It was evening when Iruka heard the patter of bare feet across the polished flooring throughout the hallway. He paused in his calligraphy, eye raising just in time to see the door in front of him slide open with the slightest grind of wood against wood. It had been an entire month under the tutelage of his new family. Every day some new kind of rule or policy or training or etiquette disrupted his self assurance. Every day was a struggle to find footing and gain traction. He knew it would be different later, when he was more settled into the routine of always being wrong and told off, but for now he wanted to strangle everyone that even breathed the name Hyuuga.
It was with this irritation at his new situation and the helpless feeling he got whenever he wasn't distracted by training that caused Iruka to glance up with a scowl at the interruption. Doe-eyed and soft, Getsumei Hyuuga smiled back. Iruka's bottom lip sucked under his teeth involuntarily at his shame for the knee-jerk reaction he'd had when she opened the door.
"Hello, sweet one," she intoned, still smiling and remaining in the doorway. "May I have a word?"
"O-oh, sure, please come in." Iruka capped his ink and laid his ink brush down gently, away from his scroll of lines. He proceeded to softly slide the set to the side of the horigotatsu, and folded his feet under him in a more formal pose. Getsumei glided down the single step into his room and onto the tatami, kimono robe emitting a soft shhhh as it dragged against the straw fibers before she kneeled down in front of Iruka.
"Before I share my news, I would like to inquire about your health," Getsumei murmured, folding her hands inside of her robe's sleeves and resting them in her lap. Her shoulders were always proudly squared despite her demure demeanor, and Iruka knew as soon as he met her that she was a lot more fiery than she seemed.
"I'm managing," he said after a moment. "How are you?" he parried awkwardly, grasping for conversation topics to keep it from being more uncomfortable than he already was. Getsumei smiled kindly at his lame attempt.
"I am wonderful. I would like to share some important news." She paused dramatically and leaned forward, white, reflective eyes dancing. Iruka couldn't help but mimic her. "You are going to be an older brother."
It was quiet while Iruka slumped backwards and absorbed the news. The "older brother" phrase was sending mixed feelings through him. First, it still rankled that his new family were forcing this certainty on him that he belonged there forever. He had always been independent, and that wasn't going to change no matter how dependent situations made him. Second, he loved kids. It wasn't anything to do with him wanting kids, but he found their strength admiring. Kids could handle anything thrown at them, and babysitting was something he loved to do since the kids he babysat were on his same level: mischief. Having a sibling, no matter that they weren't related by blood, was exciting.
"What does this mean, exactly?" Iruka asked after the stifling silence.
A quirk of her eyebrows was the only indication of Getsumei's surprise. "I am not sure I understand your question, Iruka-kun. This is merely grand news of a new member of the family." Her hands unfolded and soft fingertips brushed against Iruka's torn knuckles. "You are not required any official training to be a big brother, if that is what you are asking."
Iruka's eye drifted to their hands, and he felt a shudder start in his diaphragm. "But I'm not actually related."
"Oh, my," she sighed suddenly, and her fingers changed from brushing his knuckles to gripping three of his fingers. Iruka startled and locked his eye on her frowning countenance. "I am going to speak to Hiashi about this. You are a part of our family now, Iruka." Her face was stern and her eyes were steady. "You may not feel that way, not yet, but since the moment you were welcomed you became my first born son. You are part of this clan."
Iruka's breath froze in his chest and his throat closed, unbidden. Panic gripped his heart with spindly fingers and Getsumei's tone softened. "I see this bothers you. And that is okay. Grief is a monster, and sometimes monsters take a while to tame or slay. But one day grief will be yours to hold onto or not, and we, your clan, will still be here." Getsumei rose and Iruka scrambled to stand after her, swallowing hard. She touched his face across the table, and he didn't shy away from her touch like he would have a month ago. "I hope your night brings peace and rest before your hectic day tomorrow," she stated finally, and turned to slide the door open again.
She looked back over her shoulder. "There are no requirements for you to be a big brother, Iruka-kun. Just merely love her like she will love you."
The door slid shut behind her with a soft shh. While he listened to her bare footfalls, Iruka stood in the middle of his room, stricken down in a matter of seconds. Before, there were no emotional ties between him and the Hyuuga clan. There was only training and staying in a compound of strangers that looked down on him, that judged his every move. Now, however… Now there was a child involved.
He knew, without having to speculate, that he was going to love this baby more than his own life and that was that. However it did complicate things. Would he be expected to marry her when she grew? He also knew she would get a lot of spite from the Branch house, being the second heir to the Hyuuga Main House. That meant he would have to be more active with the Branch House to make sure relations remain well. But he had never really been accepted by the Branch House anyway.
