- Pluck -
Part II
Chapter 29: Fly Here
Companion song: The Peerless Pool by The Hardy Tree
Two days later, Neji finally appeared between the books on her shelf. Nothing stirred in the air to announce his sudden and unexpected arrival, but the moment his cloudy figure slipped out of the wood and leather and paper and ink behind her, Hinata lifted her gaze from her reading and looked at him.
His eyes were how they had been in that . . . vision, that dream, that out-of-body experience. They looked heavy for someone who had no body to hold them up. Even now, Hinata was so awfully aware of the silver in his irises and how they reminded her of that place, his arms stuck in the air, the rest of him pulling towards her - like he would run to her, or attack her, or save her from -
"You're back." She had too many things to ask him, to talk with him about.
This, for a while, was all she could manage.
Her cousin was a shifting blur. His hair was a stain of darkness in the air. His clothes were unrecognizable. But those eyes - those eyes were so poignant and there. They existed beyond him. They held up their spot in the room, in the Guard, in this little pocket of the universe. Those eyes that matched hers, that linked them as family. Why did he seem so unfamiliar? There had been a connection between them that she had felt before, no matter if she had memories of him or not; now, it felt absent, and she couldn't explain the exact feeling that revolution gave her, but it was undoubtedly nerve-wracking.
Textbook forgotten, Hinata turned a bit in her chair to face him. "Was it really you I saw?"
His lids nearly covered all of his gaze, those she could still see a sliver of moonlight. "What do you remember?"
"I remember it all." Her voice, perhaps, was a bit too clipped. She just didn't want him to dance around the issue and change the subject again. This time, she wouldn't let him. "Neji, was that Moon? Did I see you in Moon?"
His head tilted, hair sweeping across his back. That was all the confirmation he gave her.
"Why was I there?" she asked. "How did I - it felt like I had left my body. It was so cold. I didn't know what was happening." Caught up in that world, that memory, she reached out and tried to grab his arm. Of course, her hands faded through him, but it did not matter to her at the moment. "I felt like I was actually there with you. The real you. Not this - not this projection of you. I felt like I could have touched you."
Neji wafted over to the door, as if ignoring her. He hadn't even stopped to spare her a farewell. He just passed through the wood, out of sight; Hinata had thought that was the last of it, but a moment later, he returned.
"Let me tell you something about the Hyuuga. A thing that is connected to your eyes." Your eyes. She knew that when he said that, he meant her ability. Hinata closed her textbook, stood, and returned it back to the shelf. Afterwards, she rounded her desk and sat on one of the seats by the door of her office. Neji stayed there, and he continued. "All the Hyuuga had a special connection with emotions - strong emotions. Your mother had the ability to direct certain emotions onto certain things. She would take the stickers off people's faces -"
"They -" Hinata gasped, "can see them too? My family?"
"Yes," Neji said, seemingly not at all irritated by her interruption. "All Hyuuga can. It is an ability of the eyes that runs through our blood. Your mother would take stickers and place them on other things - objects, usually. If your father was ever angry at a man, she would pluck those stickers from his face and put them on an old stump in the backyard, and for the rest of the day, he would loathe that stump." He paused for a moment, eyes lifting up, brightening, not looking nearly as hollow as before. He looked so familiar at that very moment - Hinata wished she could share in the memories with him. "My father could create them - positive stickers. Ones that were silver and smelled like the air after it snowed. While regular stickers brought heaviness, these ones lifted the person, the soul, and made them feel light."
"And you, Neji?" she asked. "What do you do?"
His smile was thin. "I collect them."
There was a finality to that statement, and Hinata would not try to push it.
"Because the Hyuuga are so aware of emotions, there is a connection between us. Think of it like a web, Lady Hinata. No matter what point you are on it, you are connected to all other points. We are sensitive to one another's emotions. They affect us more than others." Another pause, but this time, his eyes did not lift with nostalgia. They sunk unto her, heavy, looking in something in particular that she, for a while, could not pinpoint. "When one is on the verge of death, their emotions expand. They escape and run along the thin silk of the web. They reach all that they can, and the Hyuuga can see it. That desperate feeling. Someone trying to hold on. We can see it."
And now Hinata understood. The scars. The wounds on her backs. That was what he was looking at.
"I almost died," Hinata whispered, leaning forward so that her back would not touch anything - not the wall, the back of the chair. "I almost died, so I left my body, and that's how you saw me. That's how I saw you."
