A Thousand White Eyes
III: It Beats For You
(you were always together)
Their mother tells them that even though Yashi came out first, he came out wrinkled and red and screaming. "You were just shaking with rage," she says to him, threading the long, thick cord of her braid through her hands. "You were so angry to be away from your brother."
One of her hands drops from the braid, settles on Zashi's head. "You, though, you came out smiling and looking for something. You knew you were going to be with your brother."
A slightly bittersweet smile crosses her face. Not that Hiashi or Hizashi quite know the meaning of bittersweet yet. They know only that their mother, their sweet, sorrowful, sad-happy mother, is smiling again.
"Always together," she sighs to them. She is their sickly mother, soft and sweet and strange, and it is she Hizashi will be thinking of when he tells Neji that all Hyuuga, even the Main House, are a little doomed.
It is she Hiashi will think of when he pushes his sweet, sickly, strange daughter to be stronger. Hyuuga Hina, curled up in her futon with a bowl of tea in her hands, with her long braided blue-black hair and her pale skin, is the one he will see when the Cloud-Nin steals into his daughter's room.
"Once, before you were born, your father sat with me, and we saw you, and we counted your every heartbeat. You were both tangled up together..." That smile turns even sadder, even stranger, and Hizashi will never understand the odd weight in his throat when he sees it.
(even when you were apart)
"I'm not supposed to call you 'brother' anymore."
Hiashi's heartbeat speeds up, and he can see in his brother's eyes that he, too fears that thought. They have always been brothers, always been together. It is the one cherished thing they have ever had that nobody could take from them for misbehaviour.
Hiashi very calmly, carefully finishes the stroke for his kanji. "Who says?"
His voice is that calm, collected tone that he only uses when he wants to hit something. Hizashi never quite learned to use that tone; if he wants to hit something, he usually just hauls off and hits something. It'll be HIS job to fix it later, anyway.
"Your father says."
That is the moment Hiashi starts to hate Hyuuga Hirohito. He could maybe forgive his father the Sealing, and maybe forgive him for making Hizashi sleep in Branch quarters--
But to take his brother away forever?
Hiashi swirls his brush in ink and begins to write a new character. "Calling me brother doesn't matter."
"Kind of annoying, though. Not to be allowed to."
Hiashi looks at his twin, eyes narrowing. "That's the least of our concerns."
Hizashi falls silent, a rarity.
Hiashi senses his brother's approach, and is not at all surprised when Hizashi tosses a zabuton on the floor and joins him.
"What are you writing?"
"An open letter, of sorts."
Hizashi tilts his head to one side. "Your kanji look all funny. I have to do this just to read 'em. We... were... always..."
"Shut up. My calligraphy is better than yours."
"Maybe, but I'm the pretty one."
"But we're--"
"I'm still prettier."
"What you are is crazier."
Hizashi tosses his hair in a gesture that Hiashi is fairly sure he learned from their distant cousin Hanamori.
(do you feel my heart beat?)
Most Hyuuga walk, within the compound, in a strange series of spirals, loops, or circles. It seems almost random, perhaps inebriated. It is a walk ingrained into Hyuuga from the time they take their first steps. The nature of a nightingale floor is that the flooring nails, like the wings of a grasshopper, rub against a clamp imbedded underneath the mats and produce a chirping sound. The first Hyuuga, in their obsession with circles and roundness and patterns, placed the clamps in a very specific pattern. One misstep not only alerts nearly the entire compound to the intruder's presence, it can let them know where to search with the Byakugan.
Not even those who observe the strange, spiraling walk can know where the pegs are without the aid of the Hyuuga bloodline technique. Each addition to the compound fits within the pattern— eight rooms with no peg immediately within or outside the doors, arranged in a circle. Of course. The result leads their enemies to believe that they safeguard common areas, but not private rooms.
That time-tested system, of sound narrowing sight, is how Hiashi and Hizashi identify the threat. Sound is what first alerted them, but the rush to Hinata's nursery is silent and strange, and Hizashi cannot help but watch the ribbon-like curl of his brother's ponytail makes as he swoops in circles. The spiral-like movements they make carry them quickly to the nursery, but they do not need to enter to see the shinobi who has slid open the girl's window.
Hiashi makes it through first, a fact that irritates Hizashi to no end.
"I see you," Hiashi says to the enemy ninja, but his terrified daughter thinks he speaks to her. Hizashi knows better; he, too, is reminded of their sickly mother in her futon.
The ninja does not even bother to drop his kunai.
"I see you. With my eyes."
The Cloud-nin actually laughs.
Hizashi knows that this is the end. He leans against the doorframe, smirking. "That means you're toast."
Hiashi doesn't waste another second. His open hand strikes the ninja's chest. A burst of chakra, visible to the Byakugan Hizashi called as soon as he heard the peg creak, and the Cloud-nin falls.
Rubbing his forehead a little, as he always does when witnessing death, the younger twin helps his brother carry the body out.
(do you feel my heart beat? it beats for you.)
"You don't have to do this," Hiashi murmurs to the one person he has ever truly loved.
"I kind of do. You'd just find a way to screw it up." Hizashi smirks, looks away. "I never wanted-- I never wanted--"
I never wanted the one who did this to be anybody but you, he is trying to say.
"I know." Hiashi rubs his brother's back. "This is going to hurt."
"It always does, brother. It always does."
"Are you ready?"
"Never. Do it anwyay."
"On eight," Hiashi says. At seven, he stops. Chokes. "Love you."
"Love you too. Eight."
Moments later, his twin's body is cold in his arms. Choking, Hiashi unwraps the bandage from his brother's forehead and runs his fingers over the unbelievably smooth, pale skin he has created.
"Mother and Father had a hard time telling us apart, you know, before we were born. Because we tangled so close together. But they counted your every heartbeat."
Hiashi throws back his head, closes his eyes, and pretends that there's no reason to weep.