Interlude

:because we were once hawks, before we were nightingales

The night of June 5th, roughly a month before his sixteenth birthday, Hyuuga Neji was rushed to the ER at a quarter to midnight, semi-conscious and mired deeply in what seemed to be a case of unexplainable aphasic shock. Upon arrival, he was suffering from intermittent seizures, hysteria and the inability to speak anything short of formless pre-operatory vowel sounds. His caretakers – a teenager and two adult branch family members no one knew – explained somewhat fervently that his curse seal had been activated continuously for a minimum of five and a maximum of twelve minutes. They couldn't be sure. He'd only been screaming for the last five minutes of it.

In the end, Shizune had been called in because, according to clan-village law, she was the only medical ninja of qualified rank allowed to get within a hundred yards of any case involving a Hyuuga Cage Seal. Even then, there was this pseudo-illicit whiff of bureaucracy about it – technically, the Hokage had to be present to okay the interaction – but when Neji had gone into convulsions and nearly bitten his tongue in half, she'd taken it upon herself to administer the medical ninjutsu and douse the killing fire in the boy's skull before it did its job and killed him. This was the second time Shizune had been called to save this particular Hyuuga's life and on both occasions the sheer brutality of his afflictions left her numb and angry.

It took two minutes to knit the muscle of his tongue back together.

Two hours to stabilize the raging chakra paths burning too hot through his brain.

"Don't call the Hyuuga head," begged the daughter. She was a pretty girl; wore her hair bound back, a clean band of gauze over her high forehead. "Please. It's my fault…"

The male Hyuuga – the father, Shizune decided, their facial structure was similar enough – stopped her with a look and the girl faded predictably into demure, tragic silence. Her bar-soap eyes were outlined in puffy red rims and she looked as though she might have just woken up, or been attacked by head pigeons. The mother took her aside and clutched her daughter with a kind of rigid terror and relief that Shizune could not begin to understand; she'd grown up thinking there wasn't a horror in the world that could shake a branch Hyuuga from their stoic global apathy.

"We brought him in because the clan medic was forbidden to help," the father said evenly. "Neji-san is my daughter's second cousin. I'll sign for him."

"We're required to contact the clan head about all Hyuuga hospitalizations," she pointed out, not because she thought he didn't know, but because there was a question there, a line of logic she needed to follow.

His deep-set mouth twisted bitterly. "I realize. I only present to you that, as his doctor, you owe Neji-san the duty to keep him safe while he's in your care." He paused significantly, his voice falling low and simmer-raging. "If you call the clan head, you will fail in that duty."

Shizune deferred to Tsunade who neglected to attend her paperwork for a few days.

They roomed Neji with a wounded ANBU member who'd had his jaw wired shut for the past two weeks, giving the med-nin the quiet she needed to work. Personally, she'd always thought Neji to be – among his peers – the singularly most talented…and the most unstable. He had a bad habit of showing up in the hospital for nothing short of vital fluids and various organs leaking from aberrant holes in his body…or being crazy. Here he was again. Lying in the over-bright hospital lights he looked white, blue veins glowing through the skin of his arms, of his throat. His hair was still long and jet black, but the face it pooled around had thinned. He looked less like a Hyuuga now than he had at fourteen, less stocky, more slender. Pretty, she decided. He'd never been pretty until now.

At four AM, she checked in to find his cousin (second cousin) at his bedside, holding his hand and mouthing silently. Either ignoring the fact or unaware that her cousin was still heavily sedated, she sat there, his unyielding hand cupped in hers, a frail nimbus of chakra quavering in the gaps between their fingers. From her vantage in the door, the medic caught what she'd missed during the rush of Neji's arrival: the feverishness, the red fabric burns, the kind pretty girls got thrashing their faces against futons. There were developed bruises on her wrists, blackberry clusters of them glaring ugly blue and green from the bottom of her papery arms. They were mostly hidden in the black void of her long, branch family kimono.

Thank you, she was saying. There were tears on her cheeks; she brought his hand to her mouth and said the words against his knuckles. Thank you.