"It's the emotion of almost dying, Lady Hinata," Neji said. "If you feel as if you are about to die, that is the cause. Do you understand?"
She did, and it was a numbing sensation that overtook her entire body. When she looked at him, it would never be the same way she had looked at him before.
Because . . .
"Then . . . what is the reason I see you now, Neji?"
Her cousin did not have the habit of smiling. Not in the time she's seen this phantom of his. Perhaps in her lost memories tucked away and sleeping in Ino's magic, there were images of him smiling, happy. Hinata hoped that, if that were the case, they were not like this smile.
His eyes crinkled, and his lips pulled back to show bits of his teeth.
It looked painful.
Like he was dying.
...
Two days later, Shino also returned.
From where, Hinata did not know, and she did not feel like she had the right to ask, either. A stranger came to her that day. He was like Neji. She could not recognize him. His posture was off. His antenni were pulled back. All she could find familiar about him was the pile of stickers on the upper half of his face, growing, stretching, seeming more daunting since the last time she saw him.
He came in when she was just returning to her desk. The revelation of all that Neji admitted (and did not) had made her skin turned cold. The room was suddenly very lonely. She felt lost in it. When Shino entered, it only felt like two people now lost in a room.
"Good morning," she greeted, trying to smile.
After a moment of straying by the door, Shino came in and looked down at her. "Well?" he asked. "You well?"
Hinata could hardly feel the wounds on her back at that point; but, for some reason, when Shino's voice tugged her direction to those claw marks on her back, she could practically feel herself on the cave's floor, Hana over her, digging into her. "I'm fine," she said. "I can take the bandages off today."
That only seemed to satisfy Shino a bit. His head tilted and turned as if he were examining her, searching for something. "Not just back," he said. "More?"
More?
"I don't understand."
His antenni pointed to the door, but his head remained facing her. "More from Uchiha?"
Never in the time she's known him has his name left such a sharp and anxious feeling to rumble in her stomach. Shino's voice had been low and quiet, like he was being cautious in case someone may hear. "Sasuke?" Why would he ask that about Sasuke. Hinata could hardly understand it. "He hasn't done anything to me."
Shino's shoulders fell with a quick and temporary relief.
"Ah."
"You think he would?"
Nothing escaped him after that question. Not confirmation. Certainly not denial. Hinata remembered his reaction when it was revealed that Sasuke had been the one to kill Tamaki. A stillness that could be the death of someone. When the Inuzuka attacked Sasuke, when she grabbed the katana, when Hana had lunged for her; all that time, he did not move, that air of betrayal never leaving his side.
The Inuzuka and the Aburame had a bond. She didn't know the exact extent of it, but it was definitely strong and deep and passed through their bloodline for generations. Shino might as well have been Inuzuka. He did not have the fur or the fangs, his pointed ears replaced with thin antenni, but his soul was an Inuzuka one. He did not bark or drool and enjoy rowdy play along the dirt floor of the forest, but his heart beat the same way theirs did.
He blamed Sasuke.
He was unsure of him, now.
Did he hate him, too?
"Shino." She started, then stopped, then started again. "Shino, he did it to save me."
His stickers flexed.
"If he hadn't, Tamaki would have killed me. Sasuke -"
All four of his palms fell onto the desk, and in a low voice, perfect, untouched by the normal strain her language put on him, "She was not that kind of woman."
Snapping weeds suddenly overwhelmed the room. She couldn't even hear her own startled pulse. Swallowing something hard and heavy down, Hinata nodded. "You're right," she said. "She was being controlled. No one knew until they examined her."
Shino still didn't look happy, but what else could she say? That she wished Sasuke hadn't stepped in? That she wished Tamaki had killed her? She doubted that would solve anything, so Hinata stayed quiet when Shino turned, hesitated by the door, opened it, hesitated again, then left with more stickers than he came in with.
...
Her body took her to the cafeteria, but her mind stayed in her study. She wanted to fall back into the normal of things. She wanted Shino to sneak food and water to her when she was trapped in the middle of one of her tens of books she had to read. She wanted Karin to walk with her through the scenic route to the cafeteria and gossip and muse about the happenings and the paperwork and the recent missions. Hinata wouldn't have minded even if Kabuto came by like he had, taking a gander at her progress, interrupting her studying to give her his own lessons and quizzes - which, really, she didn't mind; as long as it got her away from reading.
