Hyuuga-centric. Neji/Hinata, somewhat. AU-ish. Pretend that Naruto died and that Neji is still a bastard. Written October 2005, or thereabouts.
This late dissension grown betwixt the peers
Burns under feigned ashes of forged love
And will at last break out into a flame
- Henry VI 1, 3.1
This Isle of Ashes
Hinata will always think of the day of her father's funeral takes place as the worst of her life. She does not gag at the scent of burning flesh , but her heart bleeds when the fire is finally doused and she realizes all that is left of him is damp, grey ash.
She is appointed head of the family the same day. The ceremony is long and tedious and she gathers the scraps of her pride and dignity to accept the appointment in a voice that barely quavers.
"She is growing up," murmurs the Main House. "Much too soon. Raw clay, younger than when Hiashi took the same position. We must guide and imprint our beliefs on her."
The Branch House is silent, too used to the mute servitude that has been forced onto them generations before.
Weeks pass, and the Main House finds Hinata to be a much more stubborn leader than they had reckoned. They do not know that she is clinging onto her last memory of Naruto, the very last promise that she had made him (I'll never let them control me, I'll keep going). Even that much is beginning to erode and decay like Naruto's body lying under a cairn of rocks and soil built and sent there by Uchiha Sasuke.
She asks for Neji. She makes sure to ask and not demand. She outlines her problems to him when he arrives, takes a deep breath and asks him to help her guide, not rule the Hyuuga into change.
"They will never accept me," he says flatly.
She swallows and agrees. Then adds in a soft, stuttering voice, "They won't have a choice if you're my consort."
"Why not ask Hanabi? She's Main House and your younger sister. You can divide your power with her."
"I don't know," answers Hinata, closing her eyes. "She's too young. She's my younger sister. I can't--I can't rely on her because she's my youngest sister." Her eyes flutter open. Inhales. Exhales. "Please."
"Why me?"
"Why not you?" she counters, her tone still soft, but a little surer now. "My father trusted you. Naruto-kun trusted you. I trust you."
"That's not enough, Hinata-sama," he answers. "Not enough to bind myself to you."
"You know what the Hyuuga pride is and what it should be." She twists her fingers into knots and adds, "I don't know what else to do, Neji-niisan."
He is silent for a long moment. She waits, biting her lower lip and trying very hard not to hope even as she does. Finally, he says, "You should not call me that if we are to be married."
Their marriage is not easy, but it is easier than they expected. It takes them almost seven months to consummate it and almost half as long to actually become comfortable with sex. The Main House is silent. The Branch House raise their heads to meet the Head's eyes for the first time in generations.
Hinata tries to establish change. At the birth of a young girl, she preempts the elders and forbids the sealing ceremony from taking place. Main House members have permanently etched their lips into a thin line by now. When Hinata does this for a second, third, fourth time, the Main House confronts their leader. She shrinks under their calm, collected reasoning and it is Neji who refutes it.
Their marriage passes through infancy and settle into a sort of unspoken truce. She tries to make new rules, and Neji holds up her decisions if he approves. Soon, even though she does not realize it, Neji begins to implant suggestions in her, to move and manipulate the family with the strength of her birthright and his strength. She becomes his consort and does not say anything when he begins to issue orders and edicts through her.
The years pass. Hinata will always think of these as the numbest and most wilfully blind part of her life. Neji quietly usurps her power and not even Hanabi can make her elder sister see what is happening.
"He's controlling you, Sister. The family does not like it. I do not like it."
"The family is afraid of change, Hanabi," Hinata tell her quietly. "Neji was a Branch House member. He would've been one of us if his father hadn't married outside the family."
Hanabi made a noise that was born of disbelief and disgust. "Are you really so blind, my sister? He branded a Main House member," she says harshly. "A second cousin of ours. What next? Will he place the seal on me if I cross him as well?"
Hinata is silent for a long moment. Hanabi does not say anything, but sees the way the teapot shakes when her elder sister pours tea into their shallow cups. "I'll talk to him," she finally says.
Neji reminds her that she married him because she wanted to instigate change. He also tells her that he was against the marriage and that he is doing everything in his power to inflict change on their clan, their family. "We've been able to implement new laws and break traditions these last few years because we have stood together. Forgive me, but you can not do this without me."
She murmurs an apology and flees. The confrontation will leave her feeling at least a little raw for the rest of her life.
