Heaven Hold Us

by Okami Rayne

The War is over. But the wounded remain. In a world struggling for hope amidst terrible loss, the Tailed-Beast chakra that saved Shikamaru's life on the battlefield may yet cost him his soul. As darkness encroaches upon the hard-won light, there's only one man Naruto can turn to for help. A man no more a stranger to the darkness than Shikamaru himself. Sasuke. [BtB Post-War]

9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: NARUTO and its characters were created and are owned by Masashi Kishimoto. Original characters (Tsubasa Hibari © TA. RAYNE) and plot are the property of the author. No copyright infringement intended.

Title: Heaven Hold Us

Pairings: ShikaNeji, KakaGen, InoKiba, Hiashi/OC

Rating: M / R (language, themes, violence, sexual scenes etc.)

Genre: Drama/Angst/General

Summary: The War is over. But the wounded remain. In a world struggling for hope amidst terrible loss, the Tailed-Beast chakra that saved Shikamaru's life on the battlefield may yet cost him his soul. As darkness encroaches upon the hard-won light, there's only one man Naruto can turn to for help. A man no more a stranger to the darkness than Shikamaru himself. Sasuke. [BtB Post-War]

Timeline: Post Fourth Shinobi World War. 4 months after the War.

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HEAVEN HOLD US

IX

by Okami Rayne

Rain hissed off the dove-grey tiles of the daidōjō's broad and sloping rooftop, casting the building in a soft pearl mist. With its palatial air of grace and majesty, the edifice stood as regal and imposing as the white-eyed ninja bred to train within its timber walls.

No one trained tonight.

But candles burned within the dōjō's large and quiet hall, their amber glow concealed from the outside world by the thick amado storm shutters drawn across the veranda's polished walkway. Within, the delicate shoji panels were also drawn, containing both the light and the incense smoke that swirled in thin gossamer ropes up towards the shadow-choked rafters.

It looked peaceful.

A perfect and polite disguise.

At the centre of a square tatami section of the hall sat a low, black-lacquered table. Set for tea, despite the late hour, the table's long glossy surface was beautifully inlaid with a maki-e style Hyūga crest, its mother-of-pearl design as diaphanous as the pale Hyūga eyes that drifted up from the four steaming tea bowls.

Hyūga Hiashi sat in seiza, at the seat of power.

To his right, his father, Hijikata, mirrored his stance. They knelt with their hands resting palms-down on their thighs. Etiquette's time-honoured customs demanded such formality within the walls of the Hyūga Compound, and that included the training hall. Outwardly, Hiashi knelt like a human extension of the pillars that supported the daidōjō, his expression wooden, warmed by candlelight. Privately, his own inner columns stood cold as iron bars – warped, oxidised, their once immaculate polish now blackened by a grief that prowled with muzzled rage inside him.

He contained it well.

As he'd been conditioned to.

On the days when it was harder, Hyūga Hijikata, keenly aware of this precarious emotionalism lurking within his son, kept Hiashi in check with a familiar rusted chain. The chain lay unseen, as it always had and always would, snaking between them, visceral as an umbilical cord, its bloody links cinched so tight about Hiashi's spirit his eyes reflected nothing but the candlelight.

No emotion.

No interest.

Nothing.

An appropriate mask. And a necessary one, given that Hiashi stared directly across the short distance of the low-slung table into the white ceramic face of an ANBU mask. Deer-like, the painted lines curved in red cervine swirls, cutting deep into the surface while the rounded eyeholes, black as inkwells, spilled nothing of the operative's intent. Hiashi could divine nothing, though his mind had taken immediate inventory of the ANBU upon learning his name.

Tsuno.

Killer. Captain. Veteran.

Tsuno was long, wiry, and honed like a blade, all hard angles and sharp edges, roped with scars and corded sinew. Hiashi could not sense this man's chakra, so masterfully was it masked. Indeed, the ANBU's disturbingly opaque aura felt familiar in the way that Nara Shikaku's had once been.

Dangerous.

Almost too still. Too hidden. No shadow of intent. As if his energy lay at predatory rest, sheathed within a deceptively relaxed body. Hiashi registered all of this from a great, great, distance. Truly, the only thing tethering him to his midnight conference, other than the unseen chain of duty resting in his father's hands, was the fact that Tsuno was of the Nara.

And so was the man seated beside him.

The true summoner of this meeting, who'd requested an immediate audience.

Nara Enchū.

Not a familiar face, though his name preceded him. Situated to Hiashi's left, Enchū held the guest's honoured position. Unlike Tsuno, and many of the shadow-nin clansmen, Enchū did not look like a typical Nara. His formal manner seemed at odds with the more laidback demeanour of most Nara shinobi, and he lacked the signature spiky ponytail. He wore his frost-white hair pulled taut and covered by a grey cloth cap that rested halfway down his high and wrinkled brow. Ashen robes draped about his slim frame, body held in gracious poise, lending him the stately appearance of a councilman – a look accentuated by his trimmed silver moustache and his neatly pointed goatee.

Enchū possessed the sophisticated air of a courtier.

And he demonstrated it too.

Observed the proper etiquette; he reached for his steaming tea, the placement of his hands and the precise rotation of the tea bowl as practiced as any Chadō master. Before drinking, he bowed to his hosts, took the cursory sip in silence, and observed the customary pause of savouring the taste without distraction.

Flawlessly executed.

Like he'd done it countless times before.

Hiashi wasn't impressed. He recognised the move for what it was. Not just a play at social grace, but a show of strategic guile. It required skill, status, as well as shrewdness. Enchū's actions revealed that he was not intimidated by Hyūga ceremony and its subtle attempts to unnerve, outclass, and destabilise a guest. Being one of Konoha's four noble clans often achieved that without the ritual pomp, but it never hurt the Hyūga to exploit traditional customs for subtle power plays.

It seemed a wasted tactic on this man.

Enchū would not be cowed or manipulated by prestige or power. It was almost too indulgent, the way he adhered to each step of the process – as if he were humouring his white-eyed hosts, playing the face-saving game like a practiced Shogi match.

Hiashi's lips twitched.

His father didn't share his amusement.

Beside him, Hijikata's controlled annoyance emanated in the barest ripple, like an egret whose feathers had been ruffled by this unwanted Nara oddity, who appeared both cultured and well-versed in the ways of highborn custom – which included Enchū's awareness of what lay beneath the Hyūga veneer of cool civility.

Cold calculation.

On both ends of the table, it would seem.

Humming approval at the fine jade brew, Enchū rotated the tea bowl another quarter inch, at total ease on ground that would've felt shaky and uncomfortable to almost anyone else.

Except perhaps Shikaku.

That bastard probably would've asked for saké — politely, of course.

Always so masterfully infuriating…

Surprised at the turn in his thoughts, Hiashi's mind hesitated on the memory of the Jōnin Commander. To think, such routine insolence from Shikaku had once been the cause of so much hostility between them – predominantly from Hiashi's end. Gods, what a waste of his energy…and what a waste of time, especially in those final days.

Adrift in this thoughts, Hiashi's gaze strayed to Tsuno.

Immediately, Hijikata's eyes followed the direction of his son's gaze. And here, the Hyūga elder found a more viable target for his annoyance – one that wouldn't talk back. Glaring across, Hijikata's brow crinkled in displeasure at the ANBU's refusal to sample the tea.

Petty.

And pointless.

Any chance to perceive an insult, Hijikata would take it.

Hiashi felt a bone-deep weariness taking hold. More senseless hostility. More wasted energy. His father's resentment for the Nara ran deeper than the lines in his hard and weathered face. Far deeper than Hiashi's ever had towards Shikaku, though Hiashi suspected it was for the same reason.

Interference.

The Nara had always championed for change, their 'progressive' attitudes rubbing hard against the Hyūga's more conservative grain. ANBU's efforts to recruit from the Branch House added further strain on the clan. And then of course there'd been Shikaku's insolent attempts to meddle in Hyūga politics and personal affairs during his youth, which hadn't fostered any goodwill with the Main House elders – or with Hiashi.

Bad blood, like a stain.

Would it ever wash out?

"You'll pardon Tsuno for not partaking," Enchū said into the silence, noticing the tense fixation on his ANBU chaperone, his husky tones at once apologetic and amused. "The mask, you see. He will not remove it."

Hijikata's eyes cut back to Enchū and stilled upon him. "ANBU are seldom permitted within these walls. It is tantamount to carrying a weapon – or a hidden agenda." He paused here, his lips bent in an iron smile. "History, you see. Even with our eyes, there are many sleights of hand when you combine the Nara and the ANBU."

Hiashi's spine drew taut, anger halting hard behind his restraint. For his father to air such a private grievance so publicly? And to dare speak ahead of Hiashi? If Hiashi hadn't witnessed this behaviour before, he might've suspected his father of deepening spite or dawning senility.

But Hijikata had been this way ever since The War. He possessed a looser tongue; or perhaps a sharper one.

Enchū inclined his head at the pointed words, lowering the tea bowl. "Your assumption is not without merit and your forbearance is appreciated, Hijikata-san."

The non-apology, combined with the demotion from 'sama' to 'san', had Hijikata drawing back with another sour turn to his mouth.

So long as he keeps it shut.

Hiashi's jaw tightened suddenly, a sharp pain stabbing behind his eyes, spreading down his neck, an abrupt surge of dizziness which almost caused him to sway. He locked his body immediately; muscles stiffened, nerves flashed with pain, a freeze-burn sensation whiplashing back through his tenketsu.

Kami, not now…

Certainly not with an audience.

Controlling the tetany-shiver in his muscles, Hiashi exuded his usual stoic aura and reached for his tea with a steady hand. Calling on that double-helix code of control running through his ice-blue veins, he managed to keep his fingers from shaking.

Control. In all things.

Another inherited chain…

A Blood Prison all its own.

"It is late, Nara-san," Hiashi spoke at last, layers of civil breeding sheeting over his strain. "This summons could not have waited until morning?"

"I apologise, but urgency compelled me," Enchū said, frowning slightly in confusion, though it may have been contrived. "I was told you are leaving the village at sunup."

That was not information in general circulation. Glancing at the ANBU operative, Hiashi let Enchū's statement go unanswered, along with the cutting look his father shot him. He would not discuss his private affairs.

Clearing his throat, Enchū continued after a beat, "I'll be brief, Hiashi-sama. Many years ago, we approached your brother to help prevent a dangerous situation from escalating further. It is for that same reason that I approach you now."

At the mention of his brother, Hiashi's throat constricted, the tea burning bitter on his tongue. It took a great deal to blink back the painful visions crowding in around his mind. Some composed of memories though more were manufactured, masterfully created by the…

Mugen Tsukuyomi…

Artificial memories. A false narrative Hiashi could not fully erase because, like a pathetic child, he'd sometimes turn the pages of that dream, that lie, and wish it had been real.

Pitiful.

Weak.

Aware of his father's ice-white stare, and Enchū's watchful eyes, Hiashi collected himself with a low hum, no hint of his physical or psychic discomfort outwardly visible, bar the rough bob of his throat as he swallowed thickly.

"You're mistaken," Hiashi said, his deep tones carrying low and firm. "The situation with Shikamaru is in no way comparable to the one with Shikaku all those years ago. Not with the natural energy and the bijū chakra combined. There are too many variables at play." He paused for a second, his eyes narrowing as if staring through time. "Impossible variables. Unless my eyes deceive me, which they do not."

"Hiashi-sama—"

"I've already tried," Hiashi interjected, some of the strain breaking through before his voice smoothed over at his next words. "I cannot do what Hizashi did. I cannot save Shikamaru. No living Hyūga can."

At those last words, Tsuno's masked face ticked towards him.

A sharp action.

One the ANBU meant for Hiashi to see.

What that look communicated, went unspoken – just like the rest of Hiashi's words. There was nothing more he could reveal. Over the past few weeks, the various energies he'd seen polluting the tributaries of Nara Shikamaru's tenketsu ran at different depths and speeds, some swift upon the surface, others sluggish and submerged – and then, deeper still, Hiashi had discovered an energy buried so deep within the bedrock of the shadow-nin's chakra centres he'd almost missed it. An energy he'd not believed to be real, just a fossilised imprint.

Until he'd looked again. And again. And again.

It cannot be real…

And yet, his eyes did not lie.

Hyūga Tokuma's eyes did not lie.

The. Byakugan. Did. Not. Lie.

But Hiashi had. He'd lied. To all but one man.

— FLASHBACK: T&I WAR ROOM, INTEL DIVISION | KONOHAGAKURE, 6 DAYS AGO –

The war room held its breath. It was not an empty silence. Unsaid hypotheticals and countless questions filled the void into which Hiashi had spoken his findings. Or at least, an edited version of his findings. Summoned to the Intelligence Division rather than the medical department, Hiashi had remained clipped and sparing with the details regarding his repeated examinations of Nara Shikamaru. Supplying the bare-boned facts without fleshing out any theories or intuitions.

Impossible as they are.

Or felt.

But Hiashi's heart, as always, had no place at any table. Especially this table, with its broad pockmarked surface laden with reports, referrals, and an ever-growing collection of medical files, some dating back almost two years ago. Back to the fateful Kusa Mission which had roped Hiashi into the System of Lies surrounding the illicit Shinju Project at that time.

He'd wanted no part in it.

No part in Shikaku's history.

But that history had repeated with his son.

And so it does again…

Sitting back in the crude wooden chair, Hiashi kept all thought and emotion from his face, his expression chiselled in its usual cool patrician lines. An effortless feat for any Main House highborn.

But Hiashi was not amongst kin.

Or his Hokage.

He was among Tokujō. Very select, very skilled Tokujō. One, a notorious sadist with an intelligence level on par with Konoha's most gifted strategists. The other…well, Hiashi knew little of Yamashiro Aoba, other than the professional facts: he'd served in the Nijū Shōtai as a Captain, then in the Intelligence Division during the War, which ought to have granted him Hiashi's respect. But respect, like trust, was earned – and Hiashi did not know nor trust this ninja.

Ibiki clearly did.

It was rumoured Aoba possessed genius-level intuition, which explained why he'd been drafted into T&I. From what Hiashi had observed, Aoba presently occupied the role Yamanaka Inoichi would have commanded in this motley task force, had he survived the War.

Had Shikaku survived…

…had Neji.

A loud thwack sounded.

Blinking sharply, Hiashi watched another file strike the growing pile as Aoba gave up trying to make sense of whatever part of the timeline he'd been catching up on. Hissing a sigh, the Tokujō scrubbed his hands back through his wild sable hair and fell into an agitated stalk, pacing the length of the table.

"Hells Ibiki, a head's up would've been nice," Aoba groaned, lacing his fingers behind his spiky head, squeezing like he could compact all the disjointed information into some coherent shape inside his skull, his voice rising on a wave of tension. "So, on top of all this historical deep-sixed crap the Council's kept under wraps, now there's more complications to add to Shikamaru's condition?"

Ignoring the odd panicked edge to Aoba's voice, which was not winning him any respect from the Hyūga Lord, Hiashi's eyes skimmed across the short distance to the steadiest and most silent point in the room.

Morino Ibiki.

Clad in the trademark T&I garb beneath his ominous black trench coat, Ibiki stood with his back pressed to the cinderblock wall, his long powerful arms locked like a barricade across his broad chest. On the surface he seemed at total ease with the escalating situation, but his dark watchful eyes were glued to Hiashi with the keen incisiveness of a man considering a private cross-examination. It was clear he didn't trust the current testimony of his white-eyed witness – seemed to be searching Hiashi's face for all that the Hyūga Lord wasn't saying.

And there was much Hiashi wasn't saying.

And not just because he didn't know or trust Yamashiro Aoba.

Kabe ni mimi ari shōji ni me: The walls have ears; the doors have eyes.

The quote hung on a scroll in the childhood chambers of Hiashi's mind, his father's voice intoning the words. Eyes always watching. Ears always listening. The Hyūga Compound's great fortress of mistrust, a house divided against itself within its high white walls; where Main House elders and Branch House retainers operated on a timeless stage of face-saving civility – easily done, when a headband could conceal a curse mark just as easily as a silk sleeve could conceal a hand designed to activate it.

Hiashi had learned young and fast that words could curse, condemn, and worse still, they could rattle the Hyūga chain.

"School that tongue, or it will be silenced for you."

Unlike his brother, Hiashi had obeyed. He'd all but cut his tongue from his mouth. Often enough, Hiashi's words were not his own. Not truly. The practiced lines, the polished rhetoric, it always seemed to come from outside of his own mind, outside of his own soul, a regurgitation of the elders' ancient script because…

The walls have ears, the doors have eyes.

And not just inside the Hyūga Compound.

But outside of it too.

"If what you've described in your report is true," Ibiki said, his deep voice rumbling into the silence, speaking in the slow cautious way of one not trusting what he'd heard – or read. "Then we're dealing with another foreign element situated inside of Shikamaru, alongside the bijū's chakra and the natural energy. Is that correct?"

Hiashi nodded. "That is correct."

"Well shit," Aoba huffed, scrubbing at his brow. "And what does this mean for Shikamaru?"

Hiashi's gaze went between the two Jōnin as he decided on a truth or a lie. "I cannot answer that question. Not yet." Truth. Though he spoke fast to keep Ibiki from cross-examining his answer. "And until I can confidently determine the impact of the foreign energy and provide you with something more substantial, I'd advise you both to keep this information private."

Aoba stopped pacing at the suggestion of further secrecy, his frown digging deep. Ibiki's expression went even more blank and unreadable, his mind undoubtedly crunching down on the information. Or lack thereof. Hiashi had given them nothing but a one-line statement in his report – foreign energy detected in tenketsu.

It wasn't a lie.

It just wasn't the truth either.

Aoba spoke before Ibiki could ask, coming forwards to plant his palms atop the table, the lenses of his ever-present shades reflecting Hiashi's cool white gaze straight back at him. "So we're just supposed to sit on this vague info whilst you investigate? And how do you intend to go about getting answers, Hiashi-sama?"

Not used to being questioned – much less interrogated – Hiashi arched his brows at Aoba's tone and patiently folded his hands into the sleeves of his robe, as much to buy some time as to consider his response; again, how much to reveal. "I've exhausted my options here. I intend to explore a source outside of Konoha."