That had been her hope. After the Inuzuka, things were supposed to slip back into the ordinary.
They didn't.
Shino stayed a distant bodyguard. Karin was busy. Kabuto didn't bother.
And Hinata wasn't the same, either.
Her back was proof of that; as was the invisible phantom of her cousin following her.
So she sat at that table with food she did not remember getting and ate. Ate by herself. Ate that food that barely tasted like anything and spilled that water over her gills. Neji looked like he wanted to say something; nothing so heartbreakingly revolutionary as what he had revealed before, but rather something to fill the silence. A kind comment like Shino would. An exaggerated story only Karin could tell. Even a hum would suffice, as that seemed all Sasuke ever did at lunch.
He looked like he wanted to say something, but he didn't, and Hinata ate and splashed her gills and tried to keep on pretending.
...
She was in the middle of the hallways, on her way back to her office, when Sasuke suddenly came to her side.
"If you had told me you were eating, I'd have joined you."
A fake smile went to her mouth before she could stop it. "I should have thought of that."
"Was Aburame with you?"
He didn't know, and she didn't want to tell him. Later, maybe. When she didn't feel like she could collapse. "Yes."
He walked her to her office. The white sunlight casting in from the exterior windows made the clearness of his face all the more upstanding. Hinata felt a bit out of her zone; no longer did she have to squint and guess. She didn't have to base her understanding of his mood based on quirks in his body language and small, slight edges in his tone. It was displayed on his face without a dark blanket of weeds to hide it.
So it was not difficult to see his mind was in a different place, to see that foggy, unfocused gaze when he opened the door for her and let her inside. "I'll come pick you up later, then."
He was already leaving? "Sasuke." By the time she said his name, he was already halfway down the hall. He paused and looked back to see her peeking out from her office, blinking. "Where are you going?"
His cloak shifted as his wings pulled out and stretched. "I'm going to figure a few things out."
Hinata immediately understood what he meant by that. Therapy. He was starting up his therapy sessions again. A flood of cool relief made her shoulders relax, and she smiled genuinely this time.
"Good, Sasuke. No matter what, I believe in you."
But - but the strange thing was that - somewhere inside of her, deep inside, drowning in the relief, was that constant, hollowing loneliness. The weeds on his mouth were still present, and her hands burned with a will, a want, a desperate plea to pluck them off, to free him of his remaining worries. She wanted to be the one to take them off. Her.
What a selfish thought.
She tried to ignore it, to keep it there, drowning. She wasn't an experienced therapist - and even if she were, she couldn't be Sasuke's. Not with their existing relationship.
It was best he went to someone else.
Really. It was.
"I . . . believe in you."
Sasuke's eyes focused. He took a gander both ways of the hallway, then turned on his heels and walked back in her direction. His hands grabbed the sides of the doorframe, keeping him upright as he leaned in, neck bending to her level. The lightning in his breath tickled the side of her neck.
"Shall I tell you a secret, Moon Witch?"
It felt like anything he said would be a secret. No matter what, she'd latch on and gasp. He could say the most ordinary thing in the world, and Hinata would still be surprised.
"There's this person I'm in love with," he said, and her heart stopped. "I guess I've felt this way about her for a while, and now I know she feels the same way. The tricky part is that I haven't told her yet." His eyelids went low, and his face moved an inch closer. "So what do you think, Moon Witch? What should I do?"
She wanted him to do a lot of things.
The air hummed and buzzed and embraced her. Hinata sighed and leaned into it, smiling.
"Tell her after you take her to see your brother."
Sasuke's eyes widened and lit up. She wished she could see the smile that was there. But, maybe, that day was just a moment's time away. Maybe tomorrow she'd see it. Maybe tonight she'd see it. They would be in Cloud 8 with Itachi, and he would be so thrilled by it all that the weeds would just fall right then and there.
Sasuke's hands pushed him back, but he kept staring at her.
"I'll do that," he said.
Hinata was not quite sure how she was still alive, but at that moment, she wanted to live forever.
"Alright."
"Remember, Moon Witch." Amusement played in every aspect of his face, from the color painting the underside of his jaw to the way his eyes just moved like water and lightning and everything in between. His right hand touched the top of her head, he stood straight, and he went back to his journey down the hallway. "It's our secret."
...
For the next hour, Hinata waited.
No books were read.
No diagrams were skimmed.
