Author's Note: If I find the time, I'll start posting the old version alongside this one, for comparison's sake.
Warning: Graphic description of violence; implied rape.
The Chaos Theory
Even if Genzai Sakura had not mastered the technique yet, the foundations would have to suffice. The foundations, Sakura had learned in record time. She was truly brilliant. Tsunade did not know whether to be proud or unsettled.
The true challenge was the user's ability to commit to accumulating chakra. It was an alien, almost detrimental, sensation, and would have to be endured as the user slept, ate, trained—every moment of every day without interruption.
They had spent the whole evening (and the morning) working on it, until the diamond had flashed on her student's forehead, disappearing just as promptly. Sakura slumped in her chair, panting and sweating.
"The seal with grow stronger over time as you accumulate chakra to fuel it," Tsunade explained. "It will reappear faintly, and become progressively darker. In short—congratulations. I have no doubt that you will be successful with this."
Sakura was too busy catching her breath to respond, but she managed a weary smile.
There was a gentle knock on the door. Tsunade's eyes snapped towards it as someone pushed their way into the room, followed by a second person. Two shinobi from Kumogakure. The Cloud was a Leaf ally, though the intrusion was concerning. They had not gotten prior authorization to enter the Leaf village, and in the absence of an emergency, this could almost be seen as an act of aggression.
Tsunade rested elbow upon her desk and her cheek against her knuckles, a scowl tugging at her lips, but she tried to retain a calm facade.
"Apologies Hokage-sama, this is a delicate matter, and required a certain measure of discretion," said the silver-haired kunoichi with an apathy that did not match her pacifying words.
"What is this regarding?" said Tsunade.
"Hyuuga."
Tsunade almost grimaced at that. "Excuse us, Sakura. You've done well tonight. Go home and get some rest. We will resume your training tomorrow."
Sakura hesitated, but stood, as obedient as Naruto was mutinous. After she left the room, the Cloud shinobi continued.
"Hyuuga Hanabi, specifically. She is neither the heir nor cardinal to her family's survival."
"We would be protecting her from the Hyuuga clan's cursed seal," the male nin offered. "Hanabi-san can have a new life in Kumogakure, work within the leadership, and even travel at her leisure—"
"Before or after you gouge her eyes out?" Tsunade inquired.
There was pause. "Tsunade-hime..." started the woman.
Impertinent bitch.
"We just want to study Hanabi-san's technique, from the periphery."
Tsunade had heard enough. "Get out."
The two Kumo shinobi gave her quizzical looks, then angry ones.
"Fine," said the woman quietly.
Then they were gone.
Chapter 13
She pushed the final shoji piece across the board, triumphing over him for a second game in a row. "I won," she whispered in demure rapture.
"You won," Sasuke echoed, meeting eyes with the child.
Shoji was a welcome distraction from the things that would occur the following day, as well as Kasai's absence. Of course, his chosen opponent brought with her a wealth of additional problems.
Kesshi reminded him of Hanabi, if just a little. Calm and reticent. He thought of the quiet evenings when he was injured or Hanabi was suspended, as they tolerated each other, not really knowing what to do with the other. Then he would join her on the floor and show her some seals he had plundered.
Mirai Sasuke had not seen much of Genzai Hanabi that day. She had attached herself to her sister. It made sense. The two loved each other.
"Are you letting me win, Otousan?" Kesshi asked dubiously.
"No," Sasuke responded honestly, his attention returning to Kesshi. The child did not have the vicious intensity of Uchiha, or the aloofness of Hyuuga, but she was brilliant with strategy, and had the beginnings of a capable healer. Sasuke's eyes drifted past her, to the shoji doors left wide open, not that it made much of a difference, flimsy as the traditional furnishings were. "It's getting late," he said, his voice blank, unsure of how evening had fallen with such nefarious subtlety.
Kesshi seemed to think he was intimating at something. "I'll go to bed," she mumbled, gathering up the pieces and folding the board. Sasuke started when she embraced him, then she pulled back, amused by his discomposure.
When she smiled like that, she was a spitting image of his mother.
She left him there, to his thoughts, that cycled around him continuously, in the absence of the boardgame and the presence of night. He got to his feet and went back to Kasai's room. His wife was curled up on the bed there. She had not left since that morning.