This was going to be a lot harder than training. He now, more than when he found out Anko had been kidnapped, hated his old sensei with the most hate someone like him had the capacity for. His new life was hard. He was going to have to become a jounin, and his new clan would never let him settle for becoming an Academy teacher like he's always wanted. He needed to relearn how to do everything, even jog around the compound, because his balance was thrown off due to a missing eye and he would get vertigo whenever a blast of wind would hit him in the middle of his inhale.
Now he had a little sister.
"I need to go to bed," he muttered to himself.
….
The next day Iruka's eyepatch came off.
It smelled despite how often it was disinfected and cleaned. The bruising around his eye had finally calmed down and now yellow splotches replaced the deep purple around the corners and underneath. His eyelid was still swollen and red, and his eyelashes stuck together in sharp spikes. It was gross. And it was something Iruka didn't notice at first, too busy witlh sight overload.
Within the second of the eyepatch coming off (something he experienced four times a week for a month since the medi-nin needed to keep it as clean as possible without overdoing it) his vision darkened and his mind fired off explosions of light from every surface. Safe to say that he finally grew into his name.
Orochimaru must have messed with his brain as well, the medi-nin told him. He had been under observation for his entire first week in the Hyuuga compound, medi-nin and Hokage both concerned about the overload of information from his new sight to his ordinary brain. They speculated that the reason why his eye was so swollen and sore was because not only does he have a new eye, but Orochimaru must have accessed his parietal lobe through the eye socket. It would take a while to be one hundred percent certain since there was too much swollen flesh in the way to really get a good read on his new pathways. He would have to heal almost fully.
They were reassured when they removed the patch for the first time to clean it. While Iruka's head would start pounding relatively immediately, the pain was more bearable than the skin around his eye socket being cleaned with antiseptic and bruise cream. From then on, the medi-nin were careful but confident when removing the patch. Iruka still required them to wait until he said he was ready, since he had to prepare himself to take in all of the room at once.
"Are you excited to finally be finished with the eyepatch, Iruka-kun?" Getsumei murmured, sitting patiently by his side and holding one of his hands. She didn't flinch or wrinkle her nose at the smell or sight of his wound.
"I am," Iruka admitted. "I've been getting really tired of how itchy the gauze feels."
Getsumei let out a tinkling giggle. "I can only imagine. I find that I would be sticking chopsticks underneath for just a little bit of relief."
That was a sight. Iruka grinned at her. "Imagining you doing something so silly shouldn't be as easy as it is."
"That is because I am quite young, really. You will get to know how silly I can be." She winked. Iruka's grin dimmed slightly at the reminder that he was here indefinitely, and her smile softened. "That will come later. For now, please follow my finger."
A dainty finger skimmed into his vision and he moved his eyes accordingly. There was no pain with the movement. Getsumei's eyes twinkled when she saw how well he was doing, and something inside of Iruka squirmed. Maybe gas, maybe guilt. He didn't want to look very closely at the feeling.
"Do you see it?" Gestumei asked. Iruka raised his only functioning eyebrow. "Your new blind spot. Do you see it?"
Iruka frowned and concentrated. It was hard to recognize what he couldn't see, since his vision had expanded so drastically, and in a different way. The normal color tones of the world dimmed to an opaque saturation. Most of the space between objects was darker, like it was night, but the objects were stark against the sky. It was like the colors inverted; what was bright was now dark, and what was dark was now light. On top of that, he had a panoramic view of the horizon around him, and a crazy view of the three floors above and below.
"Try not to move your eyes," Getsumei murmured, breaking his concentration. Iruka's normal eye focused on her face. He must have been moving his eyes as a habit to take in everything despite not needing to move them at all.
The dual vision was probably why there was still saturation on the focus of objects in the room around him, and not on the objects in the rooms beyond. In order to combat this, Iruka closed his eyes.
"Wow," he breathed.
This was the first time Iruka sat with both eyes closed and the eyepatch off, with enough time to take the view in. Gone was the subtle haze of color. What stood in its place was a firmer boundary between light and dark, and the outlines of objects grew starker in comparison. He could see everything now, from the footprints left on the mat behind him to the splatters of ink on the floor two stories above him. He was enraptured. Spying on people was never something he wanted to try, but now that the option was before him he had a hard time not looking at everything he could.
"This is how you see every time you activate the Byakugan?" he wondered, eyebrow raised above his normal eye.