More years pass. They are older now, still childless and incurring the wrath of their family in equal parts. Neji is cunning enough to toe the line between dictatorship and instigating a revolution by hiding behind Hinata's name. Sasuke/Orochimaru continues to nibble away at Konoha and Sakura takes up Tsunade's mantle as Hokage in Naruto's memory and as a gambit against Sasuke's ghost. Konoha is fighting a losing war against Orochimaru while the Hyuuga are fighting one against Neji and Hinata.
Branch members are no longer branded. The seal is given to traitors and people that disobey and displease. Hanabi barely saves herself from being branded by appealing to her sister and calling on a favour from the Hokage. Hanabi is reticent when Sakura quizzes her, but the Hokage is now beginning to take note of the shifting currents in the Hyuuga. She sends Gai to investigate.
Neji brings back the body of his genin teacher whose face has been twisted into a macabre parody of his trademark smile. Neji himself is without expression, and his voice is much more taut than even Hinata has ever heard. She will see the same expression and hear the same voice when a joint mission with Lee goes awry and he stands before his former teammate's pyre with civilians and ninjas alike. The only dry eyes that day were white.
The deaths take a toll on Konoha and their family. Children are sombre, eyes dull from fear and overuse, small wrists strained and caffed from learning their jutsu too quickly. Even Hinata can see the fissures widening in the foundation of their family. The Hyuuga are preparing for war; who against, they cannot, will not say.
It is not until Tenten takes off Neji's blindfold from Hinata's eyes that the young leader realizes how misplaced her loyalty and beliefs have been these years.
"He's in league with the Akatsuki," Tenten tells her, the wind in the trees obscuring her quiet voice. It is very dark in the forest, and it is only with effort that Hinata is able to see the other kunoichi. "He killed Gai-sensei and Lee."
"How--" Hinata swallows, stills her trembling. "How do you know?"
"Shikamaru and Shino suspect, at the very least, and I'm sure Sakura has some kind of idea of what's going on." Tenten laughs dryly, sadly. She runs a hand through her hair, dislodging senbon from the neat buns. They fall to the moss without sound and she does not notice as she says, "He can fool your family, but he can't fool his former teammates. Lee told me before he died. He saw Neji kill Gai-sensei."
"No one is killing anyone," Hinata says, her voice firm for the first time since her father's death. She reaches out, takes Tenten's cold hands in her own and says, "I will ask him about this. I'm sure he has an explanatio--"
"There is proof." Tenten pauses, takes a deep breath, lets it out. Her eyes are shuttered as she says, "Hinata, I've come to execute him."
The words leave Hinata cold, and Tenten has to catch her before she crumbles. Shaking, Hinata closes her eyes, curls her hands around her swollen stomach. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because I want you to help me." Tenten's voice is steady, but it softens as she adds, "I requested this job from the Hokage. I can give it to you."
Hinata finally understands what Tenten is offering: a chance to redeem her pride and maybe give her family a chance to rediscover their own. And maybe, she thinks with a bitterness that is not unwarranted, the thing that would bring the shattered remains of the Hyuuga back together again. "I--I need time."
"I understand." Tenten stands up, pauses. "I know I don't need to tell you not to tell anyone."
Hinata shakes her head, and Tenten grasps Hinata's hands for a second before releasing them to pick up her senbon. Just as she is putting the last of the deadly needles into her hair, she gasps, her eyes dialate and then she slides to the ground with a shuriken in her throat and a kunai in her heart.
"She was never very good at keeping track of her surroundings," Neji says calmly as he pulls his weapons out of Tenten's cooling body.
"Why did you do it?"
"Because she was going to destroy the family. She killed Lee and Gai-sensei." Neji wipes the weapons on the moss and puts them away. "The Akatsuki want the main families destabilized. They brought down the Uchiha. They have been trying to pull the Hyuuga apart, and I will not let them." He offers his wife a hand, peers at her stomach and says, "Four months along. You've never kept a secret from me before."
"It was supposed to be a surprise," Hinata tells him, looking away. "I was going to tell you this week."
"Before or after you killed me?"
Her gaze snaps back to meet his eyes before she can control it. "I would have neve--"
"You would have thought about it. And that would have been enough to plant the seeds of the family's destruction." He pulls her to her fell, places a hand on her abdomen. "I only want what's best for the Hyuuga. You know that, Hinata."
"Yes." Hinata closes her eyes, leans her head on Neji's shoulder. It is the only time she has ever done this throughout their marriage. "As do I." With a sharp jerk of her wrist, she pushed Tenten's last senbon, the one that the older kunoichi had given to her when she had grasped her hand in warning and sisterhood, into his right arm. "If you remove the needle, you will die," she says quietly, raising her head and looking at him full in the face. "I've also blocked off your chakra."