She just sat on the chair behind her desk and stared at the knob of the door, waiting for it to turn, to announce the arrival of Sasuke to take her away.
For an hour, she rubbed the hem of her cloak between two hands.
For an hour, she did not even think a moment about Neji, about Shino, about the Inuzuka.
And a few minutes after that hour, he finally came. It wasn't even the knob that told her he had come. She heard his footsteps. She knew them by heart. The sound just fit him. Hinata had ran to the door and swung it open, and Sasuke was standing there, stunned, looking down at her like she -
Like she . . .
Like . . . .
...
He had the same look the Sasuke from her memories had.
That young look when they were kids.
A stare without walls. Nothing was held back or hidden. He stared at her like she was a woman he was desperately in love with, and Hinata stepped back, not out of fear, but to prepare herself - because it looked like he was about to throw that original plan they had agreed on into the wind. Her legs shook, but she was ready, and he looked ready, too.
Then, the static died down.
Sasuke closed his eyes and breathed deeply. Hinata tried to match him in fear she would pass out.
"Are -" His voice broke. Sasuked breathed a little longer, through his nose and out his mouth, then tried again. "Are you ready?"
Wasn't that a bit too vague a question?
Ready for what, exactly?
What did he have swirling around in his mind that she was supposed to prepare herself for?
She didn't know, but nonetheless, Hinata said, "Yes."
...
Ah. Right.
Her wings.
He was taking her to get her back looked at. Right.
When his hand left the dial next to the Sky Gate, a mirage of blues and purples filled her view. She could smell the sky. She could taste the clouds. She could feel the wind running over her skin.
"Moon Witch."
When he turned back, he dipped his arms under hers and held her against him. For a moment, she felt like he'd take her dancing in the air again. People from the ground would stare, but they would not care.
And this time, she wouldn't have to blame the adrenaline for his racing heart, or her shock for hers.
"Hold onto me."
She relaxed her hands on his back, against the skin between his wings. She could feel every muscle in his back flex as his wings prepared for flight. His own arms tightening around her, Sasuke lifted her up and brought both of them into the howling portal.
The colors were greeting her like a long lost friend. They waved and smiled and kissed her cheeks.
She wanted to tell them that - one day - she'd remember them again. That they just needed to be patient a little longer.
But she couldn't.
They disappeared, and suddenly, they were flying.
…
The Cloud king was the only one out of the other monarchs who did not set his palace in the capital of the first realm. While Gaara kept to his duties in Sant 1 and Naruto kept the sun rising and falling in Sun 1, the Cloud king had decided on a much more fitting place for his place of stay.
Cloud 9 - otherwise known as the Realm of Dreams.
Why?
Well.
"Oi. Wake up, already."
From what Hinata understood, His Eminence the Cloud King had a special love for napping. Thus, he had arranged the entirety of Cloud 9 to be the most quiet and comfortable place. No homes were in sight, perched upon their cloudy yards. No streets made of white vapor. All that took that grand space was a million white, puffy clouds made for the purpose of sleeping.
As they had been flying, Hinata had caught sight of many Cloud and Sky folk taking their leisure on a variety of different clouds. Children were wrapped in blankets of altostratus. The elderly rocked on cumulonimbus.
When the blurs or color slowly slowed and sharpened, Hinata understood Sasuke must have reached the Cloud king. She almost tried to turn around in his arms to look, but decided she did not want to make a hassle for him.
An irritated sigh rang in her right air. The flapping of his wings blew fresh, cool air into her face.
"Shikamaru. I brought her."
Ah, so that was his name. It did leave a sort of looming pang in her head, like it were a name she'd have known well were her memories still with her.
Not a sound came from the supposedly slumbering king, but Sasuke arms moved around her, and Hinata was suddenly situated so she could look forward and at the brilliant and . . . awfully tired-looking monarch.
His eyes were barely open as he had himself lounged in a rather comfortable looking cloud that simply floated through the blue landscape. He didn't even seem a tad surprised to see them here or to see her, without wings, in a Sky district. But then again, she supposed, he must have known. Sasuke had specifically made an appointment with the king for this reason.
"Ah," he sighed. His voice was barely anything. She could hardly make it out. "Hinata Hyuuga. A pleasure to see you again." So she had been right. They did know each other. Shikamaru stretched his arms, then shimmed back into his cloud. "Though I suppose you aren't too aware of our previous knowing of one another."
Hinata felt her face heat up. "I'm - ah, I'm very sorry, Your Eminence."
