember." Sasuke whispered, lifting a hand to Hinata's cheek, forcing her eyes to close for fear of the pleasure and pain overwhelming. "I want them to remember each other. Always."
"It would be hard for them to forget." Tsuku whispered. "For a wound like the kind they endured today even healed leaves a scar. Still, I will make sure they remember. Is that your wish?"
"Yes." Hinata let herself once more bury into the warmth of Sasuke's embrace. "Please… don't forget me."
"I won't." Sasuke's breath in ear came with the same panicked gasp of her own whimpers. "I won't. I won't."
"It is time." Tsuku stood, stepping back as the breeze once more took to sighing, as the sakura blossoms rustled in it's wake, lifting in tendrils of perfume and softness that embraced them in a haze.
"I love you- loved you all along." Hinata sobbed it, for the feeling which was their end was less like dying and more like the crawling hug of deep sleep, dragging her away.
"Always." Sasuke agreed, "I would choose you, will choose you again."
When the breeze carried them in the blossoms away, it was indeed like falling asleep with their arms around each other and their lips still pressed to each other's skin.
Susa's smile was ever vexing. Ama's smoldering distaste a haze of smoke. Eyes solemn, Tsuku nodded.
"Be reborn."