Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto.
Status: Incomplete
Just before she died, Hatsue asked again.
This was a question which had warmed their home, set it ablaze even, kindling from the time she'd awoken.
It was a question that remained unanswered.
"Hitomi," Hatsue began, her sister's pearlescent gaze catching her own. "What happened in the forest?"
Hitomi stared. Her face did not scare Hatsue like it did others. This was her sister, they'd been girls together, and to buckle against it would mean acting as strangers.
She met Hitomi's silence with thrumming frustration.
Their mother would have called it stubbornness if she were here with them.
Hatsue didn't know how she came to be known as the stubborn one when Hitomi became silent in this way. A tide breaking rock over time; a patience expecting the other's death.
"We are old now," Hatsue tried new words, fumbling through her husband's suggestions in gleaning the knowledge she been seeking her entire life. "Yasuo is far away. We are the only ones to care for our parents graves. You held my hands as I gave birth."
Her sister's mouth wobbled.
Hatsue nearly gaped.
(A suddenly irrelevant and horribly inappropriate thought flooded her mind—that perhaps she should listen to her husband a little more often; no wonder he got better deals at the market with his penchant for diplomacy.)
Still, Hitomi said nothing.
"I…remember the golden child."
Hatsue had never confessed it aloud, not once in all her sixty-five years, "Her eyes were yours."
When she finally spoke, Hitomi looked at the hearth. The flames licked the slate-gray of her eyes, haunting her wizened face.
"I was told I needed to give something back."
And Hatsue, the one who had found Hitomi bloodied and empty-eyed that day, suddenly understood.
The sound of their tears did not break the dark, calm night.
Hatsue awoke the next morning at the terrible cold in Hitomi's fingers. As her cries brought the Uchiha's children, she wondered if Hitomi's answer had been the final price.
…
"You will not speak as we approach," The Uchiha boy repeated himself. "My clan is not kind to strangers."
His eyes, dark and warm, seemed familiar to her. Hitomi couldn't remember his name. Perhaps it was just Uchiha as the girl who carried her even now tended to snarl.
She began to snarl again now, dark brown eyes deadened in fury, "You've said—"
"Hatsue," the older man's voice came. Hitomi liked his voice. It was strong. "Uchiha-san has brought us to his Clan for refuge. We will not squander such a rare kindness."
And sometimes, this voice turned bitter.
Hitomi liked it much less when it became like this.
"Otou-sama," Hatsue said, fingers digging into Hitomi's ribs like knives. She sounded like someone when she spoke like this. Hitomi didn't know who. "I will not shame you."
She blinked when white-silver-blonde appeared suddenly before her. This boy's mouth was flat. Full lips smoothed into a thin, bitter slash.
"Imouto's awake again."
Hitomi wanted to frown but she felt frozen. She had a feeling this was not what the boy usually called her.
The brown-eyed snarling girl (Hatsue?) turned meek as a mouse.
"Hitomi-nee, are you—"
Her words were swallowed by the Uchiha boy's hissing.
"I'll need to knock her out again," The boy's eyes flickered red and suddenly, Hitomi could hear them again, "We can't risk her doing—"
In a corner of sky, twin tails swished.
Remember your promise, little one.
The kappa's scaly skin reflected off the old man's dark eyes.
The man-child owes a debt.
Lightning sparked in the blonde boy's hair.
The trees need blood.
Hitomi opened her mouth to scream.
"—that."
She wondered why the snarling girl's cries joined her own as the world slid into blood red.
…
When Hitomi awoke, her cheek hurt.
There was someone pressed against her; warm and breathing steadily.
Asleep.
She watched the ceiling for a while before she realized it was not the familiar wood of her home's roof. It moved against the wind, soft tapping alerting her to the soft rain that cooled the earth around them.
They were in a tent.
Hitomi didn't know why. She had a feeling there were a lot of things she didn't know just right now. Like the name of the girl huddled into her side, even though her dark brown hair reminded her of…of….
"Hitomi."
The old man was very quiet when he spoke.
"You're awake again."
The word finally seemed to linger in the air.
He watched her, something agonizing tearing the familiarity of his gaze. Hitomi watched him too. This man was someone to her. He was a person, her person.
But which?
His hair, long, dark and half-pinned in a simple style, looked like her own. When he opened his mouth to speak again, she wondered if he would curse her. He looked like he wanted to.
Instead, he asked, "Are you…hungry?"
She blinked.
It seemed stilted. He was asking her something. She didn't know what.
"I…" Her voice was very weak. The man's face softened. It must have been a long time since she'd spoken. That or…the screaming. "I don't know."
His eyes grew pained.
"Hitomi you must…" He exhaled, collecting his frustration. "I do not…understand you when you speak that…language."