Shizune excused herself down the hall, where shirt-tail relatives weren't murmuring their gratitude into the grooves of a young Hyuuga's carpel bones. She wasn't sure she'd ever seen a Hyuuga hold hands with someone, never ever seen two Hyuuga hold hands. And that wasn't to say there hadn't been Hyuuga in her hospital; they just didn't touch, much less hold hands. And, if she'd bet on a Hyuuga to be the first, she'd have never put good money on Neji, conscious or not. Instead of doing her rounds that night, she foisted them on a nurse and made her way upstairs. It wasn't ever clarified why there was an auxiliary office above the hospital. Shizune always figured war-time practicality. During times of war, the Hokage needed minute-to-minute information and that included the information off her dying or wounded shinobi. Better she just be at the hospital to greet her soldiers, than waste a man playing gofer.

Hokage Tsunade was sitting with her feet kicked up on the windowsill behind her desk. Like any excellent leader, she was actively and obediently ignoring her paperwork while just as actively – though less obediently – sipping sake. She glanced in the window, examined the reflection and didn't bother to turn around.

"I know that look." She knocked back another cup. "And the answer is, before you start screeching, 'no'. There's nothing I can do about it."

"With respect –"

The Hokage snorted.

"–we have witnesses and physical…evidence. What exactly is it that's stopping you?"

"Shizune, when was the last time you read the founding treaties and clan agreements of the Leaf?" She poured herself another glass. "There's a very, very interesting clause about the jurisdiction of the Hokage over the Hyuuga Clan, you should skim it sometime. Now, kindly stop being annoying and go do some good where it can be done."

In her years growing up, Shizune had always found it in her to hate Konoha a little – benefits of having a Sennin for a teacher – but in a dim, abstract way. The way you hate the sound of a genocide, or injustice, or rape – nice terrible ideas that one cannot appreciate until it stares you shrieking bloody-throated murder in the face. She couldn't imagine where Neji's hatred was channeling itself. Looking at him, even sleeping and hooked to an IV, she imagined some closed circuit inside his head; routing through the acid green ink on his brow, conducting into his blood and his soul and crackling through his bones, threatening to explode out and destroy everything around him.

Sometime after 5:00, when she went in to check on him, she caught him with his face in his hands. He didn't remove them, even when she moved to his bedside.

"I saw you," he told her, just so she knew. "I think I need some aspirin."

"Headache?" she asked clinically.

"Yes."

"How's your mouth?"

"I can talk."

"I'll get you something for the pain.

"Thank you." A pause. "Could you close the blinds?"

She stood over him for a minute, staring down at the back of his bowed neck, where his hair parted on the pale ridge of his spine. She knew she should say something, make an empty promise, vow a noble action, say something, anything, everything she could think of. But she couldn't do any of that because, really, she didn't know him or the Hyuuga or the long history, the rough hypsographic mapping of horror and hatred that was his genetic heritage. Even though she knew she shouldn't, she left him sitting in the dark.

- - -

A lazy Uchiha comes around once a blue moon, but when the genuine article reveals itself, said clan will deny it 'til they can't see straight. It's a matter of pride. Bloodlines work very hard to maintain their image, cranking out the shinobi like it's their only function, the collective business of breeding assassins. It doesn't do to have defective product. Despite this uniform aim – this even distribution of reliability of Konoha's bloodlines – to deliver talent, you can only have so long before you get that eventual inevitable outlier.

That's what they'll call him.

Outlier.

Of all the Uchiha ever to claim the name prodigy or genius, few were lazier about it than a one Uchiha Shisui. Luckily, prestigious reputation would serve to smokescreen his childhood, not that he'd live long enough to care…but for the sake of the clan name maybe it was best. Debunking the theory that all genius comes from hard work and talent, he got on with no ambition, little dedication, less motivation and the attention span of a doped squirrel. He also euthanized the theory that all genius is immediately recognized by the tender age of three; going for good six-year-run where not a single person suspected that the class slacker – you know the type, sleeping through lecture, lazing though drills – was actually secretly that guy everyone hates at the end of the year. You know; that genius.

It was during this time Hatake Kakashi was making all kind of hooplah, graduating at age five, killing jounin while still slurring his r's into w's and forgetting how to spell 'assassination' on his mission reports. He was almost fourteen now, and leading ANBU squads to honor and glory, ripping off various moves from people and calling into question the sanity of a boy who has his dead team-mate's eye in his head. The details surrounding the death of Uchiha Obito remain in infamy (Kakashi's written report had been illegible) but it was the same Uchiha that sparked the conversation that would create some of the most convoluted intricacies in Konoha.

