I know it's been awhile, but I've been focusing on original work lately. You can see where some will be published on my blog, womanintheredroom . wordpress . com.
As always, Naruto belongs to Kishimoto.
The village had never looked so alien in all the years Hyobe had lived. Buildings were being rebuilt, but they weren't the ones Hyobe recognized, similar in form and function as they were. The streets, which had been lost along with the rest of the village in Pain's attack, were growing into paths he could no long anticipate. And the once beautiful vista of the forest and cliffside were now polluted with the remnants of the home he knew. The village would still be Konoha—the people were still there and they were the heart of Konoha—but it wouldn't be his village anymore. It was a new village for a new generation. A generation that was perhaps more ready to care for it than he might want to admit.
Hyobe had always envisioned that once Hizashi left his role as regent and—physically—the main house, Hizashi would remain a strong influence in the branch family, as he had been for Hiashi. Witnessing the aftermath of Pain's attack, Hyobe understood how old fashioned his thinking had been. It wouldn't be Hizashi who took a place of leadership among the branch, qualified as he was to handle it. It would be Neji. He matched Hinata's station in a way Hizashi, who'd acted as father and caretaker to her, couldn't.
It was easy to see now, when crisis revealed a person's character. Without Hizashi present, the clan rallied around Hinata with respect he couldn't remember seeing at any time other than in war when clan troubles fell away in light of the survival of the village. Hinata had defended them to her final breath, and now they were prepared to follow her. And she was proving that somewhere, whether in her education or training or whatever she'd learned from her team, she'd figured out how to stand in front of them with clear eyes and steady intent to tell them what needed to be done. With Neji at her side.
His attachment was understandable given his absence when the village was attacked, yet it also revealed a truth Hyobe had never considered before. As a child, Neji had done his best to always highlight Hinata's strengths when they trained together. Now that habitual need to shield her from Hyobe's own criticisms allowed Neji to seamlessly move between main and branch without ever overshadowing Hinata's more docile personality. He knew when to speak to his sister or yield his will to his clan head. He knew how to disagree without seeming to oppose and how to guide her without leading the clan itself. Hyobe had always thought that Hinata as a second child was the preferable family, to temper Neji's practicality with her mercy, but it seemed they'd found just as sure a way to temper Hinata's mercy with his practicality instead. It was not the outcome Hyobe had expected.
Hyobe limped over to the newly made gate around the Hyuuga's land, which seemed not quite right. It was certainly as spacious as the previous Hyuuga compound, but Hyobe had a feeling it was no longer in the correct place, as though the entire estate had been shifted a few feet here or there so that his sense of direction was slightly off. As one of the largest clans in the village, their homes had been among the first rebuilt, provided they would help house many of those without homes until further accommodations would be made. Rebuilding to former glory would be years away, and with what surely would be war on the horizon, he expected their clan would not be alone behind these gates for some time.
Nostalgia wasn't what drew him to the gate, though. Hinata and Neji stood in calm congress with a couple of jounin Hyobe didn't recognize. They all turned at the sound of his approach.
Hinata frowned. "Grandpa, you should be resting still. Your ankle isn't completely healed yet."
"I'm well enough to walk, especially if there is something I can do to help." He eyed the jounin curiously.
"We certainly could use all the help we can get," said one of the men with a hollow laugh.
Hinata motioned to the two men by way of explanation. "They came to ask for help searching the debris at the edge of the village."
The other man nodded. "As I was saying, we're fairly sure we've found all the survivors, but we need to be prepared for another attack, especially weakened as we are. There are valuable tools and materials trapped in the debris that we can use to prepare a defense. We're enlisting the Inuzuka's to search for explosives, since that can be tracked by scent, but there are plenty of items that can't be found without digging through the rubble and looking for it."
"A Hyuuga can search without digging though," Neji finished the man's thought. "We can minimize the area that needs to be excavated to only those places that actually have the supplies we need instead of blindly searching."
"Yes. Some of the items lost are irreplaceable, while others we're simply in desperate need of. We need to reclaim them, and quickly."