Her brow crinkled, "What do you—"
A murmur sounded next to her.
"H'tomi you' awake…"
The girl's arms tightened around her before releasing. Then, she catapulted into consciousness.
"You're awake!"
"Hatsue," the old man warned. "She—"
Blurry with sleep, the girl's eyes could only stretch into a puffy squint. Her brown curls were riotous around her head. She was very young, Hitomi suddenly realized. She couldn't be more than sixteen.
She was staring at her.
Hitomi shifted, "Yes?"
Hitomi startled when she leapt into her arms, sobbing.
The old man looked at her strangely, "You're speaking normally again."
"I told you," The girl cried, words muffled against Hitomi's chest. "I told you she would."
She wondered why the girl was so sad for her. Wondered why she was insistent something wasn't wrong with her even as the old man stared at her uneasily.
Something like a voice buzzed near her ear and she jerked hard. The girl and the old man exchanged a look.
Her eyes felt hot, "Hungry. I—I'm hungry."
Feed, it crooned, feed me.
This had the girl stilling, peeling herself away from Hitomi's embrace. This time, her eyes were not snarling or sad. Only stubborn.
"You," she started, hands forming fists. "You promised to leave her alone."
The old man seemed unable to breathe, "Hatsue, it is dangerous—"
Hitomi's lips moved on their own, "Feed. Me."
The girl, this Hatsue, glared. "Bring my sister back."
"I hunger," the thing said. Hitomi's voice was ugly. Thick. It was not her own. "I want to eat."
"Give me Hitomi first."
"Hatsue, no." The old man snarled, and something burned in her mind.
The screaming began to make sense again. The screaming sounded nice. It sounded like freedom.
Because someone had to hear her over the crea—
Hatsue's hand slapped over her mouth, "You can't scream Hitomi. You can't, you can't, you can't. They'll hear."
This girl was a sister, her sister, she'd loved her, hadn't she?
She'd entered the forest; she'd given the blood.
"Hatsue," its voice said. Then her own, garbling against flesh, "Sister."
Hatsue's mouth trembled. This was the sister she'd given oaths for.
The old man—this was her father, her father Ensui—gasped, "Hitomi, sweetling, you must fight it…you must."
Feed, the thing crooned.
Wait, Hitomi said, wait.
"You woke—"
"Up," The Uchiha boy finished. Against the soft light of the dawn, he looked taller than Hitomi remembered. She didn't know when he had slipped inside the tent.
"You're not screaming."
The red-eye, the thing screeched, killer of trees, scorcher of land.
Behind him, there was the murmuring of feet and metal. They were in an encampment. The fans embroidered on the walls seemed suddenly much more relevant.
"Uchiha," Hatsue, her sister, snarled again. "Leave."
"They want to speak to her," he said, unbothered with Hatsue (her sister) and her loathing. "They want to understand how she did it."
"You, you—you told them!" Again, this sister of hers drew herself up for a fight, "She didn't do anything. You were there you saw everything."
He hesitated, this Uchiha boy, this boy who meant nothing to her and everything to it.
Feed me, it crooned, plying and sweetly rotting, I will teach you to handle the red-eye.
"You know it wasn't her—"
The Uchiha boy finally broke, "She healed me. With chakra. No one knows how to do that."
Something was hammering at the edges of her mind. Something big and dark and ugly.
Hatsue shook her head viciously, "She doesn't know how to do that."
"She does," He insisted. His eyes looked…fervent. Greedy, the thing raged, all so greedygreedygreedy.
"I felt it," The Uchiha boy repeated. "She's…I don't know what she is but—she is not—normal."
"There is nothing," Hatsue said, nails digging into Hitomi's cheek, "wrong with my sister."
Nothing wrong, the thing told her, almost soothing. Nothing wrong with my human.
The motion had Hitomi's cheek smarting. Tears brimmed when she finally remembered why. She moved without thought, ripping Hatsue's hand from her face.
Turning to the Uchiha boy, Hitomi let them fall.
He looked jittery at the sight, on edge.
Yuji, she thought, he said his name is Yuji. It healed him and he—
"You burned me," she croaked.
The boy, Yuji, looked to the ground, "I didn't mean to…I thought you were going to—"
And suddenly Yasuo was opening the tent flaps, face ashen, lips bloodless. His presence slices through the snarling and the stillness. It only adds to the heaviness that is already suffocating.
For a moment, he does not speak.
"Uchiha-sama wishes to speak with Hitomi, Otou-sama."
Hitomi closes her eyes.
Sometimes when we return to beloved things after a time, we change them irrevocably.
In other words? perhaps a new plot is afoot.
Enjoy, and remember to ply your local author with comments.