Shikamaru squinted at her, then closed his eyes. When he sighed, silver water vapor left his mouth. "Wow. You really did lose all your memories."
Unsure what to exactly say to that, Hinata simply bowed her head in an awkward apology.
Sasuke huffed. "You're wasting time."
"That seems to be all I'm good at," Shikamaru hummed.
"Shikamaru."
"Naruto's right," he yawned. "You have gotten bolder." Still, the king finally gave her a proper look, and he pushed himself forward and rolled his neck before turning to face her completely. "But I'm interested now. What suddenly got you this bold? Four years ago, you - well, hm, I guess that doesn't matter now."
And then his eyes turned into steel, hard and unmovable, a force that she could not fathom. Really, it scared her a tad at the sudden change, and Shikamaru only seemed to find her bewilderment amusing as he rested the back of his head against the cross of his arms.
"Well then," he said, "let's see if you can continue to catch my interest."
...
Sasuke would not let go of her after the examination.
Yes, because letting go of her would lead to her plummet. Yes, of course.
But also because -
"Are you alright?"
That was the seventh time he's asked in the past four minutes, and Hinata could not hold back the giggle that tumbled against his collar.
"Yes, Sasuke."
He hummed, reached the Sky Gate, paused, pondered, then asked, "Then . . . is it alright?"
Hinata, for a second, had it in her head that they would immediately go to Kabuto with the results of Shikamaru's examination. But when she watched him turn the dial to District 8, no protest left her tongue.
Astronomically, Cloud 8 was far more busy than Cloud 9. Busy in the sense that everywhere one looked, there was a house, a collection of paths connecting one section of a neighborhood to another for those Sky folk who felt a riveting need to walk on the very clouds that homed them. Those paths invited her feet for a rest. Hinata wanted so badly to walk along them and look upon the different levels of homes and businesses around her.
She knew she couldn't but that didn't stop her from imagining it, from imagining a time where she could do such a thing.
Sasuke shot down to one of the lower levels of the grand realm. The homes there were sheltered in shadows, basking in the cool shade of the larger clouds above. The homes were small, with walls surrounding the area.
When Sasuke landed, Hinata looked back to see a home.
It by itself was not a familiar thing. Nothing sparked a light in her soul when she looked at the pale, thatched roof, the small, brick porch on the side, the subtle cream of the walls. White flowers that led to the back yard reminded her of something that she could not put a finger on, but Hinata wouldn't say she remembered them in regards to this place.
But Hinata remembered the feeling of being here with Sasuke.
She remembered herself as a child, the feeling of soaring, the feeling of his hand tapping her shoulder in a game of tag. She remembered the feeling of water vapor pressed into her back as they napped in the backyard, a glimpse of sunlight sometimes washing over their faces as the clouds above moved to the side.
Hinata remembered Sasuke in this place.
When Sasuke boots made a dull thud on the porch, the sound vibrated in her skull. It coaxed a vague, fluttering image, They had come back from somewhere. They were older - perhaps fifteen. Her legs were brushed by some sort of skirt she wore - Sasuke was dressed in black. Had they come back from somewhere fancy? A restaurant? A formal meeting with Naruto in Sun?
He had told her to take off her heels while he yanked off his tie and undid the buttons in his cuffs. For some reason, he didn't want Itachi to see them in such a perfect state.
If she had understood back then, she did not now.
Sasuke stood in front of the door. He lowered her just enough to allow her to stand on the toes of his boots, but his hands stayed on her back to keep her stable and close to him.
"You do not remember him," he said, quietly - and this, she thought she understood why he did this, at least. "So let me give a slight warning." And then his arms moved to curl around her and hold her in a manner that was not exclusively for her safety. Sasuke's chin rested against her shoulder, and he sighed. "It doesn't matter if I like the name or not; in this context, if I'm Thor, than he is without question Loki."
…
The God of Mischief.
Hinata tried to prepare herself for anything.
A cunning older brother who simpered and smirked at every chance he got.
A sinister man who was not scared to press his brother's buttons for any amount of reaction.
Neither good nor evil, simply enjoying a little chaos among the people surrounding him.
When the door opened and Sasuke stepped inside, she tried to prepare herself for each and everyone possibility brewing in her head. Sasuke's arms slacked just enough around her waist to allow her to turn. She got a good look at the miniature kitchen by the front door, the bronze coat hanger on the opposite wall. She spotted a table and a shelf full of all kinds of things behind it, the opening of a hallway, the dark back of a sofa, then -
"Itachi. Good."