There was a lull in the fighting and for a single night there were enough jounin in the local bar to strike up conversation. Aside from getting as inebriated as humanly possible, one of the happier topics that was discussed (because everyone was sick quite literally to death of war) was the kids. Thus, during the course of conversation Obito had to be mentioned, which inevitably led to Uchiha stories, which in turn precipitated to Uchiha Shisui stories.

Two teachers, working on a joint self-appointed mission to catch Shisui at sleeping during lecture, took the seven-year-old aside one day and began to harangue him extensively about his failure in the final Henge exam. The dark-haired little boy merely jammed a finger in his ear, waggled it a bit and burst into a puff of smoke. Somewhere between the bit on 'disappointing your clan name' and 'scraping by on bottom of the barrel grades' he'd pulled a flawless kawarimi and excused himself from the conversation. The rest of the day was spent chasing the Uchiha who seemed to never be where the eyes said he was and in the pub that evening Takeshi-sensei finally, through gritted teeth and a split lip, said the magic words.

"Hell, let's just push the brat into a higher class. That'll teach him."

It wasn't a serious suggestion, but when brought up by chance over warm sake and dumplings, their jounin companions thought it was such a scream that he should definitely do it. No one would notice after all; they were in the middle of a war and kids were getting pushed through to the front lines fast as they could tie a hitai-ate and if the kid could Body Flicker as well as they claimed, he might actually last long enough to get good, maybe long enough to be useful. Morbid jokes were shared, wagers made on how long the boy would last and Uchiha Shisui was transferred into the pre-genin class.

In the end only one person made any money. That was Shisui's older sister, Yuuki who betted he'd have average scores all year, then ace the final exams and make genin at the top of his class.

After his graduation ceremony Shisui thought Yuuki was being suspiciously generous, buying him a whole new outfit as congratulations and treating him to dinner. He was right to be suspicious. The young jounin made enough money off him for all the nice things she wanted for years to come, but she blew it on various unmentionables in a designer lingerie boutique out of country. Her new fiancée, a notoriously depressing Hyuuga in the branch family, was rumored to be alarmingly cheerful after the marriage formalities were out of the way. Shisui's nephew was conceived that year and born exactly nine months after Shisui's eight birthday on a warm day in July.

Only, perhaps three people have drawn the connections between Shisui's successful graduation, the lingerie and all the turmoil that resulted in the Hyuuga and Uchiha years later.

- - -

When Hyuuga Hizashi first met his bride, the first thing he actually met was her fist…at least according to Anko. Kakashi still swears that it was Hizashi, not Uchiha Yuuki, who threw the first punch, but Maito Gai – never one to be shown up – insists that it was more of a mutual throwing of fists. What they all do agree on is that this was a meeting of titans; the like of which has not yet been repeated since between the two opposing clans and may never again be repeated in their lifetimes. It involved no less than four innocent bystanders, seven not-so-innocent-jounin-who-were-egging-them-on, three different retail and dining establishments, and enough collateral damage to get both their respective clans so furious at the two of them, they forgot how much they hated each other.

"Idiot!"

"Asshole!"

"Bitch!"

"Fuck-face!"

(The truth is no one is exactly sure what the two of them were yelling at one another when they were hauled apart, but the meaning is relatively accurate.) They say the screaming and profanities were magnificent. They had destroyed a sushi bar, a tailoring shop, and a barbeque between them and sent eight people to the hospital not including themselves. The Yondaime – legend has it – arrived at the hospital and proceeded to the recovery ward where, for reasons undetermined, they were keeping the two combatants in the same room. Then he looked them over in their fine and varying states of bleeding, bruised and battered and told them to get a good look at one another's ugly mugs because that was all they were going to be seeing for a long time.

They were assigned scouting positions in a God-forsaken hole of the Rain, a joint assignment to teach them a lesson and get them the hell out of the village if they were going to beat the living shit out of one another. It's still a mystery what exactly happened between the two jounin while they sat in the cold and the damp, hating each other in close quarters, loathing each other while they slept back to back and detesting the sight, scent, and sensation of the other as they moved together in combat. No one can say for certain whether it was a political move, the grandest ever fuck-you, or just chemistry. It's all speculation. However, the day they came back and what happened after they finished reporting in is cold hard factual history. They turned in their gear and were walking, getting ready to go their separate ways when it happened.

