The Girl Who Spun Through Time

Chapter 2

Oh? What is this wandering soul?

Hinata didn't wake quickly.

The world slipped back to her, seeping into her consciousness, leaking into the cracks in her brain. Shapes, vague shapes: a grey mass kneeling to her left, the arch of a ceiling.

Colors came soon after, but almost nothing changed. The grey lightened, going dull-white. The ceiling was colorless.

Hinata, still not truly awake, closed her eyes.

Sounds. Sounds were next.

Muffled murmurs, from the wall to her left. A slight creak: someone shifting on a wooden floor, uncaring of any noise they might make.

Her own breathing, uneven but deep. Blood, thrumming through her body, pounding in her head. Her fingers were numb.

Touch.

She was wrapped in something warm, covering her entire body: her arms were at her sides. The floor beneath her was soft, with something hard beneath it: a mat over lacquered wood.

Everything ached. Not hurt: not the persistent burn or stabbing or pulsing of an actual injury. But her whole body felt bruised and sore: like something had been forced through her veins, like her skin had been stripped off and then sloppily reapplied.

She wasn't wearing her jacket. Wondering what had happened to it wandered towards her brain, got waylaid around the nape of her neck, and coiled there, waiting to come up later.

Hinata opened her eyes, and blinked.

She turned her head, and found an eerily familiar face to her left.

It was a little boy. He stared at her with pale, blank eyes, his brow furrowed slightly. There was a strip of bandages tied around it. His cheeks were still puffy with baby fat, but his angular chin had begun to emerge from the mounds they formed in his face.

Hinata blinked again.

The little boy looked just like Neji Hyuuga, if he were many years younger.

"Am I awake?" she asked, her voice quiet, barely an exhalation. The boy stared back, silent for a moment.

"Apparently," he said.

Hinata tried to smile, but gave up after a moment, the effort of moving her mouth into the proper shape too much to ask. She settled for hoping the expression made it into her eyes.

"That's good," she said, lying back and staring up at the ceiling again.

Where was she? She'd been in the village, looking for Sakura.

No.

No, that wasn't right.

She'd been… somewhere. There'd been a man. He'd kidnapped Hanabi.

She had fought him. She'd been hurt…

Had he hurt her?

Hinata frowned, her Byakugan unconsciously pulsing.

No. Could he have? She hadn't been able to even use the Gentle Fist, and she'd beaten him. She remembered that.

What had-

'I love you, Naruto.'

The village. Pain. The Sixty-Four Palms.

Naruto.

Hinata's eyes snapped wide open, and she lurched to her feet.

Or tried to.

She didn't even make it halfway before her body gave up on the effort and sent her crashing down on her side. She yelped, her sides and ribs protesting viciously.

The boy rushed to her side, his eyes wide, and Hinata ignored him completely, scrambling forward. Her hands slipped on the hardwood floor, and she fell again, banging her chin. Her blanket slipped off, leaving her all too aware of the chill wood below her.

"Father!" the boy yelped, watching her carefully. "She's-"

Hinata twisted towards him, distantly hearing a door slide open.

"I have to go!" she panted. "Naruto… he's in trouble! I have to-"

"Go where?" a calm, familiar voice rolled over her, and Hinata did her best to spin towards it, managing to prop herself up on one arm.

Her father's stern face stared down at her, silhouetted against the early morning sun pouring in through the doorway behind him.

But there was something wrong with it. Hinata blinked, focusing. Less stress marks and wrinkles, softer cheeks, warmer eyes… and a forehead protector, which her father almost never wore.

Nevertheless, the man looked just like Hiashi, despite undeniably being not.

"Father?" The words slipped out of Hinata's mouth before she could check them, as she finished making it to her knees. She rose slowly, her left leg shaking. "Is that you? What's going on? Naruto's in trouble! The Leaf…"

The man blinked, and there was a crushing silence as he stared at her. Hinata unconsciously trembled: even if the man seemed subtly different, his stare was the same.

"What about the Leaf?" he finally said, his tone careful.

"It… it's been destroyed." The man jerked back, his eyes going wide, but Hinata barely noticed, the devastation of her home flashing through her mind. "We have to go back as soon as we can!" Hinata looked around. "Where are we? I thought you and Hanabi were-"

'But I'm Hinata.'

Hinata froze, her whole body stiffening, and her breathing suddenly cutting off. Both of the other Hyuuga in the room watched her, the boy sliding to his father's side.