And then she saw that -
That -
...
The man . . . had no legs.
That was Hinata's second observation. The third was that his wheelchair stood out so starkly different from the rest of the house. A dark silver, sharp, reflecting pointed light onto the walls, stuck in light blue rugs and white wall and warm, cafe wood flooring. It was like it was purposeful, that contrast. Like it hadn't been expected, but now it took up the whole room. It made a lasting impression. The house moved with it.
And the first thing Hinata noticed were the phantoms hanging over Itachi's body.
Wings.
His wings - they were covered almost entirely in stickers. They oozed weeds. She didn't see a bit of white. If light from the wheelchair reflected into them, they ate it up. And the more she looked at them, the more they shivered and peeled back, as if afraid of just her gaze alone.
...
Itachi was like a mirror.
His face reflected the exact despair she felt at the mere sight of those weeds. Her back felt heavy, skin dragged down by the weight.
He looked at her like she looked at his wings, and as her fingers cringed and folded over one another at the middle of Sasuke's back, his tightened in his lap. She all those reflected qualities that, for a moment, she felt as if she were looking at herself.
"Hinata," she wanted to say, "Hinata, you look miserable!"
But then it was gone.
She disappeared. Itachi returned. His laugh was light, skimming over his lips like the trailing touch of a feather - a feather untouched by any sort of weed.
"Well," he said, and there was no fear in his tone, no stomach-churning disturbance; it was a kind voice, and he had the face of a perfect, kind man. "So we meet again, Hinata."
...
Sasuke had warned her that Itachi was like Loki.
Hinata understood.
She felt like she had just been tricked, somehow. But how?
What was real?
The kindness in his smile or the panic in its corners?
...
"You cannot keep your hands off her, can you?"
"Itachi. I will not explain myself because I know you already understand."
It felt like his wings were in her stomach. With every flap, he sent more stickers into the walls of her stomach, absorbing them. She felt claustrophobic in the sense that her body was too small, too crowded. She needed to get things out of it. Her thoughts. Her worries. Those damn wings that now traveled up her throat to get into her brain.
It was impossible to ignore. No matter how she tried, Hinata could not pull herself away from Sasuke. She couldn't relax her grip on his shoulder.
But she had to.
If she didn't, Sasuke would know, and then Sasuke would ask her, and she couldn't just say it was because Itachi disturbed her, frightened her. No. Not him. His weeds. But they were a part of him. They were him. She couldn't say it was because he had a thousand of them on his wings, that they looked heavy enough to break bone, that his poor brother could lose her wings like she had lost hers - and then who would he return to when coming home? Who would be there for him in Cloud?
It was hard, and it was painful, but Hinata smiled. Smiled like Itachi smiled, only hers was shaky from the force.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm not sure how much Sasuke told you about me -"
"He doesn't have to," Itachi said. "I've known you since you were six, Hinata." He said her name like how Sasuke would say it in her dreams. "But, well, he was kind enough to explain the memory situation to me."
At that, Sasuke frowned, then turned to her. "It's nothing to worry about. I trust him."
The weeds on Itachi's wings cried and dripped and wailed. They begged for her hand, for her plucking fingers.
But his smile stayed. "Your secret's safe with me."
...
Sasuke let her stand on his boots again, her back pressed against his chest so she could look around without his wings or shoulder in the way.
The shelf caught her attention once again. There was such an odd assortment of things there, spread out randomly throughout the five sections of shelving. A vile of sand. What looked to be a miniature tornado in a jar. A spruce tree carved out of ice that did not seem to melt. A -
Her heart leapt out at the sight of that flower. Silver, glowing petals. Standing in a small mountain of dusty, white soil.
Moonflower.
Somehow, she remembered it. Nothing in her memory explained why, but when she looked at it, it was like it was looking back, and its petals smiled and whispered its name to her.
"Hinata?"
That was Sasuke -
No. Itachi had called her.
She tore her eyes away from the flower and looked at him. "I'm so sorry. Pardon?"
Not an inch of him looked irked in any way. "I was simply asking you how you were fairing since the last I saw you - ah, I'm sure that was about four years ago."