He does not look surprised. "Will you do this to me, Wife?"
"I'm sorry," she says before shifting into the opening stance of the sixty-four hands of Hakke.
They are much more evenly matched than she had ever dreamed was possible. The senbon had managed to still his chakra flow, but he had been taught by a taijutsu master, and Hinata is not the fighter that Neji is. Hand to neck, arm to block, right leg to knee, she concentrates on these movements so fiercely that she is able to temporarily forget that she is trying to kill her husband.
"You will not be able to lead them without me," Neji gasps at one point, holding a hand to his stomach where she has just delivered a particularly nasty blow.
"I will have to learn," she replies, balancing on the balls of her feet and then leaping before he has a chance to reply.
He pulls back two killing blows that night. She pulls back one.
"Why?" she asks, her fingers inches above the cardiac tenketsu. He is on his knees, his eyes closed and breathing heavily. "Why did you do it, Neji-niisan?"
To his credit, he does not flinch. Kneels, breathes, thinks. "Because our family was dying," he finally answers. "If we were working with the Akatsuki, at the least, we would have had a chance to survive. Maybe even change it. The Hyuuga were fated to subservience. The Main House serves the Hokage, the Branch House serves the Main House. At least this way, the Hyuuga would have been one house."
"It was falling apart."
His lips flicker into something that looks like a smile, but she thinks that she has imagined it. "So you think. I would have eradicted the cursed seal, eventually. What pride can the Hyuuga take in serving others? If your father had lived up to his responsibilities, my father would have lived longer. My father was a fool; I am not."
"Your father loved his brother," she tells him. Pauses. "Love isn't foolish."
His lips twist wryly and he does not answer. She takes a deep breath. Fights back tears. "I'll name our son after you," she says before drawing her hand back, and then brings it forward.
The night passes. She raises her head when the sun breaks through the trees. Her legs are numb from kneeling so long and eyes bloodshot. "I would have loved you." Her voice is soft and edged with regret. "But we were too busy trying to redefine the family pride, without realizing that the answer was there all along." She takes a deep, shuddering breath, lets it out and stands up.
Coda:
Days pass. Hinata returns, sweat and tear-streaked. She gives Neji full funeral rites and once his body has crumbled into grey ash, she gathers the Hyuuga together and tells him about her husband's duplicity. She will spend the rest of her life piecing the Hyuuga back together, bit by bit.
Months pass. She gives birth to a son, and much to the combined consternation of the Houses, names him after his father. She asks each House to appoint a representative, then chooses one of her own from each House, making a perfectly balanced council of five people. They will argue, they will be a little too set in their ways, and the chasm between them too wide to ever bridge fully in their lifetime. But still, Hinata reasons, it's a start.
Years pass. Neji grows into a beautiful boy, much loved by his mother and aunt. He is quick to smile and offer a compliment, but much quicker in picking up the family techniques.
"Is it hard?" Hanabi asks her sister as they sip their tea
"Sometimes." Hinata smiles ruefully. "He's so much like his father--"
"Neji was never that sweet."
Hinata does not answer. Instead, she sees her son's forehead crease as he slides his foot forward, then his arm. His form is perfect. "No," she answers finally. "He wasn't."
They watch young Neji struggle to learn the sixty-four hands of Hakke. His movements are still clumsy with childhood, but both sisters can see his father's grace in the jerky movements. He is still too young to hear the whispers about being his father's son, but Hinata is determined to make sure that he is equally hers.
Neji will grow up in a world without Orochimaru. Sakura has avenged the ghosts of her teammates and killed Sasuke.
The Akatsuki are silent. Not defeated, and always present. Even the combined efforts of Sand and Hidden Leaf cannot find them. Neji will not grow up in a bloodless world, but it will be cleaner than his parents'.
"Do you ever regret..." Hanabi's voice trails off, but Hinata understands.
"Yes. No. I don't know. If I hadn't been so blind, maybe it wouldn't have been necessary to kill him. If I had been stronger, I wouldn't have had to marry him. But..." Hinata bites her lower lip, watches her son execute a kata flawlessly.
I'll never let them control me. I'll keep going.
She had been very young when she made that promise to Naruto-kun. She had been very young when she broke it. And she had been only just a bit older when she began to realize the scope of it. Neji would learn and understand it. So would her family, she vowed.
"But?" Hanabi raises a brow.
Words. Promises. Beginnings.
Hinata shrugs. And smiles.
end