Another truth.

And not a popular one.

The tension in the room ratcheted several notches.

Ibiki's eyes narrowed. "How far outside of Konoha?"

"Beyond the Land of Fire."

That won no approval either.

Coughing out an incredulous laugh, Aoba rocked back on his heels, planted his hands on the back of the nearest chair and looked to Ibiki for guidance, his disbelief climbing with his brows, shaking his head as if to say, 'this man is insane'.

Ibiki gave no reaction other than a blunt, "No."

Hiashi's lips curved in a ghost of a smile. "I'm not asking for permission, Morino-san. Nor do I require it."

"Respectfully, Hiashi-sama, you do." Ibiki ticked his chin towards a large geographical map tacked to the wall. "The Allied Shinobi Forces have yet to sign off on any official coalition between villages and nations. Relationships remain unstable. The last Kage Summit agreed upon a ceasefire to deal with our common enemy during the War, but that is all."

Unfortunately, Hiashi could not dispute this point. Disgust turned his stomach. The War itself should have been incentive enough to officialise alliances. If the War couldn't inspire nations to peace, nothing would. Appalled, Hiashi shook his head, not bothering to ask the question when he already knew the answer.

"Politics," he uttered.

"Unavoidable," Ibiki said, his gaze tracking the map. "Asides from Hanegakure, we cannot rely on any gentlemen's agreements. Not every village shares Tsubasa Hibari's 'word of honour' code."

Snorting, Aoba blew a tired laugh skyward. "Yeah, but you can bet that every village still considers Uchiha Sasuke and Orochimaru as war criminals," he chipped in, circling the room in a restless twist before pausing briefly at the large map, gazing at the Land of Iron. "Gods, after the homicidal stunt Sasuke pulled at the Kage Summit with Taka? Attacking the Kage? Murdering Danzō? We've got that kid just sitting pretty within our walls."

"We're not here to discuss Sasuke," Ibiki redirected, shooting him a look. "Focus."

"On what?" Aoba snapped. "Which part of the shitshow, Morino? The years of conspiracy? The skeletons in the Council's closet? It's not an isolated issue anymore. It's the cherry on top of this steaming pile of crap that's already stinking up our reputation amongst the other villages. We can't just ignore that."

Ibiki levelled him with a look that could've levelled buildings. "No one is ignoring that. We prioritise."

Cursing beneath his breath, Aoba twisted back into his fretful pacing, his voice gaining volume and speed, breaths shallow as the thoughts flooded out his mouth unchecked, despite the looks cast his way. "Well good luck, because we've still got Orochimaru and Kabuto's questionable 'pardons' waiting in the wings, despite all the chaos they've caused over the years. And let's not forget the standing ovation our village deserves for Uchiha Obito and Madara. Shit, that really takes the cake, doesn't it?"

"Aoba," Ibiki cut in, frowning now.

"No, really," Aoba laughed, a high strained sound, running his hands back through his hair repeatedly. "At least the Akatsuki wasn't all on us – but the Snake? Madara? Obito? We're the cesspit those assholes crawled out of. I mean come on, it's like we have the winning track record for producing psychopaths."

"Aoba," Ibiki warned. "That's enough."

Only it wasn't enough because Aoba kept ranting, raking his hands back through his scarecrow spikes, tugging at the roots, muttering to himself about secrets, and setbacks, and samsara cycles of doom.

Ibiki watched him, repeated Aoba's name to no effect.

Sitting on the proverbial sidelines of this bizarre moment, Hiashi's eyes narrowed on the scene, disconcerted by such a peculiar and unbecoming display of anxiety from a Tokujō shinobi. Especially one with Aoba's experience and Ibiki's endorsement. Ibiki would never have recruited such an anxious man. It was no secret that Morino didn't tolerate drama. He did not abide flighty behaviour as a rule, let alone from shinobi on his team.

Which meant…

There's something more at play here…

If activating the Byakugan hadn't risked further drama, Hiashi might have utilised his dōjutsu in response to the panic he now felt emanating from Aoba in waves – waves that Ibiki's bass tones should have settled. The sheer command of his voice, combined with the dominant weight of his presence, was usually enough to force most people to immediate stillness.

But Aoba wasn't stilled, and he didn't stop. Wasn't even aware of himself. Caught in the current of in his own tirade, his steps continuing to spiral as he swirled deeper and deeper into some raging state of angst, sweat bursting on his brow. "And now we risk word getting out that Shikamaru might pose an S-Rank threat if we can't fix him? Shit. This is worse than complicated, Ibiki. This is critical mass. This is not what we planned for. If anyone finds out about this, we're gonna have way more than suspicious eyes resting on Konoha. We're gonna have another shitstorm at the goddamned gates! Again! The last time Pein—"

Ibiki moved.

So unexpected and abrupt that Hiashi's body tightened on reflex at the fluid grab and spin. One second Ibiki was resting at ease against the wall and the next second Aoba's spine was pressed up against the very same spot, the air punched out of his lungs at the violent snatch and shove, his lenses dislodged.

It was then that Hiashi saw Aoba's eyes.

Eyes of brown and gold.

Not one eye brown and one eye gold. But both. Each eye contained a perfect swirl of bicolour; like yin-yang blots either side of the pupil, both irises were dominated by an even split.

Sectoral heterochromia.

A rare aberration of melanin in the eyes – which certainly explained why Aoba wore the shades. An enemy might easily mistake him for possessing a dōjutsu, when in fact all Aoba possessed was a unique and striking pigmentation in his irises.

Unfortunately, the colours in Aoba's eyes were not what transfixed Hiashi. It was the look those eyes held. Wild. Spooked. His vision fever-glazed in the stare of a man not situated in the moment but lost somewhere outside of it, outside of the room, maybe outside of reality altogether.

In that moment, Hiashi understood.

Mugen Tsukuyomi…

Ibiki's grip on Aoba's shoulders tightened in a slow squeeze, then he leaned in and spoke a single word against Aoba's ear. Whatever was said, Aoba snapped back to reality like he'd taken another shove rather than a squeeze to his shoulders and a sound in his ear.

Sweating hard, Aoba blinked his strangely coloured eyes, swallowed convulsively, then shoved Ibiki with a snarl, his look as edged as his voice. "Back off!"

Ibiki did, but only because he chose to. Searching Aoba's eyes, he stepped back with hands slowly raised, watching without condemnation or concern, his expression empty of emotion, his voice too.

"You good?" was all he asked.

Flushing, Aoba blinked a few more times, then bent to retrieve his shades, slipping them on and turning away in the same motion. Nodding wordlessly, he resumed his former pacing, though he walked a straight and solid path this time, rather than a shaky spiral. A steady back and forth, hands carding through his hair in those same repeated sweeps, only slower, calmer, just like his steps – walking himself back along some inner timeline to a steadier space inside himself.

Ibiki watched him for a five count, then turned.

He nailed Hiashi with a look.

Reading the warning, Hiashi said nothing. Didn't feel it necessary or wise to add his energy or understanding to the volatile display – or more accurately, the near-episode of PTSD collapse – that he'd just witnessed. He'd been privy to far worse. It required no explanation or apology.

And yet…

"Sorry," Aoba said tightly. His expression pinched with anger. Self-directed. Embarrassed. Ashamed.

Shame.

Hiashi knew it well enough. Lowering his gaze, he tipped his head in a gesture of graceful acknowledgement whilst Ibiki completely ignored the apology, running his standard protocol of dismissing anything related to emotionalism.

Hiashi knew this well enough, too.

Stepping out of Aoba's path, Ibiki took a seat at the long table, gaze steady on Hiashi now, his focus already miles beyond the fragile moment that had just transpired.

"Aoba's right," he said, words that might've been face-saving for Aoba, or just purely factual. Always hard to tell with Ibiki. "It's too great a risk for you to take this intel elsewhere. No one outside our borders can know about Shikamaru's condition. It will be difficult enough concealing it from Tsubasa Hibari when he arrives in a few days to sign off on Hanegakure's alliance – he worked closely with Shikamaru during that mission."

That mission. Masking his reaction, Hiashi reserved comment, avoiding the mention of the Land of Feather's assignment and what it had forged between Shikamaru and Neji.

Neji…

Drawing a breath, Hiashi glanced away briefly, pretending to examine the map across the room. "I understand that questions will be asked," he said. "That is inevitable. I assume you are maintaining the standard narrative regarding Shikamaru's condition."

"Chakra sickness is the prevailing story," Aoba confirmed, having recovered remarkably fast. He approached the table, set his foot on one of the chairs, and bent to crab a hand above the various medical reports. "This has gotta stick. Hibari will be easy enough to deflect, but we've got a Sunagakure representative enroute too. Just gotta hope it's some paper-pushing lackey and not one of the Kazekage's siblings."

Ibiki gave a low humourless laugh, shaking his head. "Oh, it will be. Temari-san has always been the appointed emissary in the past."

Aoba dropped his head back. "Oh fantastic," he groused to the ceiling. "This gets better and better."

Nonplussed, Hiashi looked from Aoba to Ibiki, one dark brow arching in query. "How is this specifically problematic?"

Aoba gave a quiet snicker. "Their extracurricular activities, I'm guessing?"

Ibiki refused to comment, tilting away from Aoba's nudging elbow and accompanying chuckle, ignoring the ill-timed humour and the throwaway remark.

Hiashi could not ignore it.

Pretending to be irritated at the crude suggestion, his lashes flickered in a perfectly contained eyeroll to disguise the very real and very strong displeasure which twisted in his gut.

Shikamaru and Temari?

That couldn't be accurate – though Hiashi refused to admit, even to himself, even after all this time, precisely how and why he knew it couldn't be accurate. Some hint of his unease must have leaked out and touched his face, because across the table, Ibiki's scarred lips twisted ever-so-slightly.

Hiashi caught the look, his nerves tightening at the dangerous understanding it might have telegraphed. But before he could read anything more into the expression, Ibiki passed a hand across his faintly smiling mouth and broke the moment, humming a low note.

"Temari and Shikamaru have always collaborated on assignments and talks involving the villages," Ibiki explained, filling in any gaps, droning the words to indicate they weren't of any real interest or importance to him. "From Chūnin Exams to negotiation contracts. It's standard practice for them. She'll expect his presence and question his absence."

"She won't like being stood up," Aoba chuckled, leaving the appropriate pause for laughs that didn't come. Coughing into his fist, he scrubbed his mouth and continued awkwardly. "Anyway. Like I said earlier, it's bad enough with Uchiha and the Snake. I'm not saying we don't need outside help to solve this. Tough calls are coming…but Shikamaru being a closet timebomb puts Konoha in an untenable position if we look for help outside our walls."

Another obvious statement, Hiashi thought.

Gods above, as if he required schooling in politics. Governing the Hyūga clan had all but desensitised Hiashi to the tough calls – he'd made them all his life…or had them made for him by hearts harder than his own, until his own scar tissue had thickened enough for him to require no assistance, let alone instruction.

Staring cooly at Aoba, Hiashi offered a slim and painfully serene smile that did little to disguise his disdain. "Being in an untenable position is no excuse not to act. You worry about emissaries, yet another Kage Summit looms on the horizon." Hiashi paused here, tipping his head in consideration, "Provided of course that isn't delayed, should Hatake Kakashi be inaugurated first."

Aoba grinned against his fist, muttering beneath his breath, "Bets are on."

Ibiki checked him with a look, his gaze sliding back to Hiashi. "Your point?"

"The risk of inaction far outweighs the risk of exposure," Hiashi said, glancing at the various files and documents, knowing his eyes had seen far more than what these papers detailed. And that included his own report. "It's true, Shikamaru's tenketsu is a tinderbox. But what explanations will you give to the other Kage – or worse yet, to the Feudal Lords – when these medical explanations fail? What excuses will you offer when the tinderbox ignites? And it will. Unless we take the necessary risks and look beyond the confines of this village."

Ibiki said nothing, unable to refute the logic – or supply an immediate response. Almost instantly, Aoba's braced leg began an agitated bounce, his expression flickering as he fought to contain what might have been another bout of rising anxiety. Ibiki masked any reaction with his usual granite expression, all focus turned inward, assessing Hiashi's statement and calculating his response.

Several long seconds passed before Ibiki's eyes cleared and he took a breath to speak, holding off for another moment in the way one does when cautiously selecting their words. And then he spoke, and everything changed.

"We are looking beyond the confines of his village."

That rocked the landscape.

Aoba's mouth dropped open, but whatever words might've dropped out got choked off halfway up this throat, a strangled sound lodging there. Scowling, he jerked from his shock and whipped his head towards Ibiki, jaw clacking shut and teeth grinding down.

"Sonofabitch," he hissed.

A shared sentiment, though rather than reveal his anger, Hiashi kept his burning gaze cast down, his voice rising with icy calm into the pin-drop silence. "And what grants you the privileged exception to look beyond our borders, Morino?"

"Where I'm looking, Hiashi-sama. And who I'm seeking."

"The Snake," Aoba gritted out, surprising a quiet grunt out of Ibiki.

"Hn. There's that intuition I've been banking on," the sadist muttered dryly.

Hiashi was not amused. Kami, Orochimaru? Disgusted, his head came up at last, the veins at the corners of his eyes tightening with chakra and pulsing like livewires. "You put your trust in that viper, yet you dare question my judgement?"

Leaning back in his chair, Ibiki's gloved fingers lifted off the armrests in the barest gesture of peace, his gaze pinned to the fading veins at Hiashi's temples. "Orochimaru has incentive to assist us. He'll bargain and he's opportunistic. I've weighed the risks given what I know. But what you're asking?" Ibiki shook his head. "Without solid intel about where you're going and who you're seeking, I can't calculate tactical gains or prepare for pitfalls. If you want my support in securing the Hokage's approval, then allow me to factor in some measure of political backfire and tell me where the hell you're heading."

Hiashi's expression arched slowly, a show of classic Hyūga contempt. An ingrained and automatic response, his pride rearing in defiance at being challenged and talked down to on account of Ibiki's covert head-of-operations rank. Only Hiashi's clan and Hokage had ever wielded such authority over him. Shikaku would've called Hiashi out for his arrogance – no, his "Hyūga Hubris". The stupid teenage insult pinged off his brain like a stone from a child's slingshot. Hizashi had found the comment amusing at the time. Hiashi, of course, had not.

Kami, have I always been this way…?

So serious, so strict, so unwilling to surrender anything that might cost him his father's approval, not even a smile at a silly jibe. But Hizashi had smiled – the broken brother with the branded brow and the beaten spirit, had smiled. It was such a bittersweet memory it could've been a dream. But Hiashi had replayed it in his mind long before the Mugen Tsukuyomi had been cast. Reliving the moment his brother had smiled.

Hizashi…

A rending pain in his heart, and Hiashi's expression hardened to conceal it, the barest tightening around his eyes. Bringing himself back to the moment, he wondered if perhaps this whole T&I experience might've been humbling if it wasn't such a damned hindrance to what he needed to happen next.

But that couldn't happen just yet.

Not with the third wheel in the room.

Focusing his mind, Hiashi calmed his energy and calculated his options, white eyes straying briefly to Aoba then back to Ibiki in a subtle gesture.

Ibiki caught it. "Aoba, give us the room."

Startled, Aoba turned his head and opened his mouth, but Ibiki beat him to it.

"Ino," Ibiki dropped the name like a signal, his flint-eyed stare still pinned on Hiashi, even as his head turned towards Aoba. "As planned."

Pressing his lips, Aoba tucked his chin and swept a hand back through his hair, nodding to whatever he'd been asked, or ordered, to do. Pushing off his propped foot, he slotted the chair back with his heel and turned to make his exit, taking his fractious and unstable energy with him.

The door thudded shut.

Ibiki's expression loosened, and his lips crooked with a hint of amusement. "You're overly suspicious, Hiashi-sama. I wouldn't have brought Aoba on board if he couldn't be trusted."

"Trusted with what? Containing himself?"

"Ah, his emotionalism offends you," Ibiki observed, his low basso tones coloured with the same black humour as his eyes before the amusement cut out entirely. "As you're aware, Hiashi-sama, the chakra sickness doesn't just affect the body. It also attacks the mind."

"Which makes me question your judgement in choosing such an unstable mind to supplant Inoichi's."

"No one can supplant Inoichi," Ibiki shot back, catching himself at the edge of a sneer, his scarred lips going taut as his voice. "Not even his daughter, though that would be preferable. Trauma is popping up left, right, and centre in this village – just like the chakra sickness, there's no avoiding it. We work with who and what we have. Aoba has his moments, but he's psychologically stable enough to do his job. Few are right now. As long as he's operational, I'm keeping him in play."

"Operational? Well that certainly screams confidence," Hiashi dismissed with cutting sarcasm, shaking his head. "Either way, I've no cause to trust him."

"But you've cause to trust me?" Ibiki came forwards with a low black chuckle. "A man who operates with privileged exception and runs a System of Lies? There are many screams in my world, Hiashi-sama, and few of them scream trust. Which brings me to the question – why seek me out? I know you weren't sent."

Levelling their gazes, Hiashi breathed a soundless chuckle at the frank approach. No preamble whatsoever with this man. Just a blunt and unvarnished interaction. Hiashi wasn't totally ignorant to such exchanges…which he supposed he owed to one insufferable Nara Shikaku. No sooner had he thought the name than another memory pinged up from his subconscious; an angry moment from one of their many disputes.

"Why do you insist on challenging me?"

"Because you can pass back the blame as far as you want, as many generations as you want, to justify why you still feel chained to it, but it must end. And that end must start somewhere."

Caught off-guard, Hiashi hesitated in the memory.

Lingered in it.

Long enough that the memory began to linger in him…

…a deep and labouring regret.

Something vanished from his eyes, from his voice, his words falling quieter as his gaze dimmed and drifted inwards. "Regardless of how you operate, Ibiki, it is as you say: we work with who and what we have. My options, like yours, are either limited or impossible."

Ibiki cocked his head, "Impossible how?"