Hizashi got, maybe, ten meters off before Yuuki screamed after him, "Oh, fuck you, you pretentious ass! It's the only thing they haven't banned, so why the hell not?"

At which point he stopped, dropped his travel satchel, turned around, and walked back to her.

Then he grabbed and kissed her with such uncharacteristic brutality – all teeth and tongue and pent up anger – that bystanders worried momentarily for the kunoichi's safety. They got over it when the two finally pulled themselves out of their carnal tangle and stood there smirking at each other in full view and reminding everyone very suddenly that the Hyuuga elders, in all their wisdom, may have forgotten to place restrictions on branch members marrying outside the clan. After all, what Hyuuga could have foreseen Hizashi? The rejected second-hand heir to the house Hyuuga, the one Byakugan-user just pissed off enough to knock boots with a Sharingan girl? A grand 'fuck you', indeed. Wait until Hiashi heard about this, ha ha ha (various ninja rushed off to be first to break the bad news.)

Meanwhile, Yuuki cleared her throat a bit and smoothed his collar.

"You made my toes curl," she remarked.

"Did I?" he said, as if he hadn't any doubts. "Fine then. I suppose I'll have to marry you."

Which is how Shisui of the Mirage and Hyuuga Hizashi became in-laws.

- - -

Shisui was also fourteen when he first coined the phrase, "Now you see me, now you don't," and made it scary.

During battle Shisui's real claim to fame was and always had been his kawarimi. Some even went so far as to compare his Body Flicker technique with that of the Yellow Flash of Konoha before his death in the Third Great War. He was exceptional in the fact the even members of his own clan could not follow his Body Flicker, even if he told them it was coming, which, in a clan of doujutsu users, is really saying something. Though he was admittedly never a colossus of chakra or a monstrous powerhouse of jutsu or even a Sharingan prodigy, what he was was really fucking fast and cleverer than anyone.

He was known to kill missing-nin twice his skill with a basic Body Flicker and notorious for telling them it was coming when he did so. When people critiqued him for it, he would pout and argue that it was simply misdirection – and then give them a wedgie while they were distracted.

An excellent showman from beginning to end, he would present with a flourish his empty hands and with a smile most mischievous announce: "Now you see me."

At which point the real Shisui – having Body Flickered already – would shove a tanto blade between their third and fourth vertebrae and finish, "Now you don't."

- - -

Uchiha Shisui was freshly fifteen and home from an assassination when he found his front door ajar, the lock broken open, and his older sister working her way to the bottom of a sake bottle in his living room. Curled in the window sill like a dark, ill-tempered house-cat was Itachi, all fluid motion and silence that seethed like no words could. He'd come by to wait for Shisui and instead discovered the inconsolable wreck that was his older cousin sobbing into her brother's refrigerator. Apparently, he'd managed to get the story out of her before she consumed more than her personal body tolerance in alcohol and come to know that tragic sequence of events that led them to this strange and horrible present.

Hizashi was dead.

This was the crux of the problem. The main pillar of support in that delicate balancing act that was the marriage of Uchiha and Hyuuga had just been burned out of existence, literally seared out of his skull. That the house of cards toppled afterward came in no way as a surprise to anyone, least of all Itachi who'd more or less called this years in advance. Hizashi's body was only hours mailed out of country when the Hyuuga head family made the move they'd wanted to make since Yuuki, crowing somewhat, declared herself completely and manifestly pregnant. (According to her, it was a race. She won. Ha, ha, Hyuuga head family bitches. Behold the fertility of Uchiha grade womb!)

"You knew this would happen," Itachi said reasonably from the window sill.

"Course he knew," snapped Yuuki through her alcoholic blur of irritability and grief. "I knew, you knew, we all knew. Didn't matter."

According to some obscure clause of Hyuuga law that up until that night no one had bothered to mention – women who marry into the Hyuuga branch family are only part of the clan so long as the Hyuuga half of the couple lives. Because Hizashi died that night in his brother's place, the Hyuuga elders took it upon themselves to assert their power effective immediately and pry a hysterical five-year-old Neji from his mother's arms and forcibly evict her from the premises. (Also according to clan law, apparently, if you're half Hyuuga on your father's side, that mathematically rounds up to full Hyuuga and gains you residential status and clan club membership. Fuck abandonment issues.)