"Itachi," Sasuke sighed, "most of that is -"
"Confidential, I know. Trust me, Sasuke, I'm not aiming for an answer to reveal anything particularly tricky." Itachi turned back to her, eyes slouching across her face, looking for something, before he tilted his head back to regard the shelf. "I see my brother's project has caught your attention."
"Yes," Hinata said, needing no other excuse to stare at that flower. "I'm curious about it."
"He brings me something from every realm he travels to." The wheelchair squeaked a tad when he rolled over, hands touching some of the items. "A spider silk bow from Forest 6. Regenbogen Sand from Sand 1. Ah, and this -" His thumb brushed over the moonflower. "Does this look familiar to you?"
"Yes." The word left her without permission.
Itachi kept his hand there for a moment more, the petals casting a light, silvery glow over his palm. "I'm quite sure you're the one who gave it to him."
A memory fell into place. They were in Ocean 11. It was night. Sasuke had pulled something out of her hair. It was blurry in her memory's eye, but now, as she looked at the flower, it clicked in place.
"Yes," she breathed, "I did."
The hand on her waist tightened a tad. "It's nothing special," Sasuke murmured, "just a flower."
"Hah!" Itachi barked.
At that, Sasuke turned red, and he turned so that she wouldn't get a clear look at the shelf any longer.
...
After twenty minutes, Hinata realized what was so . . . off about Itachi.
He never looked her in the gaze. Sometimes, it was like he was looking at her cheek or the spot between her brows. But not her eyes.
It didn't fit him - or maybe it did. She wasn't sure. A trickster was difficult to pin down and examine thoroughly.
"Sasuke, rest a bit. Let me take care of her."
Those black weeds stretched out and flapped and pulled Itachi into the air. His wheelchair was pushed along the wood floor by the wind created by his wings. Sasuke hesitated for a moment. She could tell he was growing tired by how he struggled to keep a strong hold on her, so Hinata turned her head to him and smiled.
"I can sit on that without falling through?"
"Its carefully designed for that reason alone," Itachi said.
"Then I don't mind," she sait to Sasuke.
Only a second more passed, and then he gave in and carried her over and settled her gently in Itachi's wheelchair. Itachi's hands rested on the handles at the back, on both sides of her head.
"Sasuke," he said, "an idea came to me just now. Could you please fly to my room and grab my notebook in the forth drawer."
Sasuked huffed. "Get it yourself." But even as the words left him, he was already making his way down the hallway.
"Thank you," Hinata said, mostly because she felt it was right after he so graciously offered her a place to sit, but a bit of her only said it to keep noise going between them. "I'm sorry to trouble you."
"It is no trouble," and as if to affirm his point, he turned her to face the living room. "Perhaps we should get you one of these, as well. You never know when you might need one."
Hinata wasn't quite sure what to say to that, and the silence that settled in made her stomach bubble and roll.
"Really," she said, "I do appreciate it." A wave of air made bumps rise on the back of her neck, and she saw a flash of weeds in the corner of her eye. "Maybe, um, you should sit back down, Itachi. Your wings -"
"Ah." The wheelchair squeaked as he pushed her forward. "The stickers. Yes, I know."
. . . What?
Hinata gasped. Next to her, blending in with the white wall, Neji seemed a tad startled, himself; not in the same sense of her. Not in an overwhelming wave of shock. He didn't seem shocked. He react like he was unaware to such a fact that Itachi - Itachi - could see them - stickers!
Rather, he seemed surprised that he had revealed it so suddenly.
"You -"
"Yes," Itachi said. "I have the curse, too."
Curse?
Was that how he saw it? But from how Neji described it, it was more like an ability, a magical sense of the eyes.
Curse seemed . . . evil. Like it was placed on her. Like it was a bad thing.
He kept pushing the wheel chair. He rolled her past the sofa.
"Why . . . do you think it's a curse?"
"You don't?" His hum was distant, like he was miles ahead of her rather than right behind her. "Shouldn't you? Or . . . perhaps you're unaware of the effects."
From the hall, Sasuke called. He couldn't find the notebook. Itachi told him to keep looking, his smile in his voice. It hadn't been there just seconds ago. Then, he turned her again, and Hinata suddenly saw the both of them.
A mirror.
There was a mirror on the wall.
She saw Itachi. She saw his wings.
She saw her.
"There's a sick lack of selfishness to those plagued with it," he said. "We see stickers, Hinata, but not all of them. I see what you see on Sasuke. I see what you see to anyone who passes by. But here, when I look at us, I see something different than what you see."