Hiashi hesitated, struggling to keep both his face and his voice clear of the regret carving up the ice in his eyes. "Shikaku is gone," he answered at last, his voice a near-murmur. "The truth is, I wouldn't have sought you out at all, if he hadn't trusted you. Both with his family…and with my own."

Ibiki's brows pinched in a split-second of confusion before understanding passed across his face, smoothing out the frown. He eased back in his seat, withdrawing from the table and Hiashi's space, installing an immediate physical distance considering the emotional territory they risked treading now.

"Neji," Ibiki sighed, leaving a heavy pause. "I wouldn't say I was entrusted with your nephew, Hiashi-sama. I did my job regarding his enrolment into the ANBU, despite his rejection of the offer."

Hiashi's throat flexed, though his voice betrayed nothing. "Be that as it may, you were an integral part of the first System of Lies created to protect Shikaku. You were dedicated to that operation. Despite your clever bending of the rules, you are at your core a man of integrity and impartiality. A rare combination."

"At my core…?" Ibiki echoed, brows raised in some private irony before he husked a low and mirthless chuckle. "Is it truly my integrity and impartiality that you require, Hiashi-sama?" He gave Hiashi a fast once-over. "At your core, you are a man governed by rules. How many of them are you bending, or should I say breaking, by seeking me out to discuss your findings instead of disclosing them to your clan elders – or more importantly, the Hokage herself?"

Cornered, Hiashi held himself rigid. Those words held far too much awareness for the casual tones they'd been delivered in. And they changed everything. The table became a tactician's board, a sudden vision assailing Hiashi's mind of black and white pieces of a Go game; Ibiki's eyes the black stones, Hiashi's eyes the white. Clearly, Hiashi had misjudged this man's ruthless read on the situation – as well as his strategy.

Tesuji, Hiashi thought.

Tesuji, meaning 'clever play'. A term used in Go. A strategic game which Hiashi was far more familiar with than Shogi, having played it since childhood. Tesuji required great skill and guile. To recognise and exploit an opponent's weakness, seize an opportunity, and gain immediate advantage. Ibiki's quick switch from crouch to ambush had been a bold move with devastating impact.

Clever play, indeed.

In a Go scenario, Hiashi would be forced to counter with zokusuji – a vulgar move – to avoid defeat. However, this crude path would put him at an immediate disadvantage; he'd lose initiative, reveal information he didn't want to give, as well as destroy any means of escape.

Trapped.

Perhaps Ibiki had planned it that way. Or perhaps he'd built upon it play-by-play, filing away information as and when Hiashi dropped a clue – putting those clues together whilst playing the ignorant party. It was little wonder Shikaku had liked Ibiki. Inoichi too. Despite their stark personal differences, they'd all operated in a chillingly similar way.

Hiashi's Go-sensei, the highest ranking Judan among the Hyūga, would've summed it up as:

"Ichi o kiite jū o shiru. Hear one thing, know ten."

To be given a small amount of information or intel, and to be both perceptive enough and intelligent enough to intuit and figure out the rest. Nature imbued the Nara with such wisdom. Nurture did the same for the Yamanaka. But in Ibiki's case, Hiashi imagined his intelligence was grafted onto him like scar tissue. Layers of cunning, all compartmentalised in a mind desensitised to emotionalism and hardwired to rational objectivity. Rumour and reputation had always suggested it. But now, Hiashi knew it first-hand, and he cursed himself for not having better prepared for Ibiki's 'Iron Maiden Mind' and the inevitable trap it presented.

Hiashi would need to be extremely prudent moving forwards.

And it was his turn to move.

He did nothing.

Inaction was also a move.

Sitting at ease, Ibiki's eyes searched Hiashi's face with quiet patience, waiting on a response. When no reply emerged from behind the icy stonewall, Ibiki smiled a slow and knowing smile.

"Your nephew used to enjoy this tactic," he said, going straight for the jugular. "While the stonewall might've served him in the ANBU, what Neji failed to realise, as have you, is that in my world the silence also screams…and oddly enough, in situations like this, it screams more truth than lies."

Hiashi said nothing.

Ibiki tilted his head with that half-smile in place, eyes still searching. "The actions we take. The actions we don't. Neji's last action told me everything I needed to know about him. And why he made the right decision. Will you?"

Hiashi's glare sharpened.

He wanted to snarl.

He wanted to shut Ibiki down.

He did neither.

Rather than react to Ibiki's words, Hiashi let a great coldness suffuse him, icing over his mind and body to protect his heart and preserve his pain in impenetrable ice. Even his eyes seemed to crystalise, sealing off any glint of emotion that might've broken through before.

Weakness.

He would not make that mistake twice.

Ibiki, astute enough to recognise the emotional shut down, gave another small, closed-lipped smile. "He'd do this too," Ibiki observed. "Not as well as you – considering he needed all those chakra blocks."

Past the stony beating of his heart, Hiashi uttered, "Watch where you tread next, Morino."

A flash of amusement in the dark eyes. "Oh, I'm watching, Hiashi-sama. I'm listening too. And something doesn't ring true." Coming forwards in his seat, Ibiki linked his long leather-clad fingers atop the table, the thumbs tapping in a steeple. "You quote Shikaku's trust as your reason for being here but given your fractious relationship with him over the years, I suspect you're not being completely honest with me. Although…" Ibiki trailed off with a roll of his shoulders, thumbs spreading in lieu of a shrug. "I can't cast stones. I've not been completely honest with you either."

"Indeed," Hiashi agreed with cool indifference. "First Orochimaru. Now these base tactics designed to insult me – to what end?"

"Insulting you is not my intention," Ibiki said, point-blank and pokerfaced. "But you see, I suspect that your being here has less to do with my professional involvement with Shikaku's kid and more to do with his kid's personal involvement with your nephew."

A physical attack might've shocked him less.

Stunned, Hiashi's gaze remained frozen on Ibiki like the blood in his veins.

It took him a halting moment to gather his wits. Gods, the sheer audacity of Ibiki mentioning this 'involvement'. An involvement Hiashi had forbidden Neji from ever speaking and damned Ibiki for knowing at all…even if there had been hints of his awareness earlier when he'd dismissed Aoba's mention of romance between Temari and Shikamaru.

The knowing smirk Ibiki had settled on Hiashi.

The awareness that'd hung on the edges of that smile should've been obvious. Gods, how long had Ibiki known? Had Shikaku told him? Or had Ibiki intuited the information straight from Neji during the psychological stages of his ANBU training?

Rage moved within Hiashi's quartz-white eyes, buried lava behind burning ice.

But it did not thaw him.

"Neji performed an Eight Gates kinjutsu on Shikamaru to save his life during their mission in Kusa," Hiashi redirected, a mocking edge cutting just beneath the ice in his voice. "You may credit that to some notion of personal involvement between them. I credit it to a reckless act that would have cost Neji his life had Hatake Kakashi and Yamanaka Ino not intervened to revive him."

"Reckless act," Ibiki echoed, amusement sparking in his coal black eyes. "Not like a Hyūga to act recklessly."

"Regardless, he acted on duty," Hiashi returned, the glacier in his chest fracturing unseen. "No different from his final act in his final hour."

"Only it was different, wasn't it?" Ibiki countered. "It was entirely different. You know it. Just as Shikaku knew it. Must royally piss you off, to learn that I know it too."

White-eyes cutting to slits, Hiashi's voice dropped to a sub-zero purr. "You are deliberately provoking me, Ibiki."

"I am. Do you understand why, Hiashi-sama?"

"Because you question my impartiality – and probably my intentions – regarding Shikaku's son."

"I do," Ibiki agreed, sliding into interrogation-mode with such speed and ease Hiashi had no time to counter. "You didn't approve of Neji's relationship with Shikamaru any more than you approved of his choice to forfeit ANBU. Do you still blame Shikamaru for that?"

Of course, but Hiashi would sooner be damned to the innermost circle of hell than admit it. Not that he wasn't damned already, having lost control of this encounter. "I did not come here to be interrogated."

Ibiki simply stared, waiting on the answer.

Hiashi bridled at his predicament, knowing that to flat out refuse to cooperate would only condemn him further. "Blame Shikamaru," he repeated blandly. "Whatever gave you that impression?"

Ibiki shrugged as if it were obvious, his thumbs tapping conclusively. "Other than your escalating animosity towards Shikaku after Neji declined the offer? It's no lie that Neji saw ANBU as his freedom. But then, shortly after saving Shikamaru's life, he forfeited that freedom. Just like that. That didn't strike you as odd?"

"What strikes me as odd, if not absurd, is that you'd equate the ANBU with freedom."

"Neji did."

"Until he did not. Hence his decision to forfeit."

"Perhaps. Either way, you wanted ANBU for him, didn't you?"

"No. He wanted it for himself. And his decision to decline the ANBU was based on far more than his fraternisation with Shikamaru."

"Fraternisation," Ibiki mused, another spark in his lightless eyes.

Hiashi's patience cracked, a hairline fracture, but enough for some of the anger to slip through, his voice hardening. "You have belaboured this point, Morino. I assume you have a more relevant one when it comes to Shikamaru's present condition?"

"Oh, I think it's a point worth belabouring regarding his present condition." Reaching between them, Ibiki plucked Hiashi's one-line statement from the scattering of medical documents and held it between them like a magistrate providing evidence at court. "Especially considering my suspicions about what you're withholding from your report."

Black stones upon the Go board, encircling the white. Hiashi's jaw tightened, as did the invisible noose around him. "That's a strong accusation. And utterly baseless, considering my level of assistance. I've given my complete cooperation."

"You've given five words."

"I beg your pardon?"

Ibiki arched a brow then gave the sheet a cursory glance, voice flat as he recited the single documented line, "Foreign energy detected in tenketsu. Five words. Your words."

"And no word of a lie," Hiashi countered, his gaze flitting briefly to the report then back to Ibiki's iron face. "It's a fact."

"It's a footnote. Your level of cooperation should have yielded a hell of a lot more than five words. You're being very selective with your truths, Hiashi-sama."

"And what is it you suspect that I'm withholding, Morino?"

Ibiki smiled unpleasantly, his lightless eyes skimming the surface of Hiashi's face once more, though his words reached much, much deeper. "I suspect you're withholding the fact that the foreign energy you've detected inside of Shikamaru's tenketsu is Hyūga Neji's chakra imprint."

And there it was.

The endgame masterstroke.

Defeat.

And close behind, the old Go-sensei's voice whispering in the back of Hiashi's stricken mind: "The strong player plays straight; the weak player plays diagonal."

Hiashi had played diagonal.

And he'd lost.

He hadn't expected Ibiki to dare 'play straight' and go the direct path. Military strategists knew the worst policy was to besiege a walled fortress, which is precisely how Hyūga Hiashi had presented himself. 'Playing straight' meant attacking those walls, a move as fruitless as trying to break through the Kaiten.

It should have been impossible.

Only Ibiki hadn't needed to attack the walls, because he'd already been inside them – and probably for quite some time.

Defeat.

Drawing a slow breath through his nose, Hiashi stared hard at the report kept raised between them, allowing his expression to register a slow and bitterly amused resignation, the barest curl of his lip, but not much else – he'd be twice defeated if he revealed his inner shock and outrage. Gods but he had grossly underestimated Ibiki's strategic prowess and completely overestimated his own.

Hyūga Hubris, indeed.

"Now I understand why Shikaku worked so closely with you," Hiashi confessed, choosing the oblique path of acknowledging his opponent's victory without directly stating it.

Not that Ibiki seemed to care, his shadowed eyes remained void of any smugness. He wasn't interested in triumph. He wanted the truth. Seemed to be waiting for more of it. And, as the losing party, Hiashi felt obliged to grant it, though not before he satisfied his own curiosity.

Refolding his arms into the sleeves of his robe, Hiashi leaned back and regarded Ibiki for a long and thoughtful pause before asking, "Other than Tokuma, no one else is aware of Neji's chakra imprint. Would you deign to tell me how you knew?"

Quirking his lip, Ibiki lowered the report, sliding it away in the same motion as he eased back from the table, mirroring Hiashi's body language, granting some space. "I didn't say I knew. I said I suspected."

Hiashi blinked in amazement. "You called my bluff?"

Ibiki didn't answer.

"Allow me to reframe my question," Hiashi said. "What led you to suspect?"

Ibiki sat with the question and squinted warily across the table, a slow sigh steaming from his nose. He didn't have to answer, but he did. "I took your five-word footnote, and I cross-referenced it with all of Shikamaru's medical records dating back to the Kusa mission." He tipped his brow towards the documents spread between them. "After some investigation, I suspected that the foreign energy you'd discovered might've been related to the Kishō Tensei technique Neji performed. We still don't know much about that kinjutsu, or how Neji managed it. Either way, it wasn't a stretch to guess that it might've resulted in some entanglement or embedding of his energy. Trace evidence, I'd call it. Chakra imprint is the technical term, though that sounds more pseudo-spiritual than scientific. There. Does that satisfy your question?"

Not at all. The answer brought Hiashi no satisfaction whatsoever – though it eased his concern as to how Ibiki had come to his conclusions. No trust had been betrayed. It really was a case of excellent investigative skills and guesswork.

"Nothing about this satisfies me," Hiashi remarked tightly. "Though I imagine you must be feeling some measure of satisfaction. Well done, Morino."

"Well done?" Ibiki's brows shot up, a short laugh punching from his chest. "For what? Doing the tedious legwork your honesty could have spared me?" Snorting, he waved away the praise and smacked the back of a gloved hand over Hiashi's report. "I still haven't gained anything more than I had to begin with. All I know is Neji's chakra imprint is embedded in Shikamaru. Do I know what that means? No. Do I assume you'll tell me? Also, no. So really, all I have is a confirmed suspicion about you hiding the fact that this foreign energy belongs to Hyūga Neji."

All of that was true.

None of it was forgiving.

And hearing it spoken aloud, outside the privacy of Hiashi's own mind, gave new dimensions to the shock of the discovery. New dimensions to the doubt, too. It still felt so impossible in Hiashi's head, in his heart. Glossing over the pain to keep it from his face, he glanced away, reflecting on Ibiki's thoughts whilst collecting his own; the chaos of secrecy begging for order – begging for trust.

Attuned to the delicacy of the moment, Ibiki let out a short sigh, breaking the silence before Hiashi could. "So where does this leave us now? Back to withholding and not trusting one another?"

Hiashi gave a faint shake of his head, exhausted by the prospect. He met Ibiki's gaze directly. "Can I at least trust that you haven't shared your suspicions with anyone else?"

"That didn't seem prudent," Ibiki cocked a brow, gave a tight smile. "Or polite."

Hiashi might've scoffed, but his heart held a heaviness too strong for words. Instead, he took a long breath, lashes drifting down as he turned the key in that lockbox inside him and let the information finally flow. "I've been observing the chakra imprint for weeks now. It behaves strangely. While it is not a wholly animated force, neither is it inert. It is both separate from Shikamaru, yet integrated. Intact."

Impossible, is what he wanted to say.

For a scientist or medic, such an unusual discovery might've classed as exciting and groundbreaking. But for Hiashi, seeing a hint of his nephew's lifeforce beating like a second heart inside of Shikamaru had brought Hiashi nothing but confusion and pain – and maybe…beneath all that confusion and pain, a dangerously fragile hope.

An impossible hope.

"Integrated and intact," Ibiki repeated, perching his elbows on the armrests, gloved fingers interlocking once again. "Would you say this energy is sentient? Chakra imprints can work that way, or so I've been told."

Hiashi sighed, wishing he could define something as nebulous as consciousness in the same way he could detect and describe chakra. "I cannot answer that. I can only tell you what I see and sense. To my eyes, it is vital. Living. And it's acting as a stabilising force between the bijū and natural energy."

"Explain."

"The Kishō Tensei," Hiashi clarified, trying to formulate the best way to describe it given his own limited knowledge surrounding the forbidden technique. "From what I understand, the kinjutsu was created by one of Sunagakure's elders as a lifeforce transplant."

"Chiyo-sama," Ibiki supplied, pulling her data from his mental archive with startling speed, enumerating facts as if reading from a dossier. "A.k.a one of Suna's Honoured Siblings. Famed leader of Sunagakure's Puppet Brigade. Also, a distinguished medic-nin. Died performing the Kishō Tensei on Gaara. A life for a life."

Hiashi nodded. "Ordinarily. However, this doesn't account for a body that wasn't officially pronounced dead or altered by senjutsu. Which would've been the case with Shikamaru when Neji performed the kinjutsu – or rather, his version of it."

"His version of it? What are you say—" Ibiki stopped, processing, then held up a palm. "Wait. Walk me back – what do you mean not pronounced officially dead? Shikamaru ceased breathing and his heart stopped before—" Ibiki stalled mid-sentence, sat forward and sifted around the documents for Neji's mission report, tugging it from a file to examine the contents, scanning fast.

Hiashi waited.

Ibiki didn't keep him waiting long. "Shit," Morino breathed, tapping his finger down to run it along a neat line of Neji's penmanship. "Neji only reported cardiopulmonary death. No mention of brain death."

Which would have been vital in determining whether Shikamaru had been legitimately dead or still dying at the time the Kishō Tensei was performed. Neji's incomplete assessment was not typical of a Jōnin-level Hyūga. Especially one enrolled in the ANBU – facts which Ibiki thought prudent to point out in his usual straightforward manner.

"Hn. Neji ignored both Hyūga Jōnin and ANBU protocol. Didn't waste any time looking for cessation of all functions of the brain." Ibiki flicked a page, eyes fixed on the data as he read Shizune's accompanying notes, a rough chuckle breaking from his throat. "Ironic, isn't it? The most prized organ in Shikamaru's body and Neji didn't even spare it a second glance before performing a kinjutsu he hadn't even mastered. Guess it was enough for him that Shikamaru's heart stopped beating."

Hiashi's chest tightened, the same grim stitch pulling at his brows. He was aware of the significance playing behind that statement. For Neji not to have checked all vital markers indicated that he'd been distracted. Panicked. Probably emotional.

Scared.

A vision of a four-year-old child.

Curled over Hizashi's lifeless body.

That child hadn't checked either – had only cried.