"Of course," Hinata said in a voice that held none of the hesitation it might have only a few days before. "It would be good to enlist some of our civilians in the search. If someone accompanied them, they'd be able to scan for supplies or usable stores of food or medicine and leave our shinobi to search for weapons or items a civilian might not know is important."
"That would help immeasurably," the first jounin said with a tired sigh. "We have some of your clan already looking, but the chain of communication isn't completely restored yet, so we weren't sure how many were here to utilize or if they knew we needed them for specific tasks rather than merely helping where they could."
"I understand. It took me most of that first day to find everyone in my clan, but I do have a complete count of those in the village right now, both military and civilian." Hinata motioned toward the main house, which was as much a dormitory for those without homes as it was a place for the main family to live. After a moment's unwilling hesitation, Neji nodded to an unspoken command and headed off into the compound. "We'll send our list of active shinobi to the command center, as well as a list of able civilians. Though, I'll need to check with those first to make sure they haven't taken on more pressing responsibilities somewhere else."
The men thanked her and departed with a respectful nod. Hyobe and Hinata watched them leave in mutual silence.
He hadn't realized she'd performed a count of the clan since the attack. It was a prudent action and one that he'd have done if he were still clan head at the time and not laid up waiting for a med-nin. Hizashi would have known to do it, but Hizashi wasn't here, and Hinata had not been given as much instruction of the day-to-day duties of the clan head as she would have without a team. He should have mentioned it to her, though. That he didn't proved he'd become complacent with Hizashi's running of the clan. That she'd thought to do it herself was admirable.
Hinata smiled softly to him, and he could see she was pleased he hadn't scolded her handling of the situation.
That was their relationship, after all. His censure was as familiar to her as his smile was to Shou. It was the only way he knew to show he cared for her, since gentle affection would not have made her the stubborn woman she was today. And she was stubborn. Not the kind Neji possessed, which could stop another in their tracks, but a gentle stubbornness that had pushed her forward to face the world that frightened her and demanded she figure out how to keep moving because it would not stop. And she had. Hyobe could see that now in the expression that was as much Hiashi as it was his healer wife's: strong and caring.
Hyobe turned away and motioned with a nod for her to follow. Censure may be the comfortable path between them, but it was not all that was left. She'd surprised him once before when she learned the seal, and so he knew how to offer praise, rusty as he was with his granddaughter. The seal . . .
"We haven't spoken about your stealing the sealing scroll from my trunk," he said, settling too easily into criticism. He hadn't meant to, but the topic was important and they were alone for the moment.
Hinata's previous pleasure ebbed from her face, but surprisingly guilt didn't replace it. "I know. I'm sorry for not asking permission to use it. I needed its insight in order to create the chackra suppressor seals I used to strengthen my coils system. Without the detailed explanations of how chakra behaved in the coils system and how it could be manipulated, I don't believe I would have succeeded."
"You could have requested to see it. It is by rights yours to learn from, but I needed to know where it was. If I had not thought to search your study, it may have been lost among the debris of the city as well."
She nodded, he eyes lowered, but not trapped on her feet as they used to when she was a child. "I didn't want to ask and admit to another failure should my attempts to create the seals come to nothing. It was cowardly of me. I apologize."
Hyobe nodded his acceptance of her apology and moved on. "The seals you used to protect the book, both its hiding place and to keep it from being opened were incredibly advanced techniques. I'll admit it would take me days of work to find a way past them. I thought your instructor's specialty was genjutsu."
"It is," Hinata agreed and after a moment's pause she looked away, showing the guilt she hadn't felt when stealing the scroll. "After I created the chakra suppression seals, I found that I was skilled in seals. I suppose that should have been obvious before then. When I expressed interest in learning more, Kurenai-sensei convinced Kakashi-sensei to teach me further. He has been a good instructor. The hounds I summoned—he was the one who passed them down to me."
Hyobe wondered how difficult it must have been for her to choose to expand the one skill that every Hyuuga would see as connected to the seal that bound them to the main family. The triumph that she despised herself for accomplishing. It was a brave act. Perhaps he needed to stop being surprised by such bravery in the young woman before him. She was not a child anymore.