He sat beside her. "All the pieces have to be in the right place," he noted, feeling strangely disconnected. But how else would he be able to proceed?
"Pieces," Hinata murmured as she gazed at the wall. "People are pieces." She gripped the sheet beneath her palm.
"Overcoming this made you stronger," Sasuke continued, though both of them knew she had never overcome it.
"Strong," Hinata echoed faintly. Tears trailed lazily from the corner of her eyes, onto the mattress in a growing patch of moisture.
"This night is fundamental—to both of us. It's the beginning of everything. It's why the thought of being with Sakura is laughable to me." He wiped his cheek as something inconveniently slithered down it.
I'm going to be raped, she hummed, in a vacant way that trickled, like ice, down his spine.
His tension at its peak, her whispered, "Loan me some chakra."
Hinata extended her arm, her hand tremulous but assenting.
"I can't allow you to interfere," he apologized as he reached out to it. "It would throw us off trajectory even worse than we already are."
At the last minute, Hinata drew her hand back. She sat up. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I hesitated. Here." She reached up to frame his face with her hands, but Sasuke was faster.
He caught her wrists and kissed her, deriving a muffled noise of protest. He pushed her into the mattress, climbing over her, pinning her arms to her sides as he kept the contact, her struggles weakening, energy draining, until the veins on her temples sunk back beneath her skin.
When her pupils rolled upwards, and her eyelids sank, he continued to drink her chakra, until there was little enough of keep her breathing.
Her chakra would begin to replenish itself as the night progressed. He couldn't risk her regaining consciousness, so left her with as little as possible.
Breaking the contact once the transfer was finished, Sasuke pulled back and watched her for a while. He kissed her once more, lightly, sincerely, before climbing off the bed and exiting the room. His sharingan was blazing, but he could not have deactivated it had he tried. He had an excessive amount of chakra, Hinata's chakra, and it made him feel reckless; made his heart to twist.
It also made him want to do something as maudlin as saying goodbye to Kesshi.
The child was already sleeping, but he ran his thumb lightly over her brow, tried to imprint her on his memory.
Then he left, ghosting his fingers over the hilt of his sword and awaited the day that would trigger the terrible future.
The air was bloated with tension, yet it had no source. It was infectious, however. Even Hanabi seemed to feel it. It left Genzai Hinata turning to her sister's bed that night, not wanted to deliberate the things to come.
She knew she was running out of time. She opened her eyes and watched the ceiling. The past few days had left her mute with fear, so determined to avoid her forecasted assault, she had been unable to question it. As though addressing it would make it more valid somehow.
Yet not knowing induced a chronic, draining, sleepless anxiety. When was the rape to occur? Who would attack her? What if she had evaded it entirely? What if her aggressor was trailing her, planning, the fated time ever-shifting? She should have asked Mirai Sasuke more questions, but she didn't trust him. She could hardly trust her own counterpart, as deeply as they had disconcerted her.
You're okay, she told herself. You're okay… She was safe in her bed, if just for that moment. Maybe she could stay there and forever evade all dark forecasts. She surrounded herself with friends and family, and was hardly ever alone.
I'm always alone.
The bed shifted beside her, Hanabi sitting up. "Did you hear that?"
She had. Hinata climbed out of the bed, legs feeling like water. There had been a crash outside the room, maybe down the hall.
Undoubtedly it was inconsequential, a broken lamp or some other hazard of weary eyes, but Hanabi, adventurous as always, decided to pursue it. A dutiful older sister, Hinata followed.
"It sounded like someone falling," the eleven-year-old said.
"Or Otousan just th-throwing something," Hinata offered with a shrug.
Their father's door was ajar, but the light was off. Hanabi swung it open completedly, and the sight that welcomed them was almost comical in its grotesque outlandishness.
The window was open, a beam of moonlight shining on her father's body. It was sprawled on its side, scarlet blood metallic as it gleamed and poured out of him.
A wet squelching pop indicated their father's last exhalation, blood bubbling up from his exposed trachea.
Their father's head...his head was upright and facing them, his eyes wide and staring. His mouth opened one final time, then hung slack to allow blood to pour down his chin.
A woman held their father's disembodied head by the hair, her face masked, and body absent of any identifying village symbols.
