4

"Yah!" Thwack. "Yah!" Thwack. "HYAH!" CRACK!

"Whoa!" Neji stumbled and almost got roundhouse-kicked in the head.

"Eep!" Hana tripped over her own feet and landed hard on the grass. "Sorry, Uncle Neji!" she gasped.

"Are you all right?" he held out a helping hand for her. She accepted it, tugging herself to her grass-stained feet.

"I'm okay," she nodded, brushing grass and dirt off her training clothes. "Can we do some other exercises now?"

"You never get tired, do you?" Neji asked her with a hint of a smile.

"Never," she shook her head, crouching into a fighter's stance (which was very similar to her father's). "Let's go!"

Neji nodded and slid into his customary pose. He did not, however, activate his Byakugan. "Okay," he indicated they were ready to go and Hana wasted no time in flinging her small, angular body at him, trying to overwhelm him with sharp jabs and mid-kicks.

"Hana is very fast," his son commented from beside him. Sasuke looked up from his contemplation, his eyes shining blood red. He blinked and they returned to normal. The small, dark-haired boy was watching the fight, his eyes straining. In a moment, Sasuke understood.

"You shouldn't do that," he commented. "You'll hurt yourself."

"But Mom and Uncle Neji can do it so easily," Haku frowned. "Mom says I can do anything if I put my mind to it. But…" his head lowered in dejection. Sasuke held his breath a moment, then reached over and laid a gentle hand on the boy's back.

"You'll be able to change your eyes one day," Sasuke nodded encouragingly. "I myself wasn't able to use the Sharingan until I was nearly thirteen."

"Really?" Haku looked up at his father, rising up at the encouraging words. The change happened instantaneously, right before his very eyes, and Sasuke was

taken aback at his son's flushed cheeks and admiring stare. "How did you do it, Father?"

Sasuke looked away, back out toward the spar match; he watched as Hana ducked and darted and stumbled and recovered and fought brashly, tooth and nail. She was fast and powerful, but liked to get in too close, too overconfident, and it was usually her downfall. Just like Uzumaki Naruto, the friend he had "given his life" for. The reason he had activated the Sharingan…

"It was my very first B-rank mission," he spoke and Haku hung forward, on his father's every word, absorbing it like water. 'A father's wisdom to act like their water…' He went on: "I was with your uncle, Naruto, and your aunt, Sakura. The three of us were in our own three-man cell, being taught by Hatake Kakashi—"

"The only son of the Legendary White Fang!" Haku cried in surprise. Sasuke was surprised the boy was so well-informed for his age. "You learned from that Kakashi-sensei?"

"Yes," he nodded, "and the four of us were protecting a citizen from the country of the Wave—he was constructing a large bridge that would eventually connect their country to the Sand Country's border."

"Amazing…" his eyes sparkled. "Did you do it? Did he finish it?"

"Yes, and it still stands today." Sasuke thought briefly on the name of said bridge and grimaced slightly at life's little ironies.

"And that's when you first activated the Sharingan? That mission?"

He hesitated. "I did…to protect someone."

"Who?" the boy's eyes couldn't get any bigger. "Was it the client? Was it Aunt Sakura?"

"No," he shook his head. "Your aunt was protecting the client. Naruto and I were fighting the same man you yourself are named after."

As if wonders could never cease for him that day, Haku's eyes bulged. His small hands shot to his father's arm and clutched at him eagerly. "My name! Why were you fighting that Haku? What was he like? Is he a Wave shinobi? Are you all friends now? Was it Uncle Naruto that you were protecting?" His face was open and pure, and Sasuke felt the pang of something very unfamiliar striking chords in his head and heart. He nodded at the barrage of questions, licked his lips, and continued.

"That Haku was a shinobi of the Mist—a faction of the Wave Country—and he worked for the man who was after our client. We had to fight him," he swallowed, "because he wanted to protect his master, his friend. He fought hard for the person he cared so much for…his precious person." The boy was watching his father's profile with his breath held. The sounds of Hana and Neji's spar were drowned out in the rush of Sasuke's memories: ice mirrors rose up in his mind's eye, a shadowy figure reflected in each and every one. White needles, white as snow and sharp as fangs, peppered the air, coming from all sides, raining down from the heavens, coming up from the earth, piercing his twelve-year-old flesh, his eyes straining, burning, feeling as if they might burst or bleed at any second. The hushed whoosh of air as an invisible body hurtled past him, all the while, telling himself: I have to see him move! Have to see it! See it! I can see!

"He was way out of my league," he continued the story after a brief pause that felt like years. "I couldn't beat him. Your uncle Naruto couldn't touch him. The guy was faster than the wind." He found to his surprise that he was smiling.

"Faster than Hana?" Haku spoke in a hushed, awed voice.

"Faster than anyone I've ever met," Sasuke nodded. "And…"

The mask turned. Needles gleamed in his clenched hand. The orange-clad figure refused to move, even though he willed it in his mind with all of his might. A scream rose up inside of him. The arm drew back. Instinctively, he began to run. Naruto would die if he didn't reach him in time.

Naruto would die.

"I had to activate my Sharingan to help your uncle and myself," he concluded. "So, you see, don't worry about activating it right away. If you train hard enough, eventually you can do it too." I don't want it to appear because you're in danger…

"But…" the boy's happiness fell away and he looked down again, releasing Sasuke's arm. "I don't have the Sharingan. I have the Byakugan."

The sounds of fighting returned. Sasuke looked up at dirty, sweaty, red-faced Hana and calm, cool, unruffled Neji. The Byakugan had been activated in the battle's intensity. He looked back to the child sitting beside him, looking so sad.

"That's okay," he heard himself say. "Hana is Hana and you are you. Each of you will train your eyes differently and will be able to do different things, but that won't change what I think of you." And he found this to be true. "You're my son, and if you were born with a Byakugan eye, then I'll just have to teach you all the tricks of the Sharingan so your own eyes can never be beaten."

Haku turned his round little face to his father's. The white eyes were welling with crystal-clear tears. "Thank you," the boy whispered through a tight throat. Sasuke felt that tugging at his heart again, and allowed it to guide him. His arm settled around his son's shoulders and he held the other boy against him. Hot wetness leaked onto his shirt. Tiny shivers nudged his side. Sasuke felt words rising in his throat, words that he couldn't decipher so he held them back, afraid of ruining it, afraid of breaking this moment, hurting Haku. Very afraid.

He held the boy tighter and didn't say anything at all.