"She did light their west wall on fire," Itachi thought to mention.

"Goddamn right," murmured Yuuki wearily. "For all the good it did."

Shisui grimaced. "And…?"

He was right to expect worse.

Apparently the entire Uchiha clan was in an uproar. The Hokage had to come down to both clan estates to play peacekeeper, which was obviously not making him happy given that he'd only just averted a colossal cock-up over a certain dead Lightening Country diplomat. Apparently the diplomat had been sneaking about kidnapping the daughters of certain Konoha ninja leaders (not a good idea in retrospect, given that that relatives of said child could make your organs explode on contact) and when he got his comeuppance for being a child-napping bastard, they were calling it militant aggression. Eye for an eye! Whine, whine, whine and so forth. Give us a dead body or we'll retract our treaty and go back to killing the living daylights out of one another.

The Hokage himself had been the one to approve the body-swap, which made placating the now livid Uchiha somewhat difficult, no matter how big a war it prevented.

All over Konoha hundreds of red pinwheels were spinning vengeful and mutinous in the dark. What more proof could there be of the favoritism and prejudice against the Uchiha than this? The marriage between Hizashi and Yuuki – dripping with juvenile defiance and dysfunction as it was – had inspired hope in the village and the clans for a reunion of the Hyuuga and Uchiha bloodlines. For the Uchiha, a shot at being treated less like attack dogs and more like equals. More like the Hyuuga were treated. Hizashi's death – so suspiciously timed at Hinata-sama's coming of age – was no less than blatant sabotage on behalf of the head house to keep the Uchiha downtrodden.

When the Hokage pointed out diplomatically that they were talking about the life of one man for the sake of the whole village, then it was favoritism of the head family over the branch, a degeneration of human rights and a horror of Leaf Village politics. Why Hizashi when it was Hiashi they wanted? Furthermore, how did Hizashi's death justify the separation of a now fatherless five-year-old boy from his mother and only parent? The Hokage's negotiation meant nothing; he had no jurisdiction over the Hyuuga's out-dated breeding plans, everyone knew that. The Uchiha were on the brink of backlash rebellion.

There was a long pause, Itachi having recounted all imperative parts for his cousin, and Yuuki burped in the background.

"Shit," laughed Shisui a little weakly. "I'm gone for a week and look what happens."

"The Third is with the Hyuuga now. He is trying to negotiate for custody."

"And you think he can do that? Shanghai the Hyuuga nobility into compromising for us commoners?"

Itachi lifted his head into the dim moonlight, face pale and just perceivably sorry. "I don't know, Shisui." He closed his eyes. "I suppose…"

"Fuck that," Yuuki spat. Her sake bottle exploded against the lintel next to Itachi's head, splattering both boys with alcohol and startling their Sharingans red. She wobbled to her feet, smirking, drunken madness in her too beautiful face, her stinking hair hung in salty strings. "The Hokage won't do shit. He won't do anything to protect the rights of an Uchiha, and certainly not against a member of the head family. Every Hyuuga elder is against me and that's it. I've already begun to face it. I have no choice."

Shisui crossed the room and took his sister by the shoulders. "We are not losing Neji."

"No. I'm not." Yuuki straightened her clothes a little, brushed her hair from her eyes. "I'm cutting a deal. I gave them one prodigy. Hell if I can't promise them another one, on the right side of the family tree this time, eh?"

"What?" Shisui's face contorted briefly in confusion then dawned in horror. "No."

"Hiashi's wife is dead and their heir is weak. I can give them what they want and get what I want."

"You're not selling yourself just so you can keep your own child!" Shisui snarled, shaking her a little.

"I've lived in that house," she sneered. "Women selling themselves isn't an anomaly. They'll jump on it."

"We know what the Hyuuga are like, Yuuki-neesan." The Mirage lowered his voice. "They won't…let you."

"Yeah," she snapped. "You're right. I'll probably never see Neji again, but if I have Hiashi's ear fuck all if I can't get him to protect my son. If I'm there, even if I can't touch him, or just be with him, at least I can…" Her voice broke a little. "…I can watch him."

"I refuse," murmured Itachi, "to believe we've fallen so far as a clan that they would ignore a mother's plea for protection."