She tried to activate her Byakugan, and her eyes burned. Hinata stumbled backwards, clutching at her face. The man who wasn't her father took a cautious step towards her.

Hinata grimaced, and brought her hands up into a focusing kai sign. She hadn't had to use crutches like this for years. The man's pace quickened, and her drew closer.

"Byakugan," she muttered firmly, and the world spiraled out around her. She ignored the twinge that shot through her skull.

She saw.

Konoha. Konoha.

The Hokage's tower, the academy, the towering walls. The Hyuuga grounds sprawling out around her, the crowded apartment blocks, ANBU winging across the rooftops, crowded marketplaces. Children laughing in the streets, adults watching them out of the corner of their eyes, the abandoned Uchiha district…

Wasn't abandoned.

Hinata stayed like that for what seemed like hours, drinking in her unbroken home. The other two Hyuuga stared at her, clearly not understanding her reaction.

Eventually, she took a deep, steady breath, and allowed her straining eyes to deactivate, the invisible pressure that had been building in her head leaving them burning.

"What's going on?" she asked, her voice steady. She clenched one of her hands. "We're in the village. How is that possible? Who are you?"

The man watched her, before glancing down at the little boy at his side. The pale boy looked up at him, trying to keep his eye on Hinata at the same time.

"Neji," he murmured. "Go get your uncle, right now."

Hinata watched the boy leave with wide eyes. "Neji?" she whispered.

The older man whipped his head towards her. "What did you say?"

"That's Neji?" Hinata asked him, her head feeling hollow. "I don't…" she stumbled back a step, sinking to the ground. She shook her head, and looked back at the man. "And you're… his father?"

"Of course," the man said patiently. "Hizashi Hyuuga."

Hinata shook her head again. "That's impossible. You're dead. And the village is gone…"

Her breathing picked up, edging towards hyperventilation. "What's happening? I have to... I don't…"

"It seems," another voice cut in, "that you've had an interesting mishap."

Both Hinata and Hizashi turned, and found a man who looked completely identical to Hizashi standing in the doorway, the little boy who couldn't possibly be Neji besides him.

Hinata stared without comprehension. That was, without a doubt, her father.

Just to be sure…

"Hiashi Hyuuga?" she said, her voice trembling.

Her father nodded, and Hinata just continued to stare, unable to understand what she could be seeing.

"And what is your name?" he asked, his mouth set in a characteristic line.

"Hinata," she whispered. "Hinata Hyuuga."

Hiashi crossed his arms. "As I thought." He glanced at his brother, and then meaningfully at Neji. Hizashi bowed slightly, and went to his son's side, taking his hand and leading him out the door.

Hiashi stared at her over his crossed arms. "Get up," he said softly, and Hinata scrambled to her feet. "We've got a lot to talk about."

"What's going on?" Hinata asked for the third time. "I don't understand what's-"

"You've traveled through time," Hiashi said bluntly.

The words snapped Hinata out of her shock, and for a moment, she just stared at her father. A thousand questions ran through her mind, and her leg started jittering again.

But eventually, what emerged from her mouth was a lonesome, timid, "What?"

Hiashi uncrossed his arms, striding towards her. His Byakugan pulsed into existence, the veins pushing the skin of his temple up.

"You have done something that has only been accomplished once before in the entire history of this clan," he said, his bluntness not fading. Then, he hesitated. "And… you're my daughter, aren't you?"

It wasn't really a question, but Hinata nodded anyway. Her father chuckled, lowering his head.

"Remarkable," he muttered, before regaining his composure. He continued walking towards her. "But something is strange about this."

"What-" Hinata didn't understand the look in her father's eyes. He bent in, the near invisible pupil of his Byakugan tightening, and stared intently into her eyes. Hinata almost activated her doujutsu by reflex: she'd never seen her father look at anything like that.

"Your eyes are barely damaged: they'll certainly heal, though not quickly," he said, his voice equal parts confused and curious. He leaned back. "Tell me: how did you do this? And why?"

"I.. why?" Hinata asked. "It w-wasn't on purpose. I tried to use the sixty-four palms-"

Hiashi cocked an eyebrow. "And you ended up back here?"

"No. I was fighting someone… he hit me with his jutsu in the middle of the technique."

Her father's eyes grew indefinably sharper. "Your opponent struck you as you executed the sixty-four palms?"

Hinata blinked at his tone. "No, during. I was already… 'loose', is what you called it."