"In that case," he said, making a decision that had been uncertain until that moment, "I see no reason the scroll should return to my protection. It should have gone to you when you learned the seal, but you were young then. I didn't believe you were prepared for the burden of it."
"I wasn't. I might not have been even when I took it from you, but the fight against Pain taught me something about the seal." Her lowered eyes raised and a warmth that was more often shown to her family than to him shined in her eyes. "I don't believe the seal was made to hurt, not intentionally. Pain's coil's system was different. I wasn't able to reach the cerebral cortex. It made me realize that there is nowhere else for the chakra to go without harming us in the long term. I believe that the pain was an unintended side effect that has been abused by the main family, and that belief gives me hope that the clan can be healed."
"War will heal the clan. We will come together against a common enemy," Hyobe said, strangely uneased by the optimism in her voice. They could not afford naiveté going into a war. Or was it the word 'abused' that she'd used, a chide on him an all who came before who solidified their authority with fear of the seal.
"Only while the enemy is there," she replied in a steady voice. When had she gotten so comfortable debating him? "It will take much more work to stay together once the only enemy we have is each other."
They walked on in silence for a time, Hyobe ruminating on what she'd said. Hinata was not going to be the clan head he wanted. She didn't see the clan the way he and those before him had. Even with the seal, the burden of the Hyuuga clan, she desperately sought to make necessity less cruel. Hyobe had seen too much in his long life to mistake the order and security the seal brought for true cruelty. Yet she wanted to look at it and find hope. Was that so terrible a trait after all? No, she wouldn't be the clan head he wanted, but that didn't mean she wouldn't become a good one nonetheless. With Neji there to keep her too soft heart in check, the clan would survive better than he'd hoped when he saw an underdeveloped child hiding behind her cousin.
They paused at the main house's porch where Neji waited, papers in hand. He handed half of them to Hinata. "I made a quick copy for us to keep. Do you want me to deliver the lists or talk to the civilians?"
Hyobe sat, straightening his sore leg to keep from injuring his ankle again, and listened to his grandchildren as they made plans for their clan. Hyobe would have gone to deliver the lists if he were in charge. To show those in power who led the Hyuugac clan. Hinata sent Neji instead, because his byakugan was better than hers, so he needed to get to work for the village sooner. She would speak to the civilians. Hyobe wouldn't have allowed himself such a duty, since the branch would have felt uncomfortable in his presence. They wouldn't, he noted, be so in hers. Not only because of the fight with Pain; he'd seen it before when Hizashi gathered the clan to help choose Hinata's suitor. They were comfortable having her near.
"You should rest," Hinata's voice broke through his thoughts and Hyobe saw that Neji had already left the porch. Hyobe hadn't noticed. "Grandma and the other healers are in the village, but if you need, I can help any pain or soreness before I go."
Hyobe blinked as his mind caught up with her words, and he shook his head. "Not necessary. Any discomfort will ease on its own in time. You have more pressing matters to attend to."
"I think I'll go find someone to help you." She frowned an expression that was entirely her mother's and Hyobe's heart ached a little.
She really wasn't a child who could be protected from the coming war. Not her or Neji. There would be no rest with conflict brewing outside their borders. And if she was to take on some of Hizashi's burden as leader of their clan, which Hyobe doubted even she could stop at this point, then home needed to be a place of rest. Hyobe knew what it was to stand in front of the clan in times of war.
"Not necessary," he repeated, his tone silencing her worry. Then, softer, "There is one more thing before you go. With all that has happened, no one will be thinking of wedding plans even if we had the resources to have one."
Hinata fidgeted on the balls of her feet. Perhaps she was hoping no one would mention it in light of more pressing matters.
"The marriage was your concession to prove your commitment to the clan, but that is no longer necessary. You died for the clan and our village. Your commitment is not in question. Given that, I see no reason you can't wait until you take over the clan to marry, as is more traditional for our family."
"You mean it?" she said in such a quick voice that she paused and steadied her face. "I was . . . am willing."