"A widow's plea," she added, her mouth cutting a gash of teeth. "They won't help me. You know they won't. Hyuuga get what they want, the village dogs get beat back into place. It's been this way since the Third Great War and it'll only get worse and you fucking know it's the truth." Her eyes alighted on Itachi. "The village will not tolerate our pleas for anything, equality least of all," she said so sweetly that the content of poison was undoubted. "They will use us until we're spent and find a new clan to throw on the frontlines. Fuck any blind idiot who says otherwise."

- - -

Uchiha by tradition were renowned for three things, the Sharingan, their raw chakra capacity, and having fantastic hair. Throughout the clan's history it had not gone unnoticed that the clan's strongest warriors tended to have the most radical hair-styles around. (If you want proof, check the old photographs of Uchiha Madera. He wasn't just the most powerful man alive back then, he was also the best styled.) In fact a less known exploit of their clan was their monopoly on the hair-stylist trade. Back before they were each and every one of them slaughtered mercilessly in the dark, all the wives and kunoichi spent their coin in the Uchiha civilian block barber shops. (They were also notorious for over-charging because they could get away with it.)

By the time Shisui was sixteen he was arguably the strongest member of his clan, challenged only informally by his younger cousin Itachi who'd already accomplished hair chic with the traditional jagged bang cut that was ever so popular back then – functional and stylish! (It's since then experienced a drop in popularity, having now been permanently associated with mass murder.)

Shisui however, being the indolent little teenaged snot that he really was, was simply too damn lazy to get his ass in gear and get a proper haircut. Mostly he took kunai to his bangs during missions for the first four years of his career and was therefore dubbed the 'Slightly Lopsided Porcupine' by his subordinates. Inconceivable as it sounds, many people bought into the old stereotype about Uchiha strength-to-hair ratio and among a crowd of Sharingan users, Shisui was never elected at first glance as strongest.

Prettiest, maybe, but not strongest.

Despite the insistence of both his sister and many friends beside, he elected not to improve his hair and – because he was sick of the Porcupine joke – grew it out, knotted it back and went around looking more like a Hyuuga than anyone was comfortable pointing out.

There's actually a story about that – of dubious authenticity of course – where a head family member confronted him about it and exchanged with him some words that more or less meted out to 'you're far too Uchiha (i.e. common) to wear your hair like that'. To which Shisui responded in a most gentlemanly fashion by removing his fighting glove and slapping said Hyuuga in the face with it. Given no other choice, his opponent accepted the challange – as per usual – the collateral damage was ridiculous. He put the snotty Hyuuga in the hospital…by which I mean he blasted him through the south wall of Konoha General and into the lobby.

It is common knowledge that the south wall has a suspicious plastered hole in the waiting room.

- - -

One thing you absolutely could not forget about Uchiha Shisui – besides the fact he could kill you with his pinky – was the fact he'd grown up with the singular talent of imagination and the ability to act on that imagination and was therefore a magnificent liar. He existed in a perpetual state of creative upheaval so insistent that he was known to carry about with him bits of scratch paper, even on missions, so he could scribble ideas. Strangest of all was the fact that despite this prolific drive to write, Shisui never attempted to publish anything. Two years after his death, it was discovered by chance that several of his stories were posthumously stolen and published by a man who made tens of thousands off the revenue.

But that's not important.

What's important was the fact that Shisui's mind worked in such a way that allowed for him to instantaneously and immediately conjure forth wild circumstances and complex illusions of reality without an iota of shame or uncertainty. He was made famous for this at his promotion to jounin when he underwent a simulated capture and interrogation and managed to convince several experienced special-jounin that his father had died in the Stone Country at the hands of three sadistic missing-nin (famous for their habit of leaving all their conquests emasculated and beheaded, naturally). He also persuaded them that his little sister was a paraplegic deaf-mute and his middle name was Mitaru. The last part was only funny because the interrogators actually had records of his full name and should have known better.

"He's a compulsive liar," Yuuki freely informed others. "Don't believe anything he says."

His sister's opinion was somewhat inaccurate, truthfully. The fact was that he did not lie compulsively. It was just that whenever he did happen to lie he did it so well as to make all his truth suspect. As a result, Shisui was given to concocting fantastic, utterly ridiculous stories and telling them to anyone who'd listen, which either made him the best company for an outpost or the worst, depending on how much you liked stories.

