Chapter Two
They had left as soon as the bird arrived. Leaving Kankuro in charge, leaving the maid to pack and follow behind them as they took the fastest carriage to Konoha. Gaara refusing to leave his twenty week pregnant wife on her own. She had barely managed to recover half of pre kidnapping strength and he wasn't about to risk a second kidnapping to gain the baby she carried in her womb.
They pushed as hard as they dared, finally making it to the village, rushing to Konoha general where they found a boy, a small boy, who looked exactly like Gaara. Sakura explained to the couple, who weren't listening, they were just starring at the boy. That the boy was in very good shape but the blood tests showed that he was in fact half Hyuuga, and Temari had submitted her own blood to be tested as well. He was their son. Their baby who had been so cruelly ripped from them years prior. Hinata touched the scar tissue at the sides of his eyes where the byakagun veins would be, her own active. Hoarsely she told him that the boy had indeed had the byakugan before his eyes had been stolen. She then cried so hard, that Sakura had ever so gently knocked her out because she reached hysterics, there was no point taking risks she explained with Hinata being an advanced maternal age and all. Gaara had just nodded numbly, trying to absorb every detail of the boy before him, very aware that as soon as Hinata was in her right mind she would kill him for not telling her that he suspected their son was alive. His hair was long and shaggy, cut unevenly in places, with entire locks much too long, evidence that he had cut them on his own. His boy was as silm as he had been, covered in wiry muscles, his hands covered in scars and callous marks. Naruto leaned against the wall, explaining to Gaara who was only half listening that they had reason to suspect someone had at least trained him to used weapons. They had found some in his backpack. The boy had clearly been on his own for a while before Sasuke had found him. Gaara just nodded, trying to memorize how he looked right there and now.
This boy should have lived a life of idle privilege, the best instructors in the world could have taught him how to be a ninja. He should have fled lessons, and played in the sand castles Gaara could have made him. He should be spoiled and petted by his parents, talk to walk holding his mothers hands up and down the hallways of the Kazekage tower. He should have been cuddled and coddled by his mother, as he got older he could have complained that he was too old to be cuddled like that. Or to hold her hand, and Gaar should have been able to tell him not to snub his mother. While telling Hinata to let the boy turn into a man, it didn't mean he loved her any less. He could feel the tears running down his cheeks as he see the boy raising in front of him calling out for Gaara to catch him as they walked around the walls of Suna, like he had seen Boruto do with Naruto, Shikadai do with his brother in law. A world he had missed out on because someone had stolen his son from him.
He looked at the scars on the boys hands, and imagined kissing those first nicks and cuts better. The kind of scars that every person got as they learned to use weapons. Gently he placed his son hand back on the bed, before places his head in hands to sob in earnest, as he heard Sakura and Naruto discreetly leave the room, Hinata still in an induced sleep on the other bed.
His son lay on this bed, his boy, his baby. His and Hinata's baby. He looked exactly like he always imagined he would deep at night as his wife snored next to him, the quiet snuffles that he had grown used. Someone had tried to take his child from him, and they would pay.
Hinata woke up three hours later, and leaving the boy to Sakura who was going to attempt a eye transplant a pair of eyes donated by a branch member with cancer who would live two weeks more at most. The branch member had come forward as a volunteer when Neji had address the clan about the mystery boy missing eyes. He had had no idea the boy was Hinata's son. They didn't go far just into the next room, but as soon as the door was closed, Hinata let lose. She didn't scream, she didn't shout, she just looked at him lavender eyes hard. It was a look he hadn't seen since they early days of his marriage where he had been besotted with Matsuri. The eyes that said she was furious in that awful cold way of hers, and he would pay.
She slapped him, hard across the face he felt a tooth come out, a molar. But he didn't try to stop the second slap as it came. That one at least didn't take any teeth with it.
"How could you," She hissed, voice unrecognizable. "You knew there was a chance he was alive, and you never told me. I never would have stopped looking for him. You let me mourn him, Gaara,"
He nodded, "I didn't know know. I just had a inkling that he was alive, Hinata please, I couldn't let you search for him. You were on deaths door for years, then you were getting better but no one had seen him. I figured even if he had survived he would be dead by now. I thought you would be better off.." He trailed off, knowing he was doomed. Instead lurching forward to grab her wrists so she couldn't slap him again. She glared at him but didn't fight him.
"You should have told me, that's my baby, they baby that monster ripped from me and he's alive," There was no answer to that, so he tugged her, and folded her into his arms, feeling their child, the baby in her womb now, stretch out inside of her as he held his wife.