Hiashi frowned. "That's impossible. How could they have known when to strike, then?"

"He wasn't an ordinary shinobi," Hinata said. "He had these eyes… they were purple, with rings around the pupil. I'd never seen anything like them."

Hiashi sucked in a breath. "Rinnegan?"

"I don't know," Hinata admitted. "But he destroyed the Hidden Leaf with a single jutsu." Her leg wouldn't stop jittering, and she clamped a hand down on it, trying to stop the nervous motion. "There were a lot of casualties… if it weren't for Lady Tsunade, I doubt anyone would have survived."

"Tsunade?" Hiashi muttered. "Wait, no." He shook his head: the motion looked the same as Hinata's. "When… how old are you, Hinata?"

"Seventeen."

Hiashi smiled dimly. "Grown up so fast… and I haven't even seen it yet." He frowned. "Fourteen years? That's all the village has left?"

He stared off into the distance, and for a moment, Hinata was left alone with her thoughts. She stared at her blurred reflection in the hardwood, the glow of an overhead lamp obliterating her face's features.

Despite being alone with them, Hinata didn't have many thoughts. Instead, there was just one repeating itself over and over in her head.

'Time travel?'

It made sense, in a way she never thought she'd have to rationalize. The Byakugan could see 'time', and what the Byakguan could see, the Hyuuga could touch. That was how the sixty-four palms worked.

But the trigram techniques just 'unstuck' the user in time, allowing them to place themselves in a place they could be, instead of where they were. Moving through time, let alone backwards through it fourteen years, made no sense.

Unless…

'Get back.'

Pain's jutsu. The push. What had he called it?

Shinra Tensei. Heavenly Push. Or Almighty: she'd never seen Pain write down the jutsu's name, and it could be either.

The semantics didn't matter. Whatever the Shinra Tensei had done, it had pushed her while she was still in the untethered state between could and were.

And now, she was fourteen years back in the past.

What had happened to the present? To Naruto, and the Village Hidden in the Leaves?

Were they just gone? Unmade by her presence here? Or were they still there, waiting in the future, moving on without her?

Was Naruto already dead?

No. Even if the future were still moving forward, it would take three days for him to have the Kyuubi taken from him. Probably more, if what Sakura had told her about Gaara stayed true.

Did it even matter, though? Now that she was back…

Hinata's eyes went wide, and Hiashi glanced at her.

She could change everything.

The first Chunin Exams, and the Sound Invasion. Sasuke Uchiha's flight from the Village. Pain's attack-

Wait.

Hinata almost fell down as her father watched her with concern. She wasn't thinking big enough.

The Uchiha were still alive. So was the Sandaime, and Naruto's master, Jiraiya the Toad Sage.

And Hizashi. She'd saved Neji's father. That man she'd fought had been after the Byakugan, after her. He had been the Cloud's 'ambassador' who Hizashi had been killed for, in the name of averting war.

Hinata, seated on the floor, giggled as her father watched in perplexed amusement. She'd saved her uncle by falling off a roof.

If Neji still existed, she was sure he'd find that funny, in a strange way.

Her father, after watching her for a second, spoke up. "We have to go," he said. "I mustn't be the only one you pass this information to."

"Go?" Hinata laughed almost manically, her ribs aching. Her whole body was shaking. Why had she been the one sent back like this? She couldn't possibly hope to change enough… she just might end up making it worse.

It should have been Naruto. He would have been able to make a change. As it was he was just…

Three years old. And more alone than ever.

"Go where?" she asked her father, picking herself up off the floor. He gave her an odd look, which she ignored.

It didn't matter if she couldn't hope to change enough. She had to try. Giving up now would be failing everyone Pain had killed.

No, not just them. Anyone who'd ever died to anything Hinata knew about. There was no excuse: she could save them all.

And Naruto, in the bargain.

Hiashi eventually gave up on trying to figure out what his daughter was saying, and shrugged, turning back towards the door he'd entered through. He strode forward, his pace urgent, and Hinata hurried after him, ignoring the constant soreness that every step made worse.

"To the Hokage, of course."

Well.

This has been frustrating.

Real life has been doing it's best to murder me: I've beaten it off for now. My writing, unfortunately, has been a casualty.

This is the shortest chapter I've ever written for a story. It's also one of the worst... but it's really not okay to leave something so simple sitting for a month. Hopefully, the next one will be better.

Serendipity, out.