One story in particular drew some attention after the massacre, the one Shisui told his subordinates during his last mission before heading home. Namiashi Raido was one of the ANBU working with them at the time. Raido was also one of many shinobi questioned following the Uchiha massacre during the investigation seeking some sanity, some reason behind the incomprehensible madness. Namely, why the hell did Uchiha Itachi snap? Work load? Genetic psychosis? Emotional trauma? Stress? Guilt? Greed? What?

Speculation suggested that Shisui may have had a hand, intentional or not, in setting the prodigy off down his road to mass murder and Raido's commentary on their last mission together provided plenty of room for gossip. Raido remembered it clearly because Shisui had been so weirdly calm about it, devoid of his usual manic bravado. Hyper, grinning and kicking ass was the perpetual state of his existence, so this was a noticeable deviation from the norm.

"He just kind of sat there real quiet for a while," explained Raido "We're all going to sleep when suddenly, out of the blue, he starts telling us this story. And I mean it's a story. He goes on and on about this supposed battle that took place during the First Great War down in the Wind Country, this massive slaughter between the Hyuuga and these two allied clans from the north. He rolled out this huge, massive goddamn dialogue. By the time he finished everyone was awake and hanging on every word. End sucked though. Apparently he hadn't bothered to think one up.

"Shisui was dead by the time I looked into it afterwards. Turns out there was a battle recorded between the Hyuuga and Wind clans, but only the Hidden Sand has the records…and maybe the Hyuuga, but they aren't saying. Anyway, the battle may have happened but there's no way it happened with any of the stuff Shisui talked about. I mean…shit. He said some really fucked up stuff. Great story, but c'mon."

He was most likely referring to the details of the story regarding members of the Hyuuga branch family and the origins of the Cage Seal. Suffice to say, it was not a tale complementary to the head family. Not unsurprising given Shisui's past with the Hyuuga, his sister, and all bad blood stemming from the mixture. That he might concoct a tale to drag the head family's reputation through the mud wasn't inconceivable or unfounded, however that he might choose to voice it just then struck some as peculiar.

A point some chose to emphasize was that Itachi had been in that outfit, had listened to the story too. Because Raido was the only surviving member of that particular four-man team (excluding Itachi who was fucking insane and a missing-nin) it's his word only that people have to go on when he said that Shisui seemed to have been directing his narrative at his relative. This supposition was reinforced when, after Shisui trailed off and ended his story in silence, Itachi grew uncharacteristically angry, got to his feet and told his cousin 'you don't understand anything' and stormed off.

"I don't know, but I thought Shisui looked pretty torn up," Raido would later admit. "But that could have been my memory playing tricks. I mean, what Itachi did to him…it would be little wonder if my mind filled in some blanks. Who kills their best friend like that? I mean they were the closest daring duo in Konoha and then it ended like that?" There was a pause. "I wouldn't be half surprised if there was some kind of meaning behind that story, a warning, maybe an ultimatum between them, but fuck if I know. Those two were incomprehensible as the sun."

Uchiha Shisui was found dead in the Nanako River less than a month after this mission. Initial investigation pointed to suicide, but the eye-witness account from lone survivor of the massacre, Uchiha Sasuke, revealed that Itachi had apparently slain his cousin in cold blood. Closer examination revealed signs that someone may have held the jounin's head underwater. However lack of defensive bruising or postmortem medical ninjutsu suggested a genjustu or toxin had been used to induce paralysis. However, this conclusion too left unanswered questions and inconsistencies. If either poison or genjutsu had been applied, it would have been found in the autopsy, as both methods leave residue of their action within the body.

None was found.

The only conclusion that these facts seemed to lead to (the one they all refused to draw before closing the case and calling it cold) was that Shisui of the Mirage, the fastest living shinobi in the Leaf, one of the most powerful and clever jounin of his generation – had lay down and let his killer drown him.

In the end, they ruled that Itachi had used some kind of mild genjutsu, just strong enough to convince his cousin he wasn't drowning while his lungs filled with water, but just weak enough to leave no synaptic evidence in his brain. In the end, none of the investigators into his death could imagine what kind of twisted wire in the mind could possibly lead to that, to such an awful intimate betrayal. What soul-deep reason could have been so persuasive, so precious or so horrific as to lead to that scene on the river? One brother crouched on the rippled mirror of water, holding the other's face just under the surface, waiting for that last burst of air to break the reflective silver moon and signal the end of everything.