"I know." And wasn't that more frustrating than anything. He couldn't manipulate her when she stood her ground. That her conviction was admirable was doubly frustrating. "But your focus should be on the war. It will provide more than enough stress without your home adding more unnecessarily."
Then, as if drawing a memory from the ether, Hinata reached down and hugged him. The last time she'd embraced him on the porch she'd had to lift herself up. As much as he'd told himself that she wasn't a child, Hyobe could still feel that innocent optimism in her touch.
"Thank you," she whispered in a broken voice that betrayed the tears he couldn't see. Hyobe finally understood how difficult it had been for her to say she was willing and follow through.
She wasn't the clan head he wanted, but she might still be a good one.
Hizashi couldn't breathe for a full minute. He knew it had to be close to that, because when he finally noticed the burn in his lungs and inhaled, the breath took far longer than it should have for a simple moment of shock.
There was a crater where his home had once been. True the crater was steadily filling as practical need outweighed any lingering memories of what had caused the it, but that didn't change the fact it was still a crater that had once been a village full of life and sound . . . and his family, his clan. How many had died in an attack that could obliterate Konoha to the bedrock beneath? Hizashi's feet left the edge of the path, which now ended in a sloping cliffside toward the remnants of his village, and landed in a sprint that the few servants he'd had with him couldn't match.
What had happened in the two weeks since he'd said goodbye to his wife and children? Were they safe still? Was the clan safe? A questions, which seemed to have no answer, swarmed him as he ran though the newly-formed streets that didn't lead to places he knew. Byakugan knew though. Byakugan looked through the buildings he didn't recognize, searched the people who suffered but strangely did not grieve, and stopped only when he found a face as familiar to him as his own.
"Naomi," he whispered, letting her name settle his fear. Naomi was alive and she did not look like a woman who had just lost one of her children. His family was safe. He could believe that, and the knowledge allowed his fear-fueled pace to slow into a reasonable run that didn't leave him panting in the middle of a crowd of people.
He entered a walled off area very similar to what had once been the Hyuuga compound and found his wife. She sat at a large table with many other shinobi, both Hyuuga and not, eating from a communal meal made to serve far more than those seated at present. A few of the others saw him first and rose with relief in their eyes, but their words were a muffled chatter he couldn't hear clearly as Naomi stood and turned to face him. Dark circles weighed her white eyes and her breath made her shoulders rise and fall with the effort of staying awake, but she was alive and that made her more beautiful than he could ever remember.
Hizashi pushed past those trying to talk to him, no doubt he needed to hear what they said, but the panic that had gripped him at the top of the path refused everyone but Naomi. He pulled her close, cradling her neck as he kissed her, long and deep and very improperly for the audience around them, and if anyone was bothered by it, he didn't care in the least. Naomi certainly wasn't bothered, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders to return the love he bathed her with in kind. He wasn't the only one who needed the reassurance touch brought.
Laughter made it to his ears when he pulled away from the comfort of his wife's embrace, and what Hizashi had been seeing in the people finally reached to his conscious mind. People didn't laugh after tragedy. Even if relieved that their clan head had returned, if there had been the grief Hizashi expected upon seeing the state of the village, they would have greeted him solemnly to tell the story. Laughter meant the situation was not as it seemed.
"What happened here?" he asked and half a dozen voices answered.
They told stories of an attack across the city, of evacuating civilians through falling rubble and danger worse than when Suna had invaded, of enemies who seemed nearly invulnerable. Then the voices began to speak together, not all at once but one at a time, each elaborating and continuing the tale of the last as many different tales became one. A tale of Pain, who destroyed their home, of Naruto who fought to save them, of Hinata, who'd died to save him.
Hizashi stared down at Naomi with wide eyes that held all the terror her kiss had banished just moments before. She was not one of the voices talking and when she met his gaze, she took his hand between her own.
"She's alive now. Everyone who died in the attack is alive. That is a much more complicated story, but for now, just know she alive." Naomi's voice was not that of the woman he'd left two weeks before. It was smaller somehow, weaker. It was the voice of a mother who'd seen death on her child's face and could never unsee it.
Hizashi pulled her close again. "Where is my father?" he asked the crowd. "I need to see what is happening with the clan." It was a good excuse to remove him and Naomi from so public a place.