Struggling to banish the image, Hiashi breathed against the tightening pain in his chest and blinked rapidly, moving back on topic. "Which brings us back to my point; Shikamaru may have been partially alive. Furthermore, he had corrupted chakra ravaging his system along with all the other foreign lifeforce energies he'd begun siphoning through his shadows – specifically the Nagu Butai and our own shinobi. At that point it's a wonder his immune system and tenketsu didn't collapse entirely."

Ibiki glanced up sharply from beneath his brow. "The Kusa mission debriefs were sealed. The Council let you read them?"

"Of course." Hiashi frowned at the dubious look. "I didn't steal into the shadows to retrieve them, Morino. How else to properly assess Shikamaru without full disclosure?"

Ibiki considered that, dropping Neji's report to pass his fingers across his mouth. "There's a lot we still don't fully understand about what Shuken did to Shikamaru's tenketsu," he admitted. "But if you read the debriefs, then you'll know Shikamaru had Akimichi chakra metabolising in his system at the time he started to lose control. He also had a dying ANBU operative's chakra imprint protecting him. It was a mess."

Hiashi frowned slightly, white eyes narrowing. ANBU operative? Other than Neji's handler, there'd been no mention of any other ANBU operatives in the debriefs.

Ibiki registered his slip, dark eyes flashing up again before Hiashi could speak. "Don't ask," he said.

"I see we're back to withholding," Hiashi returned archly.

Uncompromising, something closed off behind Ibiki's eyes, an unseen seal zipping across his scarred lips. "It's classified and inconsequential."

"I doubt the latter point."

"Understand this, I'll share with you whatever I'm at liberty to disclose. But that? No."

"Fine," Hiashi dismissed, though he'd ask Tokuma to scan Shikamaru again for any other chakra imprints they might've missed the first few times. "We've established that Shikamaru was not an ideal candidate for a lifeforce transplant at that time. He had too many different energies situated in his body. Neji attempting to substitute his life to compensate for all that? It wouldn't have worked."

"Like organ rejection," Ibiki muttered, nodding along, eyes back on transcripts and reports as he simultaneously read and listened, taking his own mental notes. "Shikamaru's body would have rejected Neji's lifeforce and…" he stopped, made a face. "All this quasi-medical jargon sounds so goddamned weird coming out of my mouth."

"Not exactly your wheelhouse, is it?" Hiashi said with a hint of stinging sarcasm, ignoring Ibiki's well-humoured chuckle. "The only way it would've been even remotely possible for Neji to perform Kishō Tensei on Shikamaru is if Neji had been a senjutsu master and medical expert."

"Which he wasn't."

"Which he wasn't," Hiashi agreed, before adding, "He was, however, a prodigy."

Ibiki stopped scanning the documents and glanced up like he'd misheard.

Hiashi met the odd look with a weak twist to his lips. "You don't have to feign surprise on my account, Ibiki. It's no surprise that Neji was a genius."

"I'm not surprised by the fact," Ibiki said. "I'm surprised you admitted it. Or feel the need to tell me what I already know. I worked with that kid. I worked with the ANBU who recruited him and the veteran who handled him. They were pissed when he declined. So was I."

For the first time since entering the room, Hiashi allowed his mask to slide, white-eyes widening slightly at the blunt confession and the strong respect playing behind it. Ibiki was not one to admit favour for candidates or comrades. The fact that he had, left Hiashi wordless. A strange and conflicting feeling wound through him; cold iron chains and a mess of red-hot strings, aching, pulling, dragging Neji's memory with it…

"If I wish to pursue ANBU, will you stop me?"

"No, I will not stop you. But I will not support you either."

But others had.

Even from the shadows and sidelines, others had done what Hiashi himself had not. Could not. Knowing this did not ease the heaviness in his heart, but it lent him a little more strength to bear it.

Clearing his throat, Hiashi reached to slide one palm along the white fold of his robe, making it look casual and dignified, pretending to smooth out the pale material, like that could somehow smooth out the pain tearing across his chest.

Ibiki wasn't fooled.

But neither was he foolish.

Sensing emotional exposure, he acted to spare Hiashi the embarrassment and discomfort, listing off his profiler routine on Neji to fill the silence. "Neji was a quick study. Intuitive. Resourceful. Resilient. He seemed capable of learning by observation alone, as much to his own credit as to the Byakugan's. One might've assumed he possessed a Sharingan." Ibiki left off here, waving a hand as if the rest were obvious and unnecessary to cite. "Clearly, his genius is not in question. What's in question is how his genius relates to what he did in Kusa."

Hiashi blinked slowly, his expression tempered back to cold steel, picking up the thread of Ibiki's words. "It relates to his ability to assimilate techniques, as well as alter them."

"Right…" Ibiki prompted, slanting Hiashi a flat look that screamed 'explain'.

Hiashi did, adding quietly, "You neglected to mention that Neji was also proficient in the 8 Gates techniques he observed under Gai-sensei. Add that knowledge to what he witnessed when Chiyo-sama performed the Kishō Tensei on Gaara-sama? This leads me to suspect that Neji altered the nature of the kinjutsu. Which also explains how he survived it."

A suspicious look flitted briefly across Ibiki's eyes. "He didn't survive it. Neji died. He needed to be revived."

"Just the fact that he could be revived after executing such an irreversible technique tells us he altered it. It also confirms Shikamaru was not clinically dead at the time Neji performed it." Hiashi watched Ibiki parse the information, continuing on, "Casting Kishō Tensei on the dying can save the target from death, though it will leave the caster depleted, exhausted, possibly at the threshold of death themselves."

"Which is what happened with Neji," Ibiki concluded, his eyes shifting to the side as he filed it all away with a grunt, flexing his fingers and massaging his wrists. "That makes sense. Gaara had been dead for quite some time when Chiyo performed the kinjutsu. There was no reviving her."

Hiashi nodded slowly. "Had Shikamaru been truly dead, Neij would never have survived performing it. Rather than transplant or trade his life, what Neji achieved with his actions seems to be a full-bodied chakra transfusion instead. He completely purged the natural and corrupt energies from Shikamaru's system."

Something clicked.

In Ibiki's mind.

In the joints of his hands.

And then those hands slammed down, jolting the entire table.

Shocked, Hiashi straightened sharply, his energy rising like hackles in response to the rising tension. This was most unexpected. "Ibiki?"

"Gods damn it," Ibiki growled, shoving to his feet, the chair legs scraping back in a violent screech as he pushed himself away from the reports and files, his ironclad aura denting with the force of his anger.

So sudden.

So reactive.

So unlike Ibiki.

"Ibiki…" Hiashi hedged again, with great caution.

Ibiki either didn't hear or didn't bother to respond. He'd vanished under the impenetrable hood of his own mind, his thought-glazed eyes swinging across the room towards a large corkboard nailed into one of the walls before he circled in the same direction, mouthing the words, "Chakra transfusion," repeatedly.

Sensing no immediate threat, Hiashi relaxed his energy and watched with guarded unease as Ibiki approached the board at a stalk. Notes, reports, strings of timelines, and various other visual aids were pinned to the board's surface. Halting before the assortment of data, Ibiki studied the tacked intel, shoulders stiff, spine a long iron line, his voice carrying the undercurrent of tension so evident in his body.

"Chakra transfusion. Why the hell didn't the medics catch that? There's no goddamned mention of this anywhere," Ibiki gritted out, snatching up a pen to scrawl some short-hand inscription on a blank index card clipped to a red-string timeline. "Shizune found no trace of corrupt energy in Shikamaru when they returned from the mission." Clicking the pen-lid back with his thumb, Ibiki twirled the marker in his gnarled fingers, growling a low note with his back still turned. "You're right. Neji must've created his own version of the kinjutsu to turn a transplant into a transfusion."

"It would appear so," Hiashi responded, still mindful of the aggression, watching Ibiki closely, waiting a few moments before offering up the most abnormal part of his findings. "It would also appear that the kinjutsu is still in effect."

Ibiki stopped twirling the pen. "What?"

His complete stillness carried the same frequency of shock as Hiashi's had at the time he'd discovered the chakra imprint. Plagued again by that heaviness in his heart, Hiashi dug deep for strength, most of which he'd channelled into masking his chakra and dislocating his mind from the growing pain in his body. Grimacing, he reached up a hand to knead his brow, grateful Ibiki's back remained turned.

"This is where it becomes complicated," Hiashi sighed, trying to package the information into a neat and precise delivery. "Neji's chakra imprint is still performing this transfusion routine. Operating almost as a filtration system. This filtration is one of the main reasons why Shikamaru's decline happened so slowly."

"Alright, that makes sense," Ibiki acknowledged, stepping closer to the corkboard, his leather-clad fingers skimming along the data, following a steep drop in one of the charts. "Only now that decline is speeding up."

"Well of course it is," Hiashi growled, catching his tone before dropping his hand from his throbbing brow, taking a slow breath in a futile attempt to ward off the short and stabbing pinpricks needling through his blood – not a good sign. "Such a small quantity of Neji's chakra imprint cannot hold out indefinitely against the sheer volume of natural energy Shikamaru is absorbing – especially when that energy is combining with the bijū chakra. That's why I need to investigate this further."

"For what purpose?" Ibiki muttered, scratching out something he'd written and shaking his head. "Ultimately, all this boils down to is seconds on the clock." He set the pen down, though he didn't turn. "All this is, is the ghost of Neji's energy buying us time."

Hiashi's head came up sharply at the underlying tone, at the hint of disappointment in it – or worse, dismissal. As if Ibiki had expected more. As if Neji's past sacrifice was of no consequence to Shikamaru's present survival, never mind the fact that Shikamaru would've been killed instantly had Neji's chakra imprint not activated to protect him.

Kami, even in death, you are still protecting him.

Grief, shot through with a deep red anger, lanced through Hiashi like a hot poker, scalding his sternum with a brand of burning resentment. One that might've scorched right through all his stoic ice, had Ibiki not followed up with his next words.

"It's not the solution we need," Ibiki said, his voice quieter, more reflective, his tension sloughing off in one long sigh. "But it's still something. It's given us time we wouldn't have otherwise had…and we have your nephew to thank for that."

"Tch!" Hiashi almost spat the sound, his chest a cradle of fire and ice, a chaotic alchemy made worse by the currents of pain forking through his body, his words steaming out through his teeth. "If Neji had survived the War, you'd have far more to thank him for."

Ibiki's head turned fast, his black gaze cutting over his shoulder and homing in on Hiashi through narrowed slits. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Eyes flashing, Hiashi's jaw fastened on a snarl. The frost in his white eyes glinted like bevelled glass, anger fogging up all the clarity that usually stood there, his legendary control fracturing under his body's mounting strain, nerve-endings filled with the burning of a thousand biting fire-ants, a thousand stinging bees.

"I should think it is obvious what I mean," he cut out, tongue sharpened by pain, his words slicing through the silence with the cold ring of steel. "Do you think I've spent weeks of secrecy chasing a dead end? There's much we know, but there's more that we don't. There's a reason no other Hyūga or medic-nin can perform the kinjutsu which Neji used to save Shikamaru's life."

Ibiki cocked a brow and his body turned ever-so-slightly. "Really now?" he crooned, his voice slipping slowly into the soft baiting tones of the artful interrogator, exacting, precise. "And how could you possibly know that for certain, Hiashi-sama? Unless, of course, you've tried to perform the kinjutsu yourself?"

The question blew a hole through Hiashi's glacier calm. He stiffened as if stabbed, cold dread bleeding through his anger. Such a dangerous question – and with his weak flash of emotion and brief loss of control, he'd given Ibiki cause to ask it.

Ibiki had him on trial with that question.

It demanded an answer.

Curse this chakra sickness.

This was why emotionalism was so utterly intolerable. It compromised everything. Just a few short words, spoken in a split-second of reactivity, could become a condemning life sentence. To admit that he'd attempted to save Shikamaru by replicating Neji's kinjutsu would doom Hiashi to treason by Hyūga law. As clan head, he was not at liberty to take such risks with his life. Regardless of how those risks would benefit the village. That's what Branch members were for. Hizashi's sacrifice was supposed to have cemented this realisation inside Hiashi. The Hyūga Elders would not only punish him for neglecting to remember it, but also persecute him for going against the clan's most basic mandate to never put the Main House at risk.

Gods, the irony.

For the sake of a Nara – the son of a man he'd once claimed to detest – Hyūga Hiashi had risked everything.

And not for the first time.

Because Hiashi had involved himself in the madness before. Back when he'd helped Inoichi and Chōza unleash and contain Shikaku's remaining alters. At the time, Hiashi had put himself in the direct line of an attack, risking his life to save Inoichi's.

Reckless.

Hiashi still carried the scar from where Shikaku's kage nui had pierced him, straight the way through his right shoulder, leaving behind a wound almost identical to the one Neji had sustained as a genin. Of course, Hiashi's injury hadn't been life-threatening…though he'd been vulnerable in other ways, allowing Neji to see and suture the bleeding flesh.

"Hiashi-sama, shall I call you a medic?"

"That won't be necessary. But seeing as you're here, you may assist me by suturing the wound on my back."

Moved by the memory, Hiashi's brow creased softly. Upon reflection, it made an achingly sad kind of sense that Neji had been the one to help stitch the scar. Neji remained the only Hyūga to have ever seen it. While Hiashi's father had known his son had suffered an injury, Hijikata hadn't ever seen the wound. Hadn't known how or why Hiashi had gotten it – and he hadn't asked.

But by all the Gods, if Hijikata ever learned the truth…

About the risks Hiashi had taken back then…

About the risks he was taking now…

The consequences flooded through Hiashi, rivers of ice down his taut spine. If word got out, it would cause an uproar on both sides of the clan, inviting a challenge from the Main House that would either lead to Hiashi being ousted by the elders, or overthrown by another highborn member keen to usurp him – Hyūga Hitaro, ever at the front of that back-stabbing line, would undoubtedly lead the charge.

It would put the stability of the clan at risk.

It would put Hiashi's daughters at risk.

It would break the Hyūga chain. And Hiashi would, to Hitaro's delight and his family's eternal devastation, be revealed as the weak link his father had always suspected him to be.

"So, it's true," Ibiki said, breaking into the silence, all baiting gone from his voice now that he'd gotten to the truth. "You've tried to perform Neji's kinjutsu yourself."

No longer a question. The moment for Hiashi to deny the claim had forever passed. Closing off his expression, Hiashi held the dark patient stare, wondering if Ibiki fully comprehended the power he'd hold over Hiashi, were the Hyūga Lord to admit the truth.

Not that Ibiki needed him to.

Ibiki already knew.

He'd need proof of course, irrefutable evidence that Hiashi had performed such a kinjutsu on Shikamaru. And of course, Ibiki wouldn't find any. Not even a fingerprint of energy tampering. Hiashi was nothing if not careful when it came to masking his movements and chakra in a world where eyes and ears were always upon him. But the simple fact that Ibiki knew the truth felt incriminating enough without any evidence required to support or prove it.

"Sonshite tokutore, Hiashi-sama."

Lose in order to win.

A sacrifice for an advantage.

Contemplating his old Go-sensei's words, Hiashi turned his head away on a slow sigh, a sound that confessed the truth as loud as any scream from T&I's accursed cells. His body played out its own torture, but even the pain from the chakra sickness dimmed in comparison to the sense of acute disgust he felt at being caught in yet another trap.

Like Shikaku before him, Ibiki risked rattling the Hyūga chain.

Hiashi's only play right now, until he could reinforce that chain, was to avoid putting further stress upon its links. That called for strategy; enduring the short-term loss to obtain the long-term gain. Another move that called for energy he wasn't sure he had.

Do not be weak.

Gazing across the room at a line of crumbling mortar, Hiashi marshalled what little strength remained, crafted the most neutral response he could manage, and forced himself to speak. "Even if I were to hypothetically admit to what you claim, it would make no difference at all. Shikamaru's tenketsu will not and would not survive any foreign energy interference. I'm not viable. Nor would I have been, had I ever attempted to perform such a kinjutsu."

Out the corner of his eye, he saw Ibiki frown.

"Not viable? I don't understand. How would your—" pausing, Ibiki broke off with hands raised, gave a faint smile to acknowledge the move Hiashi had made and played along. "Theoretically speaking, how would your energy be considered a foreign interference? You share Neji's blood."

Spoken in that candid way.

The direct play.

Not even meant as an attack, and yet it still hit like one. An endless war of attrition on Hiashi's mind.

It is not my mind that is weak…

No. Not normally. But with his body under invisible assault, he found that masking his chakra, numbing-out pain signals, and simultaneously defending himself against Ibiki's direct line of questioning was making it increasingly difficult to think straight.

Focus.

Loss of emotional control was one thing. But loss of physical control would put Hiashi completely at Ibiki's mercy. Hiashi could afford to lose pride. He could not afford to lose power. Hiding the impact of the chakra sickness was absolutely essential.

But Hiashi couldn't mask his chakra forever.

Not forever. For now.

White-eyes tensing, Hiashi steeled himself against another spasm of electric fire and biting ice, steadying his voice in the same exhausting beat. "Yes, I share Neji's blood. But not his chakra. Not his essence. That is as unique as a fingerprint. Even my brother, identical in every way, carried his own unique energy signature, despite us being cut from the same genetic cloth."

Ibiki grunted, his tone edging back into that grim-reaper humour. "Why do I sense this is going to take another pseudo-science, esoteric turn?"

"I'll try to keep it technical," Hiashi humoured, keeping Ibiki in his peripheral vision, his pale gaze still following the cracks in the mortar, feeling similar fissures breaking down along his chest even as his mind scrolled through the past few weeks. The things he'd seen. The things he'd done. "Anyone trying to infuse their chakra's lifeforce into Shikamaru's tenketsu would send his immune system into acute haemolytic shock. His overwhelmed tenketsu would identify the energy as invasive and attack it. But Neji's energy cannot be attacked as it is not considered invasive or alien to Shikamaru's system because—"

"Because it's already been integrated," Ibiki finished, the scuff of his boot sounding as he turned back towards the corkboard. "Probably since Kusa."

"Correct," Hiashi said, allowing himself a brief grimace of pain when Ibiki turned away. "It was situated inside of Shikamaru long before the Kyūbi's energy entered in."