Hinata's stomach heaved. She fought the urge to vomit, barely remembering to breathe—but she couldn't—didn't remember how to. Her legs shuddered beneath her.
The unnamed kunoichi turned to the window and leap into the inkiness of Konoha's night, hair fanning behind her.
Hinata finally managed to draw a shallow breath.
Her relief was short lived when Hanabi launched forward and took chase of the masked woman.
Kasai or Kesshi…Kasai or Kesshi…
She leaned towards the latter in a strange wistfulness, a yearning for selfish indulgence that was uncharacteristic of her.
"We have less than half an hour," said her husband.
Mirai Sakura blinked out of her reverie. She could see Naruto's orange back under the glow of the streetlamps. "Do you remember where you were, this night, ten years ago?"
Naruto glanced back at her. He grinned wryly. "I was asleep in my bed." They continued towards the tower.
"I asked Sasuke to train with me," Mirai Sakura admitted. "He turned me dow…" She trailed off. They had passed the bridge, and spotted two teenagers. Pink and black hair.
Genzai Sasuke and Genzai Sakura were leaning on the railing, gazing at the water, but it was inconsistent with how things should have been transpiring. Sasuke had rejected her invitation, and she had gone home. Then he had wandered the forest on the edge of the village, as he tended to, at fifteen.
Maybe no one will remember Kasai, she wondered. When we return to the future, maybe I'll be with Sasuke, and Kesshi. We'll be a family.
Try as she might, these words didn't placate. Instead they disturbed her.
"Shouldn't you be looking for Hinata?" Sakura called out to the teenagers, startling them. They turned around, staring at her.
"Stop playing around," Mirai Naruto hissed beside her. She took his hand and allowed him to pull her along. "We're going to be late." It was almost midnight, after all.
"Hanabi!"
Genzai Hinata pushed her body forward, desperate to reach her little sister.
The thin girl was the embodiment of determination. She would not allow the murderer to go unpunished, even if it meant putting herself in danger.
And Hinata...Hinata wasn't nearly as courageous. She just wanted to collapse, cry, and mourn the death she still had not processed.
She needed to reach Hanabi before she met a similar fate. Her chest ached, her throat burned, and her heart felt that it would tear to shreds. Her face was raw, stinging from the tears and air beating against it, but she pushed herself forward, Hanabi always just out of reach. The girl's target, up ahead, leading them toward the village border. "Hana-!" Hinata cried.
Hanabi raced forward, her body like fluid, becoming nearly invisible in the trees as Hinata struggled to keep up. She flew past the border, following the whistles of movement, the rustles of leaves, Hanabi's soft footfalls, until her sister faded completely. "Byakugan!" Suddenly Hinata could see everything, even the nin surrounding her in the darkness, even the—
She was struck out of the air. Heard her nose crack. She cried out, clutching her face, trying to orchestrate her breathing. She had been struck with something hard, blunt, and unyielding. It left her dizzy and disoriented, her mind refusing to collaborate with her body. "H-Hana..."
Someone climbed over her, but she was still too numb to process much. Large hands tore at her nightshirt as a man straddled her waist and pulled her torso off the ground.
"Sa-Sasuke..." she whispered.
She felt a soft kiss below her ear, one with just a hint of cruelty. Others followed, growing progressively more aggressive until they left her throat stinging with bruises. She struggled, by then no longer dazed, yet completely trapped in place by muscled thighs and thick arms. "Sasuke!"
She wanted Sasuke, at that moment. Either version of him. He had warned her, and that was significant. He cared about her.
Another strike to her face, this one with his elbow. Another crack along the bridge of her nose. Another blotch in her vision, and another vein withdrawn from her temple, until the byakugan could no longer function, nor could the jyuuken, or any other clan technique.
She felt her very first kiss press her lips. She clenched her jaw, but he forced his way passed it, found her tongue; teased it, bit it.
Had she been relying on Sasuke all along? Tears poured down her cheeks as she felt her captor tear through her remaining clothes.
From the corner of her vision, she watched another man enter the clearing. A tall form, with a muscled build. She was desperate enough to think that he might have come to save her.
But the second man simply unbuckled his belt, tossed his foreign hitai-ate to the ground—
Muttered to his friend that he wanted a go.
She felt her exposed legs touch the cool night air. Felt the man above her viciously jerk them apart.
It was midnight, and she wanted to die.