"Yes, this is how we all see. You will learn how to read everything at once during training," she informed him, "and I believe the medi-nin wants you to wear the eye patch at night and every hour for ten minutes. At least until you are used to the steady extra sight feeding into your brain."
Iruka grimaced. He knew why he needed to, of course, and he would probably be grateful to put it on in an hour. But he wasn't lying when he said the gauze was itchy. He wondered how he would be able to get premium gauze for peace of mind (and skin). In the meantime he vowed to take in as much as he could. Like the flickering, faint glow of everyone's chakra systems.
"I learned in the Academy that Byakugan sight gets stronger the more you see out of it," Iruka stated, eyes still closed. He saw Getsumei's lips open. "I'm not going to be able to see like all of you, at least not until I'm a lot older. I mean, all other Hyuuga clan kids my age have had years to perfect their sight. How am I going to catch up?"
He finally opened his eyes to bore them into Getsumei's sad ones. "I am not sure, Iruka-kun. I also am not the most adept at our eyes. I am not a ninja and I have never trained mine to the same level as most of the Main and Branch House members."
Iruka's insides squirmed at her admittance.
"I can teach you while I learn," he offered in an effort to cheer her up. "We could learn together."
The pause was long, and Getsumei's nose looked suspiciously red. "I would like that," she whispered softly. "I look forward to learning from you, Iruka-kun."
He swallowed thickly, heart heavy and weird and weirdly sad. He was looking forward to learning more about his new family, and he was looking forward to getting to know Getsumei more. And he didn't know how to feel about it.
….
Nights were the hardest. It was when he was the loneliest.
It wasn't as bad now that he had the ability to look at everything around him, rooms over, so he could see energy signatures and ghosts of the guard walking along the edges of the Main House compound. Every once in a while he would see dashes of the smallest energy signatures above the roof, darting back and forth. They were probably bugs but he imagined they were Anbu. On his happier days he made it a game: how many Anbu could he count passing high above?
ely. He didn't let himself think about his parents very often, but when he was alone at night, waiting for sleep to claim his unwilling brain, they snuck in. He would remember the feeling of his mom's fingers carding through his hair while she pulled it into a ponytail. He would remember the feeling of his dad's strong, firm grip on the back of his neck in reassurance. He remembered how loved and safe he felt when they were both by his side.
He hated it. He didn't want to remember.
So he distracted himself when he could. Half a month into keeping the eyepatch off, Iruka snuck out. He wasn't the most stealthy, but he used to be a prankster. He knew how to avoid sight, even Hyuuga sight. Especially now that he had his own Byakugan. If he saw a Hyuuga, they would see him.
He also learned that it was easier to disguise chakra signatures and pathways around other signatures. If he could get to the south end of the compound without being seen he would be scott free. The chakra signatures of the rest of Konoha's residents would help mask him once he was out of the compound. He just had to get there first.
He started by scaling the side of the building his room resided in. He couldn't see anyone in the immediate vicinity, and he knew that six rooms down Getsumei and Hiashi were sleeping, with anyone else awake beyond them. That was too far away even for a fully trained Byakugan to see.
Once on the roof he scanned to the south and east. The roofs there would mark the path he needed to take. He had learned how to tree walk, and water walking was something he took to just as quickly. It was with this instinctive aptitude for chakra control that Iruka pushed out the softest amount of chakra from the balls of his feet. From there he gripped the tiles like a spider would a wall.
His steps weren't completely silent when he ran, but he knew how to shift his footing to avoid the sharper sounds. Within minutes he was past the first guard. He had one more to avoid and then he would be free for a few hours. At least until he was either caught or he snuck his way back in.
It was when he was crouching beside a nocturnal plant (the Hyuuga compound was obsessed with night themed decoration despite how Spartan it was) that Iruka had immediate regrets. The next guard over was a Branch House member, and he was nasty. Not only that, but since the Branch House's border was the one he needed to cross to finally get a taste of freedom, he knew that if a Branch House member caught him it wouldn't just be a slap on the wrist. They'd wake the whole compound in order to get him punished.
It was when the Branch House guard just faded out of sight that Iruka bolted out of the brush and over the wall of the compound, breath frozen in his panicked chest.
He did it.
He was free. Free for a few hours, at least.
It was while he was standing on the path to the village from the Hyuuga compound that the urge to go see the Memorial Stone sunk its teeth in and didn't let go.
Plans to go eat ramen at Ichiraku's dashed, Iruka made his way to the stone.