"Hn. I'm surprised the Kyūbi's energy didn't destroy it."

Honestly, so was Hiashi, though he had no answer other than the one he gave. "For whatever reason, Neji's imprint holds enough strength to endure the other energies, just not enough power to eradicate them. As you said, it's buying us time."

Ibiki was quiet for a while, absorbed and sifting through all that he'd learned, his body held in complete stillness, like any sudden movement might disturb the arrangement coming together in his mind. Hiashi knew what that arrangement would be – but he would not be the one to speak it.

The silence built between them.

Filled with the buzzing of the low-wattage bulbs, the distant grumble of pipes through the walls. And all the while, in-between these intermittent sounds and the ongoing war inside his hurting body, Hiashi could sense the physical forming of Ibiki's question.

The impossible question.

The question Hiashi had denied answering even within the sanctity of his own mind.

And then Ibiki spoke.

Only he didn't ask the question. He answered it.

"If Neji were still alive, he could have performed the same kinjutsu as he did back in Kusa." Ibiki's pause held the gravity of a world. An impossible world. A world in which Neji had lived. "Shit. He could have saved Shikamaru's life."

The tragic truth.

Spoken aloud.

A caged bird released.

In that same instant, Hiashi's chakra faltered, the pins-and-needles rush hitting him in a violent flood, numbness and agony pouring through his limbs, white-hot fire slamming along one side of his body whilst a paralysing cold sheeted across the other.

The pain took his breath.

Stalled his heart.

Teeth grinding down on a shout, he braced his hands upon his thighs, tensing every screaming muscle against the aggressive burst of neuropathy, his throat working around a response to keep Ibiki from sensing his distress and turning to see it.

"Perhaps," Hiashi said, his voice tight with pain – just about disguised as unease. His chakra hummed beneath his skin, trying to coat and soothe the damaged nerves, whilst also trying to mask its activity, pulling his focus in three directions, his words slurring slightly. "This is why I need to seek answers elsewhere to confirm what I've found."

"And again, for what purpose?" Ibiki said, sounding distracted, his profile shadowed in deep frowning lines before he abandoned the corkboard and circled back towards the table, one hand raised to knead the lids of his tired eyes. "Even if this theory holds true, it makes no difference. Neji is gone."

"I'm aware!" Hiashi snarled – no, shouted.

That was all it took.

Ibiki froze halfway into drawing his chair back from the table. He did not speak. He did not have to. His quick look telegraphed his immediate caution – and then his absolute comprehension. Tuning into the chakra emanating from across the table, his eyes scanned Hiashi as if he possessed the dōjutsu to observe what played beneath the surface of the ashen skin.

He didn't, of course.

What he possessed instead, was far more dangerous. Far more damning to Hiashi than any dōjutsu. Ibiki now possessed the knowledge that Konoha's formidable Hyūga Lord was compromised. Was weak. Could be struck down at random and rendered powerless by the chakra sickness, unable to control his body, his tenketsu.

And just like that, it all came undone.

Disgusted, Hiashi let loose the breath he'd been holding and finally allowed the pain to break through his expression, shaking his head on a snarl. He had no strategy left with which to avoid this shame. No means to extricate himself. He was no longer caught between a straight or diagonal play, because Ibiki was no longer just within the walls. He'd stormed the entire castle. Besieged the board. Captured every one of Hiashi's cold white pieces.

The time for lies and oblique game-playing was over.

There was no further defence to be had. The vulnerability of Hiashi's condition granted Ibiki the power to do far worse to the Hyūga chain than Shikaku had done.

Shikaku had once held the power to rattle the chain.

Ibiki now held the power to break it.

It was a very charged and very defining moment. Ibiki held the moment. Held the power. Held the chain. He observed Hiashi in silence for what seemed like an age before he finally sank into his chair with a tired roll of his broad shoulders, staring out from beneath the hard ledge of his brow, shaking his head.

"You must be in agony," he said. Spoken without pity for Hiashi's pain or praise for the Hyūga's ability to conceal it, just blunt observation. "If your threshold is anything like your nephew's was, I shouldn't be surprised that you've held out this long."

Breathing a bitter laugh, Hiashi closed his eyes, leaning back stiffly. "It would appear, Ibiki, that you have me at my greatest disadvantage."

Ibiki considered this for a moment. "Not necessarily. What I've witnessed, including what I've heard, doesn't have to leave this room."

Hiashi wanted to believe him. Gave only a rueful smile instead, eyes still closed. "This puts you in a significant position of power over me, Ibiki. I can list on one hand the amount of people who share that position. I doubt you'd surrender such power on account of my dignity."

"Not your dignity," Ibiki agreed.

Hiashi's smile carved deeper, colder. "Of course. And what currency might buy your silence? More power?"

"The truth."

Hiashi opened his eyes. Stared straight into Ibiki's frank black orbs and matched him stare-for-stare. "I've given you the truth."

"The best lies are often crafted on the truth."

"You believe I'm lying?"

Ibiki's lips cut a quarter-inch smile. "In a System of Lies? I'm inclined to suspect it."

"I cannot cure you of your suspicion, Ibiki."

"No, but you can be honest about where you're planning to get your answers and tell me where you're going, Hiashi-sama."

"Stop with this false ignorance, Ibiki. You already know where I'm going."

"I still need to hear it."

Hiashi told him.

Ibiki closed his eyes for a second and nodded, then he crossed his arms, fingers drumming against his inner elbows. "You'll need a chūnin emissary. And medical pretext for the visit. That's the only way this can possibly work."

"That was my understanding."

"So, what do you need from me to make this happen?"

"A forged travel permit, it would seem. But more importantly, a diversion, or rather, a redirection." Hiashi had to stop for a moment, the pain criss-crossing his torso like the lashes of a whip. He breathed through it, then continued, "The Hokage requests that my efforts continue with Shikamaru. Dissuade her. Shift her focus onto Uchiha."

Ibiki frowned slightly, but his half-smile ruined the attempt at confusion. "Now why would I do that?"

Hiashi scowled, too worn to disguise his annoyance. "Enough games. You're already approaching Orochimaru. You'll need an inroad and I'm assuming Uchiha provides that."

Ibiki's half-smile stretched. "I should've recruited you into this new System."

"That would be pointless," Hiashi muttered, a caustic snort firing out. "I never left the first one, it would appear." He met Ibiki's questioning look with a weak shake of his head and left the rest unsaid. "Can you do what I ask?"

"Secure you a forged travel permit. Redirect the Hokage with what you need her to hear," Ibiki droned, tapping his fingers before he slid Hiashi a bored look, his deep tones touched by a trace of sarcasm. "Anything else you'd like to add to your tab?"

Aware of the rising cost, Hiashi nodded. "Ensure you tell her Hyūga eyes have failed. Tell her I've failed. It is not untrue at this point."

"Your eyes aren't the only ones available. She could demand another Hyūga's."

"Then they must be Tokuma's. No other clan member can be allowed to discover Neji's chakra imprint."

"And here I thought there was a conveyor belt of Hyūgas running into Shikamaru's ward."

"Branch House members only," Hiashi pointed out. "And I was always present at the time they scanned Shikamaru."

"Ah," Ibiki's head went back, understanding in his eyes. "You masked Neji's chakra imprint. Or swore them to silence. Though I'm guessing the former. You wouldn't risk exposure, or betrayal."

Hiashi didn't deny it, only repeated, "Tokuma's eyes only."

Ibiki weighed this, fingers ceasing their stiff tap. "Alright. I can get you your permit and run interference. But I will need something in return."

Hiashi's lips twitched. "Of course."

Request pending, Ibiki glanced at the medical reports scattered between them for quite some time, absorbed in thought before he gave a decisive nod. "Take Haruno Sakura with you to act as your emissary. She'll double-up nicely as a go-between with the medics. She has some measure of clearance regarding Shikamaru's condition – that includes her knowledge about the altered Kishō Tensei Neji performed on him. She's also racked up a few favours at that end of the map, should you need them…which you probably will if you're sniffing around this kinjutsu."

Fair and doable. Hiashi hummed. "Very well. And how does Sakura's removal from Konoha assist you?"

"Uchiha," Ibiki said and tipped his head to one side, a passing nod to Hiashi's earlier guess. "Like you said, I need an inroad to The Snake. With her gone it's one less do-gooder to worry about. She'll only interfere. I'd have suggested you take Naruto if I didn't need him here."

Before Hiashi could catch himself, his eyes narrowed at the mention of Naruto, though he held his tongue. He didn't have the energy to entertain another intrigue. Nor did he wish to acknowledge the tangled patch of thorns which snarled and twisted inside him whenever someone mentioned the young Jinchūriki.

Let it be.

Even if Hiashi had wanted to know more, Ibiki probably wouldn't have answered any further questions related to his own schemes.

And that was just as well.

Trust isn't without cost.

Hiashi had paid in proverbial blood throughout this entire exchange. He needed to rest, recover his energy. The pain had altered its pattern, coming in stabs now rather than waves. It would ease off shortly, allowing him at least a few hours respite in which to revise his plans and chart his next course of action.

"It seems we have an accord," Hiashi concluded, a faint shift of his robes signalling his readiness to rise. "For corroboration's sake, my clan believe I will be visiting my wife in Tsurukirimura. If asked, I trust you will support this. I'll need all the time you can grant me."

Ibiki's brows lifted with his shoulders, his tired shrug rolling into a sigh. He spread his hands. "I can grant you redirection, Hiashi-sama. I can even grant you corroboration. But I cannot grant you time."

No.

No one could.

— END FLASHBACK: HYŪGA NO DAIDŌJŌ | KONOHAGAKURE, HYŪGA COMPOUND, PRESENT –

"But I cannot grant you time."

Blinking slowly, Hiashi roused himself from the memory, the faintest prickle of tetany along his arms and legs situating him back in present time.

Ah yes, time.

While Ibiki had done as promised and redirected Tsunade's attention onto Sasuke, Nara Enchū had now seized the hourglass, wanting to steal what precious time remained. Hiashi felt that time slipping between the cracks of the silence holding from both ends of the table. United in their stillness, Enchū and Tsuno sat patiently, though the ANBU operative's mask remained turned toward Hiashi, the unseen eyes boring a hole through his stonewall.

They were waiting on his answer.

On his assistance.

Assistance that Hiashi had already lent in the past – was still lending, even now. Only Enchū did not know this. Could never know this. The old System of Lies had been supplanted by a new one, and Hiashi's part in both Systems could never be uncovered.

Never.

Despite the inconvenience of this meeting, it granted Hiashi the opportunity to distance himself from the Nara by refusing to personally assist. With his father as a key witness. Loyalties secured, this would grant some measure of security against a Hyūga coup d'état if nothing else – not that Hiashi suspected such betrayal from his own father…

And yet…

He could not complete the thought.

Banished it to shadow.

A shadow in which Shikaku's ghost always seemed to lurk, reminding Hiashi of the time Shikaku had dared compare the Hyūga to the Uchiha. A clan embroiled in treachery. Hiashi had called them a separate breed. But in truth, with the Hyūga's complicated and antiquated practices, including their shared ancient bloodline with the Uchiha, were the white-eyed ninja truly all that different from their red-eyed cousins? Vying for power, for control.

Nara Enchū's eyes seemed ask the same question. Daring Hiashi, as Shikaku had dared him years before, to have the courage to go against his clan.

To break the chain.

The Nara were patient by nature, but there was an unmistakeable persistence in Enchū's silence, as if he thought Hiashi might change his mind if waited out long enough.

Hiashi did not.

Could not.

"I cannot help you," Hiashi said at last.

Beside him, his father's lips curled with a smugness so artfully disguised it might have passed as a genuine smile. A smile to suggest there were no hard feelings. Indeed, no feelings at all, as far as Hijikata was concerned.

Ice in our veins, Hiashi thought. Let them believe it.

It served his secrecy. So did supporting his father. So Hiashi leaned into the Hyūga stonewall, presenting a united front with Hijikata that would both insulate him against suspicion from his clan, as well as prevent Nara Enchū and his ANBU aide from trying to scale that wall and extend this meeting.

Hiashi had no more time to spare.

Sensing the curtain start to close, Enchū breathed a quiet sigh. Taking a final sip of his tea, he lowered his head, eyes cast deep in shadow as he nodded a final time to Hiashi's unyielding answer before asking, "Will you permit me one last request?"

Hn. Persistent to the last.

Hiashi set his tea bowl down to grant his attention, though glanced briefly at the waning candles to signal his desire to conclude fast. His father, probably just to be contrary, took up his tea bowl in direct opposition and stared directly at their 'guests' – as though Hijikata's were the only Hyūga eyes and ears that mattered. For a fleeting moment, Hiashi wished that were so. He could have operated with more freedom.

Hn. Freedom.

Enchū spoke his request. "If you cannot assist directly, might I ask that you lend Hyūga eyes to examine the fūinjutsu and Saisei Kekkai we are devising to contain Shikamaru?"

Hijikata gave an eloquent snort. "To contain what he'll unleash," the elder corrected, not willing to credit a Nara with any measure of power – which, as far as anyone knew, was an unknown factor despite the measures being taken. "This sounds extreme. The Saisei Kekkai are built for bijū. This clandestine scaremongering is absurd. A Nara cannot possess such power."

Enchū's smile thinned, though his eyes retained their polite patience. "Precautionary measures, Hijikata-san. We do not yet know what the barrier may need to withstand."

And chances were, they would not know until it was upon them.

There are no records.

Morino Ibiki had been clear. No documented accounts of Shikaku's Incident existed. Initially, Hiashi had assumed this to be a lie. Assumed that the records had been sealed but lost during Pein's Invasion – many divisions had been decimated during that attack, including many of the ANBU archives. Although, some subterranean departments had survived.

ROOT.

Allegedly disbanded. Or perhaps subsisting somewhere. A dark and dormant seed, eking out a shady post-Danzō existence.

Could ROOT know more?

Could whatever remained of their division offer Konoha something ANBU intel couldn't in relation to Shikamaru? Hiashi wanted to ask, but with Hijikata present, he could not risk disclosing his knowledge of such things, or his interest – it hinted too much at his illicit involvement. Although, it wasn't just the risk of exposure that concerned Hiashi. Hijikata did not like anyone possessing powerful information that he himself did not. Not that Hiashi felt any sense of superiority in harbouring such intel. There was no power whatsoever to be gained from what he knew. On the contrary, he stood to lose everything. Felt only the weight of all the secrets he'd accumulated, rather than their worth. The more Hiashi learned, the heavier the weight became – so too the Hyūga chain.

He'd been careful to distance himself the first time around.

He hadn't wanted to know.

Hadn't wanted to look.

Until of course, he'd done more than know. More than look. He'd participated. He'd touched, with his chakra-charged hands, the edges of the conspiracy his brother had helped the Sandaime, the Council, and the old Ino-Shika-Cho unit conceal. By lending his assistance, Hiashi had pulled back the curtain of that Shinju Project smokescreen just enough to aid in its final closure – not because he'd wanted to help Shikaku conquer his past and destroy it, but because he'd wanted to help Neji secure his future in the ANBU and defy his fate.

Hizashi's fate…

A fate that had claimed Neji, regardless.

Beneath the frosted surface, that deep, deep pain crawled its routine path through the tired trenches in Hiashi's heart, as avidly as the chakra sickness through his tenketsu. A fortress under siege. He could feel the emotional strain, combined with the sickness, tunnelling through the compact ice and stone he'd tried to fill himself with ever since his conference with Ibiki.

He needed that ice and stone now.

And not for himself.

Enchū and Hijikata were still speaking, time was still wasting…

"The intent is not to fearmonger," Enchū was saying. "As I said, we're erring on the side of caution with Shikamaru."

"The side of catastrophe," Hijikata challenged yet again, sneering at one Nara then the other. "This is a waste of resources that ought to be directed at that Uchiha traitor."

"Regardless," Hiashi cut in smoothly, his cool tones sheeting across his father's ignorance as he stole and held Enchū's attention. "The Saisei Kekkai may offer a safeguard, but it is not a solution."

"It saves the village," Enchū said.

"It does not save Shikamaru," Hiashi returned, regretting the curt words the second they left his mouth.

His father's spine went taut.

So did the silence.

Across the table, Enchū regarded Hiashi with brows raised, a flicker of surprise registering in his dark eyes. Beside him, Tsuno's masked face had turned again in that quick birdlike tick, the eyeholes settling on Hiashi with the stillness of an apparition.

An uncomfortable pause held.

A pause in which Hiashi felt the roil of displeasure and disgust emanating from his father as if the iron chain binding Hiashi to eternal obedience had been yanked and wrapped about his throat, choking off any further comment.

Enchū eventually smiled, the turn of his lips both sad and weary. "No, Hiashi-sama, it does not save Shikamaru. The barrier and seals are a temporary measure to secure the village whilst we search for a way to save him. I hear there are operations underway."

Was there a baiting edge to those last words? Hiashi couldn't tell. Nor could he risk a fishing expedition. It was not his responsibility to uncover how much Nara Enchū did or did not know about the System of Lies. Although, Tsuno probably posed more of a threat regarding those lies – and the truths they protected.

That isn't my concern.

That was Ibiki's problem. Hiashi had his own to contend with. Fortunately, he'd suffered no loss tonight, manoeuvring this situation very differently than he had during his encounter with Ibiki.

Hn. Shikaku would have enjoyed this tedious gameplaying.

Indeed. The bastard would have rolled his laidback shoulders and laughed that smoke-and-gravel chuckle at the sheer irony of it all. Reflecting upon that laugh, and all the missed opportunities to have shared in Shikaku's amusement rather than shut it off with aggression, Hiashi's gaze touched on Enchū's…and it pained him to realise that the eyes staring back at him across the table might have been different and familiar – if only Shikaku had lived.

If only.

Something shifted in Hiashi's eyes, a drift of light behind the clouded ice. "I will lend Tokuma to examine the integrity of these seals," he said at last, ignoring his father's sidelong glare. "His eyes are among the sharpest. They'll serve you well."

Enchū dipped into a half-bow. "I appreciate your assistance, Hiashi-sama, despite your absence from the proceedings."