- - -

It was snowing out the day Hinata realized that Neji loved her little sister more than she did. She remembered because she'd been standing inside warming tea in the Sakura's kitchen when she chanced to look up and see Hanabi sprinting across the street, shrieking in a manner completely inappropriate for the heir of the Hyuuga head house. Then – just as inappropriately – her elder cousin blinked into existence, darting out of some hidden pocket of nowhere and grabbing the little girl up in his arms like an over dressed teddy bear. He then proceeded to heft her under his arm like a badly-behaved sack of potatoes and continue on his way down the street. Protests of 'Stoppit! Stoppit right now!' and 'You're embarrassing me!' and 'I order you to put me down!' rang ineffectively in the cold December air.

Hinata set her tea aside and watched them.

It was just after Academy, so Neji must have been ordered to escort the Hyuuga heiress back from school. Apparently, she hadn't fancied the idea of a baby-sitter and made a break for it, which lead inevitably to the debacle that was Hyuuga Neji forcibly hauling the shrieking Hyuuga Hanabi up the street under his arm. When the threats against major and various faculties of his person became too graphic and offensive for even his patience to bear, he very unceremoniously halted and dropped Hanabi in a large snow bank. Then, dusting snow form his spotless sleeve, he walked away with great and apparent indifference. Hanabi's screaming invectives became even more copious.

While Hanabi extracted herself from the snow Hinata wondered when this had happened. When had the dynamics of Neji's perspective shifted so violently that he could freely express something suspiciously like brotherly affection? And to the second daughter of the clan head no less? Furthermore, when had Hanabi quit looking at their cousin as something to be controlled? When had Hanabi turned a deaf ear to her grandmother's poison. A defiant subordinate needs discipline. A firm hand and firmer handling. Do you understand, Hana-chan?" When had Hanabi – hungry, ambitious, driven Hanabi – fixed upon Neji as her guiding star and clung to him? When had her little sister finally seen – 'Byakugan be damned, they were blind as anyone! ' – an elder brother through the haze of hatred and clan-wide disgust that was Neji's breathing space?

Outside, Hanabi aimed a kick at Neji's shin, which he accepted with good-natured stoicism and they continued walking back toward the main house. There was no one watching but Hinata, so no other witnesses when Hanabi's hand snuck out and caught in her cousin's, weaving easily into the mesh of his fingers, holding on and, in turn, being held onto. And the thought crossed her mind – 'They look just fine together. They look like brother and sister.'

"Ha ha! I found the little bastards!" crowed Sakura from the bedroom. She emerged with two videotapes, picking a sock off one of them and tossing it back to the nuclear wasteland of her room. "Knew they were around here somewhere. Are you coming, Hinata-chan? I've got junkfood." She waggled a bag of unknowable foodstuffs. "C'mon, chips, candy, there's ice cream hiding somewhere if you can find it in the freezer somewhere and – hey. Oh, hey, Hinata. Hinata, are you okay?"

Hinata took her tea from the counter top and tilted a hot mouthful onto her tongue. It burned down the back of her throat into her stomach, pooling inside her while a different kind of warmth swam through her blood and through her chest. She wiped a hand across her cheeks in an effort to mop up the wet tracks now lined in glistening wet down her face.

"Yes," she managed. "Yes, I'm fine. Thank you."

Sakura came over and touched her arm gently. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"I can't. It's not about me it's…I'm sorry. Let's get started on that ice cream."

"I've got triple chuck chocolate. Whatever your heartache, promise that'll fix it up."

Author's Note:

Wow, long time no see. Took a while to get back to this, hope no one's too angry with me but I'll be damned. It wasn't easy trying to draw all the lines between the Uchiha and the Hyuuga that I wanted. These shorts are just some the pieces I came up with and they explain a bit, but not everything, not even remotely. I always wanted to do a piece on Shisui but I never got around to it. But fear not, the Neji torture is back full swing next chapter. And lucky you, it's already written up. Should be posted within the week if plot bunnies don't kill me first.

Also, for those of you who were are having issues seeing who's related to who, just say so in your review and I'll send you a summary of Hyuuga-Uchiha family history. I will probably be clarifying things to a greater degree within the next several chapters. Remember reveiws and questions are my bread and butter. They make my writing world go round.

Next chapter: fear of change.