She kept looking at that Hinata. That white face. Those moon eyes. Those gills, exposed and in the open. There was no dent. No shadow too dark on her face.
Flawless.
No stickers.
And he must have seen something she didn't - couldn't - because he didn't what she did. He read the stickers, and he understood her exact thought process.
"It's a cruel thing," he said. The hum of Sasuke searching through papers was a soft hum over their shoulders. "You are aware of all the issues that dent the other, but not of your own. You pluck and pull and brush away their problems, but what of your own, Hinata? What do you look like?"
In the reflection, she saw his fingers stretch and heard his knuckles pop.
"Shall I show you?"
His hand reached back, ripped a handful of stickers off his wings, and plunged them into her eyes.
...
IT STINGS!
STOP!
It was so dark. It was like her eyes were mouths, and she was choking and hacking. Hinata dug her nails into his arm, and instantly, he pulled away, and she gasped as wave upon wave or pain and needles and thorns traveled through her eyes, into her mind, her brain.
It hurt like hell.
Her eyes burned. She felt the sting of tears. She -
She felt the sting of stickers.
The weight -
The weight that made her sink. Her shoulders were boulders. Her head weight a million pounds. Her ribs felt like they could shatter.
"Look at that, Hinata."
Her hands felt like they had fallen off. Her back felt like it was no longer there.
"Look at you."
And when she did -
Gods, she went nauseous.
Because Hinata did not see her. She saw a mass of weeds. No eyes. No facial expression. No sign of humanity or life. A pile of stickers. A lump of problems. An excess of pain.
They stretched and croaked and begged and screamed, and now - she could hear them. She could hear herself screaming:
NEJI'S DEAD!
MY FAMILY MIGHT NOT BE ALIVE! THEY COULD BE HURT!
WHY ARE YOU HURTING NARUTO LIKE THIS!? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!?
I'LL NEVER GET MY MEMORIES BACK!
I ALMOST GOT SUIGETSU KILLED!
THE STALKER WILL CATCH ME - I KNOW IT!
WHAT IF THEY DO?
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO SASUKE?
WHAT WILL THEY DO TO SASUKE!?
It wouldn't stop - the YOU BETRAYED YOUR ONLY FRIEND IN THE INUZUKA! and YOU'LL NEVER GET YOUR WINGS BACK!
It kept echoing.
It kept screaming.
She kept screaming.
She tore at her face, at her throat, at her back. They wouldn't let go.
She was suffocating.
Down - they were pulling her down.
Sinking, sinking.
Falling.
...
Hinata was falling.
She had leaned forward, and gravity grabbed her and yanked her down. She fell through the floor. She fell through the clouds. Soon, the neighborhood was so far ahead of her, and she was just falling, falling, falling -
The weeds didn't stop crying.
...
Arms caught her. She knocked the air right out of Sasuke, and he wheezed, and his wings froze for a moment, and they both were falling.
"Gods -"
He hissed and angled himself above her, flapping his wings at twice the speed that he had used before. He struggled to lift her. His arms were shaking.
"What happened?"
Or maybe she was the one shaking.
He squeezed her and slowly made his way up. Hinata tried to lean her head back to prevent her stickers from rubbing him.
"Moon Witch, what -"
"S-Sasuke," she sobbed, because that was all she could do. It hurt, and if she didn't scream, she cried. "Take me back. P-Please! I want to go back!"
Lightning cracked.
Her stickers moaned in agony.
...
When they got to the Hall, she shoved away from him. It felt like the stickers were trying to climb in her mouth. If they got to her throat, she wouldn't be able to breathe. She'd die. She didn't want to! She didn't -
"Moon Witch!"
When her hand turned the Ocean dial, it didn't look like a hand. She squeezed her eyes shut as magic hissed and snapped around her. If she looked at herself - if she saw those things - she'd grow sick.
She couldn't do it.
She had to get away.
"Moon Witch."
Her body rammed into the portal. The colors looked startled. Her stickers shivered.
"Moon Witch. Wait -"
Her foot touched the surface for a mere nanosecond, and then she was submerged.
Sinking
Sinking
Sinking
"Hinata!"
The front of her cloak was yanked forward, and when her eyes snapped open, she saw Sasuke.
Sasuke?
In Ocean 11?
Her eyes looked up. The surface already seemed like a mile above them, and Sasuke was here, holding onto her. Sinking
Sinking
Sinking
Chapter 29 - End