Refusing to be manipulated into disclosing his own agenda, Hiashi almost made a diagonal move before he played straight, offering further assistance that required no direct participation. "I would recommend that Tenten be present to verify any routine checks. Her fūinjutsu expertise will prove useful."

An advantage offered.

Nothing lost.

Enchū appeared pleased.

To subdue the enemy without fighting.

If only he'd employed this method years ago.

Bracing his palms upon his thighs, Hiashi offered a short nod, ready to rise and exit this cage of insufferable decorum. "Forgive my candour, Enchū-san, but I must retire. Now, I trust there's nothing else."

He didn't phrase it as a question.

Taking the polite but pointed cue, Enchū bowed his head. "My thanks, Hiashi-sama. For your hospitality and your assistance. I shall take no further liberty in occupying your time."

Enchū lifted to his feet with Tsuno rising close behind.

Hiashi watched them leave, his gaze tracking the ANBU operative when Tsuno fell into a smooth rolling step just behind the Nara elder, shadowing Enchū's path towards the exit. Bowing a final time, Enchū took up a broad oiled wagasa to protect from the downpour. He waited for Tsuno to pull aside the delicate shoji and the amado shutters before the pair stepped into their shoes and vanished into the spectral mist beyond.

There and gone.

The crash of the rain shattering off the polished veranda terminated abruptly when the panels slid shut once more, leaving the hall filled with the muted drum of the storm beating down upon the Hyūga bastion of tile and timber.

Arashi o yobu: to call forth a storm, Hiashi thought, doubt and conviction building like slow-gathering clouds on the periphery of his mind.

High above the daidōjō, the base gurgle of thunder rumbled through the rafters and down through the pillars. In its deep belly echo, the quiet of the candlelit hall broke on the sharp clack of Hijikata's tea bowl, drawing Hiashi's focus back from its inward churn. Back to the tension rising cold and ghost-like between them – another presence, lingering on the threshold of the moment.

A ghost perhaps.

Hizashi.

Neji.

"I assume you are still leaving for Tsurukirimura," Hijikata said, his tongue a subtle knife, so delicately honed, a razor's edge of censure beneath the false note of idle conversation. "I would be remiss, as both your father and your forebearer, not to question your timing – or indeed, your motivation – for this sudden sojourn. Especially when you are leaving your children behind. You pick an interesting time to rekindle the flame between you and Hayami."

No suffix.

No respect.

Another subtle dig – at the mother of Hiashi's children, no less.

And then, Hijikata twisted the blade. "I suppose it's only natural. Your stress is palpable, Hiashi. The Hokage has demanded much of you regarding this Nara problem. Add to that the strain of ruling during a time of domestic unrest? The pressure is great. It's understandable you would seek relief. Though, if it is a woman you require to alleviate the strain, that can always be provided."

Pressing his eyes shut, Hiashi's jaw hardened, the hot-and-cold tingling in his blood warning him against reaction or response. Instead, he rose in a swift fluid motion, focused now on masking his chakra, drawing his silence around him like a shield.

Sensing the shield, Hijikata's knife became a smile, sheathed in thin lips, just a glimmer of teeth as he gave a silent laugh. "Come now, Hiashi. Unlike Hizashi, yours was a marriage of political convenience with the Taketori. You would not be the first Hyūga Lord to take a mistress."

No, and it sickened him to recall how he knew this.

Like bile rising, a sour vision of crimson silk upon the floors of his mother's room…the kimono's delicate sleeves spread like a butterfly display, the silk wings fanning out…atop which a violet-haired woman with a powdered face and painted ruby lips lay twisting and writhing like a snared cat…thrashing beneath his father's odd and angry movements with such violence Hiashi's young mind had thought her to be dying…his father a murderer, a mad man, because a man should never strike a woman…and his father's body slapped and pounded like a fist…but this woman held him to her…with trembling thighs and clawing arms…she pulled his violence against her and into her…her milk-white skin bejewelled with glowing moisture…Hyūga Hijikata's broad muscular back limned with sweat and corrugated power in the candlelight…skin ribboned in scratches…shining and straining with every rippling shift of his hips, a great hacking in his thrusts…as if he were hitting her without hurting her…she made odd sounds…but they were not screams or sobs…they were soft and strange and short…her red nails clawing red rain down Hijikata's shoulderblades…his callused fingers locked about her delicate swan neck…arched back…back like her eyes…two pale blue stones…clouding over…rolling up and across to land upon the crouching child frozen in the gap between the fusuma screens…a child looking for his sick mother…a child who stared at this scene but did not comprehend, did not really see…as the woman too, stared back and did not see, a great distance in her gaze…expression unchanged as she looked into Hiashi's young and frightened eyes…her own as still and old as time…time unbroken…even as Hijikata moved endlessly upon her like the sea and she shook and swelled, and sighed and—

"—many skilled courtesans known for their artistry as well as their discretion," Hijikata was saying.

Hiashi jolted back to the moment, revulsion burning in his throat. In his eyes. "I will not hear another word," he uttered on a near-snarl, making to turn away, his tone serving as loud as any shout. "You will not insult her. I will not allow it."

"Insult? What insult have I dealt Hayami that she did not deal you first?" Hijikata defended, daring to appear wounded on behalf of his son, his stern upturned face cast in pulses of gold from the candlelight. "Bearing you no sons was a matter of destiny. Bemoaning her lot and absconding her duties as your wife, however, was entirely a matter of choice."

Too deep, this cut.

It drew more than blood.

It drew memory.

"ENOUGH!" Hiashi exploded, rounding on his father, the swirl of his robes and the sharp turn of his body extinguishing the nearby flames, casting the elder in semi-darkness – and gods help him, but Hiashi wished, for one blind and hateful second, that this darkness was not his shadow, but a shroud thrown across his father's cold and accursed corpse!

Curse you, he snarled, shouted, screamed – and all in silence.

But the intent must have carried.

In his energy.

In his eyes.

Because Hijikata, for just one fleeting moment, froze in a way he never had before his son, struck with a look so foreign to his harsh patrician face. It wasn't as strong as fear, but it held an acute acknowledgement of danger, of threat. The threat of the obedient son raising his voice and an unseen hand against his elder, his Lord, his chain-holding sire.

Only in that moment, Hiashi would've raised more than his voice.

More than his hand.

He'd have raised the Branch House dead to cast their unforgiving judgment.

Or maybe he'd have raised his mother's ghost to—

"CURSE YOU! Curse you, Hiji…oh gods, curse you…curse you…"

Stunned, Hiashi's eyes flared wide open on the memory of his mother's dying words, the breath flooding out of him even as every other part of him closed off in shock, leaving him still, and numb, and wordless.

Above, the thunder curdled, black and roiling.

Below, Hijikata stared, pale and still.

The great hall felt abruptly airless.

Lungs burning, Hiashi swallowed hard, caught in a wild and wretched confusion, his expression slowly twisting as he recognised the horrible coldness in his heart as an extension of the bitter, blue-lipped whisper of his mother's trembling words…

"Curse you…curse you…"

…her damning deathbed chant, it's bane forever frozen in the ice-white eyes gazing up at him now.

"Curse you."

Was this the chant, the cry, the incantation, handed down by Hyūga wives and mothers? Had those words lived behind the sad and pretty lips of Hiashi's own wife as she'd languished in the Hyūga Compound, her spirit diminishing before his eyes, as his own mother's had begun to diminish? He could still see the tears holding in Hayami's dark purple eyes, the colour of akebi fruit, the sweetness turning sour.

"Hiashi-dono, do not send me away. Do not keep me from our daughters. From you."

Oh, but Hiashi had. Stricken at the thought of blue-lips and dying curses, Hiashi had buried his fear and brandished his father's heartless fury instead. Shamed by his wife's inability to do her duty and ice-over her pain as his mother had done, Hiashi had sent Hayami back to her village on account of sickness.

A sickness Hiashi had seen before…

In his mother…

In his grandmother…

They'd lasted longer. But Hayami? With her gentleness of spirit? So willing to serve but so unable to sacrifice. Her tender heart strangled by the Hyūga's iron chain Hiashi could not break. Would not break. And so, he'd broken Hayami's heart instead. Sent her away. Separating her from their daughters and denying her divorce. Hayami saw her children four times a year. Seasonal visits Hiashi took with the girls to Tsurukirimura. He would permit no more than this, lest the gentleness of Hayami's spirit somehow compromise and weaken their children…as it had almost done to Hiashi…

"When will mother come home with us?"

Hanabi still asked after every visit to Tsurukirimura. Hinata had stopped asking a long time ago. Hinata, who looked so much like her mother, who was so much like her mother. She had her mother's blue-black hair, the purple-tint of her mother's eyes, her Byakugan more lavender than white…and when she looked at him, Hiashi saw the soul of Takatori Hayami peering out at him. The separation from her mother hadn't spared Hinata the inheritance of Hayami's gentle spirit. A spirit no more suited to inherit the Hyūga seat of power than it was to inherit the chains which crowned it.

Hijikata stirred at last.

Moving from the well of shadow in which he'd frozen, Hijikata unfolded himself to stand and raised a stiff and pointing hand toward Hiashi, the look in his eyes hardening into burning indignation. "I would counsel you to choose your next words very carefully, my son."

Hiashi had no words to give.

His mouth felt parched, the anger hot as embers in his throat. Composing himself, he pulled a slow breath through his nose and straightened away from the finger thrust toward him, a single backward step, turning his gaze away.

Shadows and joss-smoke played across the air, carrying the same phantom chill as his father's voice when Hijikata spoke again. "The War dealt you two bitter blows, Hiashi." He did not name those blows. He did not have to. Brother. Nephew. "It has weakened your spirit. You hide it well, but my eyes are always upon you. They were upon you in your mother's womb and have been ever since. They've never stopped watching you – nor shall they ever."

From any other father, that might've been spoken as comfort, rather than a threat.

"And mine are not the only eyes," Hijikata added, his voice dropping lower, conscious of eavesdroppers. "And many find the depth of your involvement with the Nara Shikamaru situation to be objectionable in the extreme."

My depth of involvement, Hiashi thought bitterly, if only they knew.

"In the extreme?" Hiashi echoed flatly, glad for the smoky darkness standing between them now, it afforded him some measure of privacy as he struggled to regain his lost control, his mouth twisting in derision. "What baseless objections."

"They are not baseless, Hiashi. These past few weeks you've spent cloistered away with the young Nara when you should have been looking to your clan. Neji's death has destabilised the Branch House. We are at risk of infighting. Your duties are becoming too divided bet—"

"I have a duty to this village as well as to this clan," Hiashi cut in, his face still turned away. "This situation with Nara Shikamaru is a growing threat to the village. By extension, it is a threat to our clan. What would you have me do? Ignore direct orders from the Hokage?"

"I'd have you exercise great caution moving forwards," Hijikata urged sharply, his voice falling quieter with his next words. "Given the slightest excuse or provocation, Hitaro would petition the elders to have you impeached, or worse, deposed – you know what that means."

Blood. Trial by combat to settle the dispute. Normally, that wouldn't have concerned Hiashi in the slightest. He might've inherited his title based on nepotism, but he'd secured it based entirely on merit. He was swifter, sharper, and stronger than the other highborn members and that included Hitaro. Hiashi had always classed in a far more elite tier.

Normally…

But now?

With the chakra sickness?

Hitaro had healed. Hiashi hadn't. And while he continued to do his utmost to mask his ravaged tenketsu and disguise the neuropathic damage to his system, this cost him great stores of chakra. And that wasn't even counting the energy he'd been expending trying to form a kinjutsu effective enough to at least stabilise Shikamaru long enough for someone else to save him.

Shikaku. I will not allow your child to die.

Hiashi had sworn it into the silence of Shikamaru's room; the only place without eyes and ears. Had anyone heard and relayed this oath to the clan, the Hyūga elders would do more than object to it. The outrage would be unimaginable if the depth of Hiashi's involvement got out.

It won't.

He had to believe that. Hiashi trusted Tokuma. He had no choice but to trust Ibiki. Outside of those two, no one else knew the risks that he'd taken. But then…

Kabe ni mimi ari shōji ni me: The walls have ears; the doors have eyes.

Had ANBU been listening within those walls? Watching through cracks in concealed doors? He trusted ANBU no more than he'd trusted ROOT.

"Hiashi," Hijikata pressed into his space, into his thoughts. "Are you listening to me?"

"Yes," Hiashi breathed, blinking slow.

Needing space, he stepped away from the suffocating pall of his father's presence, took up an ornate brass candlesnuffer and crossed the hall to begin extinguishing the remaining flames, one-by-one, his voice carrying. "Hitaro is easily provoked. He is just as easily subdued. The last time he crossed me, I was generous to spare his life. Rest assured, if the War has weakened anything in my spirit, it is my tolerance for betrayal."

"Then you might wish to demonstrate this," Hijikata admonished, the tap of his ivory cane sounding out. "Hitaro believes there are others qualified to replace you. Let me be clear when I say your daughters were not amongst those named."

"Hn. Hitaro would instate himself, if given the power to do so," Hiashi replied, forcing his words to indifference, standing tall in the ink-black shadows as he left a single flame to burn. "As it stands, he does not possess that power."

"A display of your power is what's needed, Hiashi," Hijikata reiterated, his voice floating disembodied in the surrounding darkness, though the steady rap of his cane signalled his closeness as he approached. "What is not needed, nor understood, is your absurd decision to take this sudden absence without leave, abandoning your responsibilities to this clan to go dally with your Taketori in-laws."

Absence without leave…

Hiashi marvelled at the ability of those words to reduce his role as clan leader to little more than a token figurehead. A mouthpiece for the Main House. A puppet king on a paper throne. Answerable to authorities far more demanding of his obedience than his own Hokage. He never remembered his father having ruled on his knees.

Was I simply blind to it?

Probably. As a boy, Hiashi had always looked up to his father. From the vantage point of a child, perhaps he hadn't noticed whether his father had been kneeling or standing. Hijikata had always seemed so much larger than any chains designed to rein in his power. Or completely restrain it. Was that the true purpose of the chain? Not to secure tradition, but to subdue tyranny? The fact that the Branch House existed seemed tyrannical enough…and that was with the chains in place. If removed, what atrocity might be unleashed? Could any Main House Hyūga ever be trusted with unfettered power? Without those chains, how much worse might it be?

Or how much better? Challenged that faint and rusted voice that had swift become his conscience, the tones lost in smoke and shadow and line-of-duty sacrifice.

How much better might it be…?

For Hyūga brothers and sisters and cousins…

For Hyūga wives and mothers and grandmothers…

For any of those women who'd ever whispered: "Curse you…curse you…"

Eyes churning storm-like, Hiashi stared at the single flame he had not snuffed, watching it twist and dance, its blazing filament reflected within his own eyes, which remained averted from his father. Keeping his back to his sire was dangerous, but revealing the storm in his eyes, was far more so.

It took him a moment to calm that storm.

To contain it.

And then he turned, put his back to the flame and sought his father's lurking form until their gazes caught and held. Two immoveable forces. Because despite his diminished stature and advanced years, Hijikata's intrinsic energy remained both strong and steadfast in the face of Hiashi's own formidable aura, like two great tides threatening to converge.

Of course, they never did.

Hiashi would always yield; withdraw his energy at the very last second, moments before the waves could impact, leaving both father and son regarding each other with the wariness of strangers – wondering what might happen should they ever truly collide.

The chain would break.

The clan would fall.

The world, unravel.

But then, the world already had.

Mugen Tsukuyomi…

A ghost life, a ghost longing. Hidden within his robe's sleeves, Hiashi's fingers tightened on the corded muscles of his forearms, blunt nails digging in. He held fast against the surge of false and devastating memories, felt them filling up the space between the two great Hyūga waves, waves larger than Main House and Branch House, waves that could never be allowed to collide.

Sire. Scion.

Father. Son.

Blood cut with water, or water cut with blood.

Staring across at his father, Hiashi no longer knew.

"Curse you…curse you…"

Oh, his mother had. Truly she had for there to be such a vast and uncrossable ocean standing between the sole surviving parent and the sole surviving son. An ocean as deep as it was wide. Like the hole in Hiashi's heart…and maybe in Hijikata's too, if he'd ever possessed one.

Caught within the memory of his mother's curse, Hiashi's face showed nothing of his conflict, of his pain, his deep tones rolling out as flat and smooth as stone, "Your disapproval, as always, otousama, is noted."

An often-quoted line. The strategic use of the honorary 'father' to lessen the disrespect shown by refusing to agree, whilst simultaneously avoiding an argument. A frontier of empty words. A weak strip of land that ran between the unmet waves, skimming just above the surface of the ocean that divided them, a strip so thin it was barely an edge.

Hijikata regarded Hiashi from that edge…

And if he sensed the storm within his son, he did not speak of it.

But when at last he did speak, there was something different in his voice.

"Be careful, my son," Hijikata whispered in a voice Hiashi scarcely recognised. This time there was no detectable threat in what was said, just a great tightness pulling at his words, at his face. "You are not the only child I watched within your mother's womb. I pray you don't become the only child I watch entombed within her grave."

Unlike Hizashi. Entombed somewhere in Kumogakure. Buried in foreign soil. Just like their mother, in the end. And to think, Hiashi had once gazed upon the gentle countenance of the Kwan Yin statue, trying to divine his mother's features in the time-worn stone…

"Curse you…curse you…"

Now she was a wraith, stuck in the corner of Hiashi's vision, her blue-lipped cry coiling up with the joss sticks' perfumed smoke, the incense strung so thick about the darkened hall that ghosts seemed to form and disband within the spectral mists, whispering and weeping between the worlds.

"Curse you. Curse you."

Hiashi wondered if his father still heard those words. Perhaps he'd grown deaf to the mournful litany, dead to the sense of loss Hiashi still felt haunting the daidōjō and the Compound beyond.

Even in death, Hiashi's mother stood between them.

So did Hizashi.

So did Neji.

And now, standing on the threshold of both worlds, so did Nara Shikamaru.