"Hyobe-sama was injured in the attack.," a man said. "Hinata-sama and Neji-sama have been coordinating the clan with the village. Both of them are probably out with the others searching the debris."
Hizashi nodded, not letting the surprise show on his face.
"We'd be searching the debris for months if we didn't have the Hyuugas helping out," shouted one of the men still sitting at the table. He wasn't Hyuuga, but he was dressed in the usual shinobi garb.
A Hyuuga woman, her name escaped Hizashi's confused mind, twisted to see the calling man. "We'll still be dealing with it for months, we just make the clean-up easier."
They laughed. They laughed the relief of Hizashi arrival and the thrill of survival and the joy that broken buildings were all they had to dig up. Hizashi took a deep breath and exhaled. His world hadn't been destroyed with the village and Naomi was right, that was enough for now.
Hizashi waved the people back to their meals and drew Naomi away from prying eyes. She took him inside, through halls that weren't his home, and to a room with nothing but a battered futon that looked like it may have been dragged from that debris they'd been talking about. Naomi closed the door and buried herself into him. Her face pressed into the fold of his kimono until skin met skin and she just breathed.
"Do you need to tell me the complicated version of what happened?" he asked softly. He wrapped his arms around her to anchor his wife in his own stability. She was a strong woman and he had no doubt she had done all that was necessary in his absence, but that didn't mean he couldn't give her the respite she needed now that he was home. Let him be strong for a while.
"Not yet. I don't think I'd function if I told it. There's too much there I don't want to remember." She inhaled again, as if needing her every sense to be of him alone in the moment. "I keep reminding myself that she's not dead anymore. It helps. Seeing her helps more. I wish I could tie Hinata to me and never let her go."
He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and raised her head until she looked at him. "But you're a better woman and a better mother than that, so you let her go."
"The clan respects her now in a way they never did. I couldn't take that away to satisfy myself."
"It seems quite a story. I can't wait to hear what Father has to say."
Naomi's eyes darkened with hatred far deeper than any she'd shown for anything before. "Don't expect me to be in the same room with him. He can call it necessity, but I won't forgive him."
Hizashi still beneath his wife's contained fury. There had always been disagreement with Hyobe as she was born branch, and that only intensified once Shou was born, but there had never been the kind of outright murderous hatred for him, not like he saw in her eyes now. "What did he do?"
"He killed her." The words dripped like venom from her lips. "Hinata was too wounded to fight back. If he'd done nothing, Pain would have ignored her. Pain only killed her because of him. I will never forgive that."
Hizashi desperately wished he knew the complicated version of the story now, but Naomi was not in a state to tell it, that much he could see. He would find someone who was there, who was neither his father or wife, to tell him an unbiased truth, if such a thing existed. Then he would see about healing his family of the wounds that lingered unseen. They needed to be strong together for war was surely coming.
Hizshi rested his chin on the top of Naomi's head, forcing her face to press once more against his chest. She breathed in and her hands relaxed their hold on his kimono. "Hinata's alive," he reminded her. "She's alive and Neji's alive and Shou . . ." he paused, no one had mentioned Shou.
"Shou's alive," she finished for him. "He was safe with the civilians."
"Good," he said, kissing her hair. "Our family is alive. Let us be thankful for that and everything else will fall into place."
Tears wet his skin as Naomi released a long, sobbing cry that she was too strong and too driven to allow in front of those looking to her for guidance as a member of the main family. But now, safe in his company, she wept the horrors she'd witnessed from her mind until raw eyes closed and her hand found his.
"I'm glad you're home." Naomi took a deep breath and steadied herself, once more the determined woman he'd fallen in love with. "I wish we could stay here for a while more, but there's work to be done. No time for crying over things that have happened."
Hizashi tipped her head back with light fingers and kissed her. "I always have time when you need me."
She wiped her eyes clear as best she could, though the redness of crying was more pronounced against a white iris. "I am very happy you're home. Come, I can find out where the children are."
Hizashi nodded. There were countless things he needed to do, but checking on his family would always come first.