---

The moonflowers shone white in the starlight, powdery and soft in a low-hanging mist. Veiled this way, the flowers' phantom glow burned like a thousand festooned bulbs strung across the silvered meadow, their gentle heads nodding in the smooth night breeze. Fireflies drifted through the haze, tiny motes of gold, their luminous trails weaving gilt patterns in the gathering darkness.

Beautiful.

Familiar.

A scene captured from one of onii-chan's paintings; black-velvet fields stained with midnight hues; dark purple inks swirled into translucent wisps of aqueous silver-blue, the scent of paint supplanted by the sweet floral perfume of the dew-kissed grass.

There was no rain.

But Ino felt the dampness…

Cold on her clothes…

Hot on her cheeks…

Salt, Kiba called it, because 'tears' felt too tender on his tongue, even when he'd kiss those tears away, the taste of his own tenderness so bittersweet on Ino's lips.

Kiba…

Shivering, Ino sank deeper into the feathery blanket of silky thread grass, the whispering blades thin and soft as ink-strokes, a stippling of silver and shadow across the bare skin of her arms. It felt so real she might've been a carefree singing child again. Only she wasn't. Never could be again. That pigtailed kid didn't belong here. In this midnight realm with its hauntings and its memories, sitting on the knolls of the rolling meadow, eyes bright and twinkling with starlight. No, that kid was gone. She sat now, eyes empty of all those stars she used to wish on. A pale wilted flower, watching and waiting. Waiting as the colours darkened, deepened, dipped into the floaty, dislocated tinctures of a dream.

Above this dream, an opal moon rode high.

It should've burned red.

Red as the Rinne Sharingan of the Mugen Tsukuyomi.

Because this full-blown moon was just as false. This floating world, just as fake. An illusion. An imagining. A sad genjutsu of the heart. Yet preferable to the reality Ino had to face every day when conscious.

I don't want to go back.

The waking world held no promise, only pain. It blurred and bled into hot mascara streams every time she opened her eyes. The last time, there'd been a black vignette crowding in around her vision, her drug-pickled, alcohol-soaked brain struggling to focus, the added concussion dimming the lights in her head even as her gaze had tunnelled down into the tear-washed horror of Kiba laid out in the trauma ward…

"Get the hell out, Ino…GET OUT!"

…the glare of the medical lights bleaching his beautiful golden body into an ugly beaten slab on the gurney, sparing no bruise, no cut, no abrasion – his flesh a study in ruin because she'd let it all come crashing down, the smoking rubble of their relationship piling higher and higher and…

"Hate me. Hurt me. Don't leave me."

Leave like Asuma.

Leave like Daddy.

Leave like—

"Onii-chan," Ino gasped. She raised her hands to her face, child-like, cradling her pounding head, unable to reach inside to cradle her pounding heart. "I'm seeing you in my dreams…but…you don't speak to me…"

Could this be called a dream?

No.

She had not seen him. Kept her eyes covered. Waited to hear his voice – invited it with blind silence, ears open and straining for any sound of his approach. Heard only the Konoha night song chorus trilling all around: the distant bark and whistle of the Nara deer, falling beneath a stag's deep and eerie bellow; then closer, chittering away, the symphony of chirping crickets, underscored by the drone of cicadas; and somewhere in-between, a nightjar's churring call.

No rustle of fabric.

No swish through the silky grasses.

No foot's deliberate tread to let her know he was near.

When the grass whispered and parted around her, its susurrus belonged to the chill of a breeze, not to the movements of her childhood hero, her onii-chan in all but direct parental blood…

Blood…

Blood pounding…

A distant throb and pressure in her head, a dim reminder of the real-world concussion, calling her back to the waking world…breaking in through the dream-that-wasn't-quite-a-dream…

Not yet…not yet…

Ino sucked a breath, remembered how and why she'd sustained the hit. Remembered the hurt. The harsh words. The hard KO. Remembered a fight…a fist…a cold fire in bronze eyes…

"Damn. Daddy would be so proud."

Rocking forwards as if to be sick, Ino's fingers clawed against her scalp, a ragged sound catching in her throat.

No. No. No.

No hiding here. In the dreamworld, the subconscious ruled. It recorded, remembered, re-played, in such humiliating detail, everything her waking mind had dared not register at the time she'd been conscious – if one could call such a crazy, drug-wrecked state 'conscious'. It didn't matter, did it? She'd been conscious enough to chase trouble and crazy enough not to care or question what kind – so long as she could sleep off the regret in someone else's bed.

Genma's bed.

Oh no. Please no.

Mortified, Ino shook her head – not in denial, but in disgrace – grabbing fistfuls of long blonde strands. The shock of her actions streaked through her, clawed through her, the humiliation rising hot beneath the surface of her skin even as she paled and curled in on herself, knees pulled close to her chest.

Of course, it finally made sense.

Naoki's silence in her dreams…

And now, his total absence from them altogether…

"Is it because of Genma?" Ino gushed, disgusted with herself for having to even ask, doubly so, for expecting an answer.

Naoki had loved Genma.

Genma had loved Naoki.

And in her 'hiss and spit' madness, Ino had spat on that love as irreverently and mercilessly as she'd spat on Kiba's. Because her grief was a feral, fragile, fucked-up thing, and Kiba's love had somehow caged it, activating a rabid fight or flight mode because falling into his arms was not an option. If she fell into him, she'd fall apart. And he'd leave. Oh god, he'd leave.

"Hate me. Hurt me. Don't leave me."

He had every right to. Gods, she'd have left herself, if she could. Her sorrow had turned her savage. Not the wild kind Kiba loved and joked about, but the cruel kind. The foaming at the mouth kind. Inflicting hurt, to keep from feeling it. What a bitch. To think she'd laid herself out like a whore before Genma and dared compare herself to Naoki.

"Guess I hit too close to home, don't I?"

No. No she didn't. Because if she was anything like Naoki, she'd have left Kiba. Left him because she couldn't love him the way he deserved. Left the way Naoki had left Genma.

Genma.

He'd tried to help her – like Kiba, like Chōji – and she'd turned on him too, bypassed his jugular and gone straight for his heart.

"I know it's not a blond thing. Or a Yamanaka one."

"Careful."

She hadn't been careful. She'd been cruel. And crude. Completely out of her mind – and miles from her heart. The things she'd said…the things she'd done…or wanted to do…never mind the things she didn't remember saying…or doing…

Guilt whipsawed through her, a hiccup, a sob.

I'm so sorry, onii-chan…

Ino's heart twisted so hard it hurt to speak, but she forced the words out on a watery breath. "Gods, you must hate me…I know Kiba does…"

Because he'd finally snapped. He'd gone for her this time. Or at least he'd tried. She wished they'd let him. Let him hit her, hurt her, howl at her…so long as he didn't…

Leave.

Sadness and shame scalded down her cheeks. Sniffing, Ino swiped at the salty trails, blinked her matted lashes, and gazed through a film of tears at the shafts of wan and watery moonlight breaking through a drift of clouds, silver-brushed and threadbare across the white-washed moon.

"I keep coming here, hoping I'll hear you…" she went on, speaking in the tones of a mourner at a gravesite, hushed and forlorn. "I couldn't save you…or dad…"

Childish.

Illogical.

A therapist would tell her yes, she couldn't save them. No one could have. It wasn't her fault. She wasn't to blame. They'd said the same about Asuma. The standard grief-counselling spiel about the five stages. But there was nothing standard about the stages of Ino's grief. It had been different with Asuma. She'd had both her teammates. She'd had her father.

But now?

There was no climbing up or down the ladder of loss.

She was forever stuck at anger.

Such inconsolable anger.

Ino clutched at her neck, felt the rage and its feral wail clawing up her throat and swallowed it down the way she never could whilst awake and aware. Aware, sober, lucid. She never wanted to be aware. Of herself. Of the feral thing inside her. She wanted it to disappear. To drown. To die.

The drink shushed it.

The drugs smothered it.

And the dancing, degenerate, 'doing-everything-but-that' drama silenced it…

Until it didn't…

And she'd go crawling back to Kiba's and he'd smell the dirty damage all over her long before he saw her coming through the door, ready for the fight, the fury, and the 'fuck you' fallout.

They'd fight.

They'd fuck.

And then the cycle would repeat, and she'd go hunting for trouble all over again. Kakashi, maybe hunting too, just for something different, had found her, dragged her out of some seedy no-frills izakaya, dodged her wandering hands and redirected her to Genma, complete with canine chaperone. Only with Genma, she'd sunk to a new low. Because in Ino's fucked-up head, all roads had led to inevitable ruin and Genma wouldn't just be a hot ride through the wreckage, he'd be a roadmap too. Because he got it, didn't he? He was supposed to get it. Because like him, she hadn't chosen what she'd lost.

"And you think the rest of us did? Grow up."

The memory of those words slapped her.

Stunned her.

Shamed her all over again.

Gods, what the hell kind of person had she become?

"Damn. Daddy would be so proud."

Ino cried in silence for a long time. Or what felt like a long time. Hard to tell in this strange dreamworld. It felt so close to her old meditations, but not quite. For the past two months, the drugs and the drink had messed with her ability and willingness to meditate. Whenever she'd tried, the total quiet, the utter aloneness with herself had felt completely intolerable. The peace was gone, leaving behind a void that felt starless…lightless…like the waking world ever since—

Dad…

"He was ripped away," Ino picked up her words to Naoki as if she'd never stopped, as if she wasn't stopping every few seconds just to catch her breath and find the strength to finish. "And you…you slipped away…I'm slipping too…I know I don't deserve it…"

But please…

Naoki did not appear.

Please…

Neither did Asuma.

Please…

Neither did her father.

Silver bled to grey, and the world turned monochromatic, its colours washing out.

Help me…

A thousand moonflowers stilled and withered…and with them went the light…

Please…

Darkness came without answers or absolution.

Ino was alone…

…

…

…and then she was awake.

Colour and light were the first things that registered; swirls of purple, pink and green, kaleidoscopic blobs blooming and shrinking against her closed lids, fizzing in and out. Phosphenes, some slow-revving part of her medic-mind said, a dislocated and rational part that felt very far away…

Phosphenes…closed-eye hallucinations…

They were pretty.

The pain in her head, however, was not.

How did I get here?

Nausea turned an oily circle inside her. Grimacing, Ino cracked open her lids, saw total darkness – and panicked. She shot out a hand, felt a small sharp pain at the crook of her right elbow. A shrill beeping sounded somewhere beside her.

"Ino."

It took a second to orient the voice. The second she did, it took another few seconds to hide the flash of cold panic. "Chōji…" she croaked, hand still outstretched, frozen mid-search. "Where…?"

The loud creak of plastic, chair legs scraping, followed by the familiar heavy tread. A large warm hand clasped around her questing fingers, squeezed gently. "Hospital. It's okay. You're okay."

It was not okay.

She was not okay.

In no world, real or imagined, was anything about this okay.

Fingers limp in his grasp, Ino tried to rise only to be pressed gently back. Again, that pinprick pain at the crook of her elbow.

IV line?

She turned her head and the dull throb in her skull triggered an abrupt wave of dizziness. She frowned, and that hurt too, pulled at what must've been a bandage or some medical gauze taped to her brow. Then something tightened around her left upper arm, whirring and inflating. Blood pressure cuff?

"Don't move, yeah?" Chōji's voice sounded clogged. Sore.

Warmth pricked the backs of Ino's blind eyes. "I can't see," she croaked, pressing her spine into the stiff incline of the hospital bed. "I can't see…"

"Yeah, you can," Chōji whispered, the lightness in his voice so paper-thin she was grateful she couldn't see his face. "You're wearing a sleeping mask."

Ino stiffened in embarrassment, a flush cresting her throat. "Oh…"

The pressure eased about her arm and the BP cuff relaxed on a hiss, the surrounding equipment falling into routine blips and drones. Background noise. Drowned out by the shrill ringing in her ears. Groggy, she tried to draw her legs up, gasping at the paralysing ache radiating outwards from her right thigh. Deep pain. Bruised tissue. Pain like a haematoma.

What the hell?

It felt like someone had wailed on her leg with a mallet. Could picture the ugly contusions mottling the skin of her thigh, swollen and hot to the touch. Tempted to look, she reached up towards the eye mask with her free hand, felt the light pressure of the pulse oximeter clipped to her finger.

Chōji, still holding her other hand, squeezed lightly. "You want me to take the eye mask off?"

That meant seeing him. Freezing, Ino aborted the gesture immediately, fingers curling against her palm. She couldn't bear to face him – face any of it. His sweetness, his support.

She abruptly pulled her hands away; from him, from the mask. "No."

Sucking a slow breath, Chōji rolled with the rejection as if he'd taken this punch before – which he had, many times – bluffing a shaky little laugh. "Yeah. Okay. It's a good thing too. You don't wanna see your fancy gingham gown. You're practically a tablecloth."

That explained the stiff, starchy fabric, its sterile stink amplified by the sheets. Ino could feel the ties of the hospital gown scratching like gauze, everything sensitive and raw – but also a little floaty, a little buzzy, a weak high riding beneath the pain.

Sedated.

Which meant the feral grief was sleeping. Stolen away. Her anger, robbed. The loss of that anger left her feeling far more naked and vulnerable than she'd been in Genma's apartment. Flickers of memory stabbed through the dream-fog in her head, smoked-up images, degrading, shocking. Disgust crawled through her, a chemical bile burning its acid trail from stomach to throat.

She thought she might be sick.

It must've shown on her face.

Chōji leaned in, the familiar sweet-and-salty soy scent of yakitori tare sauce preceding him, his presence tangible, solid, warm, completely attuned to her – and that hurt so much more than the pain in her body.

"You feeling queasy?" he asked softly. "Need to puke?"

Ino tried to speak, coughed.

Chōji pulled away, returned with a stiff non-spill beaker, the kind of sippy-cup contraption they gave to babies, which he pressed into her hand. "Take little sips."

Humiliated, Ino did as told, swallowing a spoonful at a time. Normally she'd have hung her head and retreated behind the long drape of her bangs, but her hair had been pulled back, forcing her to twist and turn away. Not to preserve dignity – that was long gone – but to create distance. Retreating from Chōji's presence, snubbing his softness, his sweetness, creating as much space between them as possible – well, as much as the annoying sting in her arm would allow.

Definitely an IV line…

They'd hooked her up. Probably to the standard banana bag of fluids – along with a mild sedative. She didn't remember. Had a vague impression of the trauma ward hovering somewhere at the edges of her fogged-up brain. The memory of shouting, of being chemically restrained because she'd probably gone rabid-bitch feral before…

Before what…?

It hurt to think about before. Physically hurt. She couldn't recall much. Tried to walk her brain along the closest timeline but ended up stumbling further back than the trauma ward. Saw flashes of Kakashi. A silver dog. Genma. A crazy cat. Didn't remember how she'd gotten to the hospital, let alone this bed. Remembered wandering the hallways, stumbling into gurneys, furniture climbing her way…

I was…looking for someone…

The vestiges of the drug-dream plucked at the tangled strings in her mind, sad, forlorn notes – a wordless song…which threatened to pull far more tender cords inside her…cords…strings…IV lines…

Who was I…looking for…?

She'd spent so long avoiding people she knew; she couldn't imagine what the hell would have provoked her to go stumbling around the ICU in her messed-up state.

Who…did I…?

A scrape of metal against the bedrail startled her. Jumping, Ino felt a light weight settle on her lap and reached to touch the cold steel, feeling its curved kidney shape. Emesis basin. Well, at least she'd be puking her guts out in a bowl and not some seedy izakaya dive-bar toilet.

"Sakura said you might be sick," Chōji tiptoed into the silence, trying for casual and failing miserably. "You've got a grade three concussion." He broke off here for a moment and his hesitant tone hardened ever-so-slightly. "Do you remember how you got it?"

Ino stiffened at the tone – at the horrid feelings it provoked – an acute mix of humiliation and defensiveness. "That's personal health information," Ino snapped. "She shouldn't have told you that without my consent."

"We're family," he shot back. The first words out of his mouth that weren't strained or soft. They hit like a slap, uncaring of what it might trigger in her.

No…

Chōji wasn't uncaring. Wasn't cruel or unkind. She didn't need to see his face to know it's sad and tortured cast. She sketched his expression in her mind's eye, coloured by the pain in his voice. Maybe he hoped his words might reach her. If she'd been in possession of her anger, they've have pierced her feral grief like an arrow, triggering a nasty, hissing, fury.

We're family…

It shouldn't have hurt him to say it. And it shouldn't have hurt her to hear it. But it did. So, so much. Swallowing, Ino took a rattled breath, heard Chōji do the same.

Family…

Shikamaru's absence felt so acute in that moment. So…permanent. So unlike the stories she'd been telling herself about his sudden amputation from their lives. Temporary. Chakra sickness being 'troublesome'. Nothing serious. Lazy slacker immune system. Bastard isolating himself because Shikaku-ojisan was – no, no, no, la-la-la and fingers in her ears…and oh gods how it hit her now…the terror of everything she'd been avoiding regarding Shikamaru…an unbearable panic striking her unguarded heart like the onset of septic shock.

Shikamaru…

Her heart began to quiver, rabbit quick.

No. No. No.

Teeth grit, skin damp and clammy, Ino felt the quickening of her breath and the endless refrain of no, no, no, please, please, please blaring in her skull because she couldn't go south to her heart. That was where the anticipatory grief crouched, waiting, an ever-present monster in the shadows – and thanks to the sedatives in her system, she had no savage anger to subdue it, numb it. She felt it all. The monster biting, scratching, gnawing; a threat so overwhelming it almost ripped a keening sound from behind her clenched teeth.

Shikamaru…

She must've said his name.

"Ino," Chōji tried to console, his voice as gentle as the touch he'd bestowed earlier.

Shut up, she wanted to snarl, ignoring the aching need for comfort and the heartbreaking reality of how close that comfort might've been if she'd just reached out to Chōji now. Just reached out to Kiba before. Reached out to those who loved her, instead of strangers and substances and the savage anger inside her…

Please.

She heard Chōji take a short, scuffing step, inching his way like a man treading ice, worried the moment might crack beneath the weight all the sadness in the room, all the sadness in his voice. "Ino. Please. Tell me how to help you."

Help me.

"You can leave," she rasped, the words rattling like glass. "Leave…me alone…"

"I'm not going anywhere."

She didn't want to hear this. Couldn't hear this. Gulping deep breaths, Ino blinked hard and fast behind the eye mask, the quivering in her heart spreading like a virus. She began to shake, wanted to attack. Chōji's loyalty was as unbearable as Kiba's. Didn't they get it? Their love only reminded her of what she still had to lose.

Lose like…

Shikamaru…

Panic filled her lungs, expanded inside her, her deep heaving breaths turning shallow and quick. Chōji's comfort couldn't kill the fear. But the feral fucked-up thing inside her? It lived to kill the fear. Claws out, fangs bared, shredding fear to ribbons. The anger, unlike the fear, would not accept the possibly of losing Shikamaru.

No. No. No.

She needed the anger. Now. Right now. Needed its sharp bloody teeth. Teeth that snarled and snapped at the first threat of tenderness. Because gods knew, if her anger ever stopped snapping and biting, her mouth would hinge wide open on the fear, and she'd scream forever.

There could only be anger.

Anger or emptiness.

Some interfering nurse had robbed Ino of the anger. So only the emptiness remained. An emptiness she'd filled with pills and poisons, and places and people she didn't care if she lost because loving meant…

Please…

Meant…

Help me…

Meant…

Oh gods, don't leave me…

The emptiness filled, filled, filled and— heaving, Ino dropped the sippy-cup clenched in her hand, scrambled blindly for the basin, folded over, and emptied out her hot watery guts into the cold steel, choking and straining.

Chōji was beside her in an instant.

Touched her back.

Ino flinched away from him, gagging on a snarl, holding the basin to her like a child, rocking and gasping. "Get…away…"

"GET OUT!"

Kiba's voice, a percussive roar in her mind…

Ino retched again, a violent spasm in her gut, in her throat, stomach muscles contracting, bile flooding out as memories came flooding in: Kiba's swollen face, one slitted golden eye, its hateful gaze tearing through her like his clawed nails biting through the flesh of her arms…

Hate me. Hurt me. Don't leave me.

Her heart slammed against her heaving ribs, lungs on fire, a corrosive burn. She couldn't swallow, couldn't get air. She felt Chōji's hand descend again and lashed out, her elbow striking him at point-blank range. Heard him cough and stumble, heard the clatter of the chair, and kept her eyes squeezed shut behind the darkness of the eye mask as a thousand colours pulsed and swam and…

Get out. Get out. Get out.

…another vision struck her mind.

A frail hand rising as if to caress her cheek only to slap and scratch and shove. The strangled scream of "GET OUT!" exploding in Ino's head all over again – only the voice and the slapping hand were utterly female. The once soft tones, usually so refined and polished, were sandpaper raw, their wild shriek piercing the air between Ino's outstretched hand and her mother's curled-up shell of a body, rocking, and sobbing and wailing at the edge of the bed…Inoichi's name a dribbling cry from Yamanaka Sayuri's closing throat…

That same cry left Ino now…

But no names would shape, no words could form…

Bent-double, she didn't have the air. Had nothing left in her gut to expel, dry heaved over and over into the basin, her forearm raised like a baton between herself and Chōji when he pressed in again, trying to bring his arms around her…trying to comfort and console…trying to be the cornerstone of strength he'd always been in the past…

But he couldn't…

Because he wasn't…

Dad…

Gagging, Ino jerked her arm, felt the sharp rip of the IV line come loose, beat her fist in a weak thump against Chōji's chest, snarling her fingers into the fabric of his top, holding on as she folded again, coughed, spluttered, and spat into the basin…felt the wet burning trails slipping sore and stinging from beneath the eye mask…

But the anger wouldn't come to save her.

Again, Chōji tried to.

And again, Ino scratched and clawed in a wild animal attack. She would've turned to bite if her head wasn't bowed and her mouth wasn't occupied with opening and closing like a beached creature trying to breathe, slumped over the basin clutched in the crook of her other arm; still rocking and cradling all her stinking poison. Chōji might've been talking, might've been shouting. But Ino heard as much as she saw – nothing.

Nothing but the internal chaos.

The scream was building inside her now…

…the one she couldn't let out or it would never stop.

Chōji pulled away abruptly.

Exactly what she wanted.

Exactly what she didn't.

Terrified, Ino gagged and gasped and grabbed for him with clawing fingers, looking to hurt him as well as hold him. Caught hold of something else instead. No. Someone else. Lashing out, her broken nails scratched across what felt like the fibrous gauze of a bandage. One that stretched the entire length of a slender forearm.

"Ino."

The voice reached inside…

…and touched her.

A touch that was not a shake, a shove, or even a strike. It should've been all three. It was an entirely different trine.

Firm.

Female.

Familiar.

Family…

Stunned, Ino recoiled in shock, in shame, snatched back her hand and blindly pushed aside the stinking basin – there was nothing more to come up, she was empty, empty of everything but the building scream.

Please…

"Ino," the woman repeated. "Enough."

Trembling now, Ino shook her head, breaths sloughing in and out through her stinging salt-clogged nose, shaking all over as she wrapped her arms about her sticky heaving body and rocked like a child, rocked like her mother rocked at the edge of that big, lonely bed. Only unlike her mother, Ino held in the scream caught behind her grinding teeth. She would not, could not let it out.

Please.

The woman stepped closer. Ino caught the rich sweet-forest scent of tonka and tobacco leaf, woody and fragrant, the barest note of soft creamy cashmeran. So unlike the light, piney, floral smells of her mother…

Even the touch…

The brief feel of fingertips skimming her cheek…

So unlike her mother's stinging palm…

Please.

The eye mask was gently removed. Squeezing her lashes shut, Ino's lips pulled back over her clenched teeth, the grimace of pain lined by the tears that burned her cheeks and jaw and throat.

"Ino…"

Those firm female hands reached for her. Not to shake her, slap her, or stab her with a sedative. And again, that made no sense whatsoever because she deserved no better from any woman she loved, than any man – at least she could trust the women she loved to hit her, to hurt her in ways the men who loved her could not.

"Look at me," the woman commanded. "Look at me right now."

Oh, Ino ached at that voice – the warmth it held beneath the warning. And suddenly Ino was a tiny pigtailed child, covered in melted milk chocolate thick as mud, her small hands and face smeared in sweetness instead of all this burning salt. And Chōji was there. And Shikamaru was there. And they were laughing…and running…and there were no headstones…or broken hearts…or…

"Ino."

Ino's lashes flickered open, her vision so filled with tears that the face which bent to catch her red-rimmed gaze blurred and shimmered in a prism of shadow and light. And then Ino's eyes focused, froze…and filled all over again.

A sob broke in her throat.

The woman's bandaged arms opened but did not impose, remained outstretched and waiting.

"Come here," she called. "Come here to me."

And Ino did. She went like a battered child. Like a beaten animal. Her head down and her hands up, a high whine building in her throat like a howl even as the bandaged arms came down around her, pulling her flush against a tender bosom which heaved and shuddered with relief, a fierce whisper gushing out.

"There's our girl…there's our sweet girl…"

There's my baby girl.

Where'd my confident loudmouth go?

Tsubomi.

Something shattered.

Ino's heart…

…or maybe the anger protecting the child inside it.

The woman kissed her filthy hair, stroked her burning face, and it was over. A great cry rising in her throat, Ino buried her face against Nara Yoshino's chest, tore open her swollen mouth…

And screamed…

And screamed…

And screamed…

Until she could scream no more.

---

Stillness fell upon the shrine room. Unnatural, oppressive. Not the stillness that belonged to peace or prayer. It held a subtle shift, a peculiar static. The air, so serene just moments before, felt charged – like the calm before a growl of thunder.

Hiashi raised his head, eyes half-closed.

Through slitted lids, he observed the sacred space, his senses emerging slowly from their inward cave. Darkness swamped the small tatami room, broken only by the lambent glow of a single paper lamp. The delicate washi globe seemed to sit suspended on the black-velvet shadows like a matsuri sky-lantern designed to float on air.

Only the incense floated.

Purls of sandalwood smoke coiled from burning joss sticks and climbed along the dark cedar grain of an ornate hardwood altar. Its latticed doors were hand-carved with an intricate design of birds in flight, their feathers inlaid with moonstone while the lacquered shelf, glossy from polish, was engraved with wisps of abalone clouds, curling soft as brushstrokes. The incense bowl sat centre-stage while the rest of the shelf stretched bare to either side, void of the usual offerings of candles, food, and floral arrangements. Hiashi wanted no distraction from the altar's highest central space. A space normally reserved for a holy image, be it a sutra, painting, or statue of a god.

No god dwelled in the cabinet's gleaming alcove.

No sutra.

No scroll.

Instead, two memorial tablets hung. Slim and black, each one engraved in gold-leaf script. Two names inscribed upon the ebony wood.

Hyūga Hizashi.

Hyūga Neji.

Needing something more private than the public headstones, Hiashi had commissioned this altar, sparing no coin. He'd employed Hanegakure's finest carpenters to design and carve it, and Iwa's most talented artisans to fashion the complex crystal and abalone inlay. It was a masterpiece, a worthy memorial.

And yet…

Hiashi swung between reverence and disgust, depending on the depth of his grief on any given day – or any given night. Tonight, he gazed upon the memorial's exquisite majesty and saw another gilded cage. Just as grand and ornate as the Hyūga Compound, enclosing two names that didn't belong in this altar any more than their spirits belonged in the afterlife.

He almost slipped back into prayer…

But again, that subtle shift in the air.

The smoke tilted, slid, moved by an unseen breeze.

Turning his head, Hiashi came to alertness once more, body holding like a breath, senses questing beyond the thick blanket of shadows, beyond the fusama screen, and out into the daidōjō's echoing hall.

He waited, gathering his chakra.

Then he moved.

Fluid as melting ice, Hiashi flowed from utter stillness into seamless motion, rising from his kneel to slide back the fusuma and step into the great hall beyond, his bare feet soundless on the polished floors, eyes adjusting by degrees.

Here, the darkness held a physical presence.

Felt thicker, fuller, and far more charged than it had a few hours before. Blackness filled the daidōjō, so opaque it seemed painted on the air, its impenetrable depths undisturbed by the dim illumination of the shrine room. The lantern's glow could not penetrate the fusuma's screen.

For a long unbroken moment, Hiashi simply stood in the darkness.

Listening to it.

He blocked out the ambient sounds of the ebbing storm, still growling away above and beyond the dōjō's screens and shutters. His focus centred solely on the hall, on the mass of ink-black shadows. Attuning himself to the steady beats between the seconds, Hiashi sensed the faint vibrations of a chakra so masterfully masked that the emanations were only detectable to him because the unseen presence allowed it.

He could have used the Byakugan.

Instead, he fixed his unaided eyes on a point where the shadows seemed to thicken, pool, and spin. Layers of darkness turning in the slow swirl of a gathering whirlpool. And there, at the centre of this black and twisting vortex, both hiding as it revealed, the shadows slid and slipped like oil off the hard edges of an ebon figure without a face.

Hiashi recognised the mask.

And then, squinting into the gloom, he recognised the approaching man, remembered the gait of the tall sinewy body – suddenly so familiar in the way he moved, a gliding roll, smoke-like through the darkness.

At length Hiashi said, "You move like Shikaku did. I wonder, do you share his inclination to steal into my peace uninvited just to aggravate me?"

"If I'd wanted to steal in, Hiashi-sama, I would not have been detected," came the crushed-gravel reply. The tone held no arrogance. Indeed, it held no emotion at all.

All the same, Hiashi's eyes narrowed slightly. Though his vision had acclimatised somewhat, he struggled to pick out details, relying heavily on sound to orient the other ninja. "You underestimate my eyes."

"You did not use them. You still don't," Tsuno pointed out, and it was as if the shadows spoke, the breathy acoustics of the mask combining with the dimness of the hall to give his voice a floating wraithlike quality. "I relaxed my chakra, and you felt it. Few feel it. You did not need your eyes to detect me. That tells me more about your skill than your Byakugan ever could."

Hiashi made to speak, only to pause at the hiss-fizzle-rasp of a match being struck. A spark flared and flickered to life to the right side of the hall, a shadow hand lighting one of the tall, antiqued candle-stands, the flame pushing back the darkness with a soft amber glow.

Hiashi blinked slowly, glanced back. "This is why you masked your chakra when you accompanied Enchū-san. To keep Hyūga eyes from remembering your signature."

Candlelight played across the right side of Tsuno's body, sharpening all his contours whilst throwing his left side into deep, deep shadow. "Habit," he said.

Liar, Hiashi thought, shaking his head. "Give me reason to let this trespass slide."

Tsuno did. Reaching into his grey ANBU flak jacket, he procured a slim bamboo scroll case and offered it with both hands. It was an oddly gracious thing to do. Especially for an ANBU. While initially suspicious, Hiashi could detect no mock-deference in the gesture. No sentiment. It was simply respectful.

Loosening his frown, Hiashi reached with both hands to receive the case, noticing for the first time Tsuno's disfigured left hand. The ring finger was missing. Right down to the palm. The ANBU glove had been fashioned to cover the scar and accommodate his remaining thumb and three fingers.

There was a slight pause as Hiashi noted this, then he took the scroll case and recognised the small brass Leaf symbol affixed to the lid. Travel permit. Signed, sealed, and surreptitiously delivered. Just as Ibiki had promised.

Slotting the case into the folds of his robes, Hiashi's eyes flicked up. "You are part of Morino's System." It was not a question.

And what Tsuno offered in response, was not an answer.

"We look to the dead, when we cannot look to the living," Tsuno said, a complete non-sequitur. "That is a dangerous road."

Unsettled, Hiashi concealed his confusion and asked, "What do you mean?"

A slight uptick of the mask, the eyeholes fixed in a blinkless stare. "You could not do for Shikamaru what your brother did for Shikaku," Tsuno reminded, letting the statement linger before he continued the words Hiashi had uttered just a few short hours ago. "You said, no living Hyūga can."

Hiashi's breath stopped in his throat.

He knows about the chakra imprint, he thought, watching Tsuno closely, trying to interpret a feeling, an intention, some clue as to the ANBU's inner thoughts by energy alone. But as with most ANBU operatives, it was as if all emotionalism had been ripped out from the roots; and yet, Tsuno's words – no, his warning – about the dead and the dangerous road, was not without some sentiment. Or some opinion at the very least.

Drawing his head back, Hiashi forced his voice to smooth indifference, knowing Tsuno would detect any untoward nuance. "The dead are gone."

"Until they aren't," Tsuno countered, his voice flat and low, the right side of the mask glowing like a half-moon in the darkness. "When the dead are called to rise, they bring hell with them. You saw it."

The words rang like a death knell throughout the hall, and in the wake of their echo, an ominous chill slithered through Hiashi's veins, his gaze freezing in a blind stare as the inward memories flickered in his mind's eye.

Yes, Hiashi saw it.

And he saw it all again, as he did most nights.

His twin's animated corpse condemned to living perdition as they'd fought on that accursed battlefield. Brother against brother. The same cloth, torn down the middle. Hizashi's face ashen with ruin and regret, the undead skin pallid and cracked as peeling plaster, those pale Hyūga eyes corrupted by the signature black sclera of the Edo Tensei. And then, so shortly after, the Mugen Tsukuyomi twisting it all inside out in another grotesque perversion of the natural order. Hizashi alive. Hizashi unbranded. Hizashi as he'd never been in life, or death. Whole. Happy. Free.

The Edo Tensei had delivered an honest hell.

The Mugen Tsukuyomi had paraded a false Heaven.

No kinjutsu came without cost – only this time, the innocent had paid.

Hiashi swallowed roughly, the click of his throat audible in the silence.

On that sound, the moment shifted.

Without a further word, Tsuno turned on his heel, and the shadows rolled like the twirl of a matador's cloak, billowing upwards as his chakra began to thicken, the beginnings of the kage shunshin.

Blinking at the abrupt move, Hiashi broke from the memories, his white eyes seeking out the retreating figure in a blind drift. "Were you Neji's ANBU handler?" he rasped, the question cutting across the distance completely unplanned.

Tsuno halted mid-stride.

So did his jutsu.

The shadows froze about him in a dark tableau as he stopped, his back to Hiashi, shoulderblades taut as hackles. An animal scenting a trap. One foot in the steel jaws, one foot in a quick exit.

It could've gone either way.

Although, it seemed to go neither way.

Tsuno did not answer, but neither did he leave.

A dangerous tension hummed between them, almost aural in its quality, unseen currents thickening the air, as if a secret radio channel had been tapped, leaving Tsuno to determine the significance of the breach – reminding Hiashi once more about the walls' listening ears and the doors' watchful eyes.

At length, Tsuno spoke, his voice pitched low in his rusty throat. "Neji. I ran no operative by that name."

The response should've shut down the question. Rejected it completely. But Hiashi noted the significance of the last three words, and the deliberateness with which Tsuno had chosen them, leaning ever so slightly on the 'that'.

By 'that' name…

Of course.

Neji would have been given a callsign.

A whole other identity.

A whole other path.

Pondering that path, Hiashi watched the candlelight gild the taut ridges of Tsuno's left side, emblazoning the leanly corded muscles of his upper arm, where the ANBU tattoo burned red as a brand. A brand Neji might've borne, alongside the curse mark, in another life, in another world.

A world in which he'd survived.

"In the genjutsu," Hiashi let slip, his mind caught at the border of that false heaven they'd all fallen into, not fully conscious of the words he dared to utter until it was too late to take them back. "In that Tsukuyomi world…were you still ANBU?"

Cast like a stone into the blackest well.

The reaction was immediate.

The darkness rippled on an outward swell, causing the candleflame to quiver, shrink, then flare once more as the shadows broke upon its honeyed light and dissipated back into their deep and inky sea.

All the while, Tsuno did not move.

Not yet.

Only when the darkness settled back into complete stillness did the disfigured hand crab and twitch, twisting at the wrist ever-so-slightly, drawing the shadows inwards, tidal slow, as the sea retreats before a gross attack.

Grounding himself, Hiashi braced for violence.

But no black tsunami came.

No angry wave.

Not even a ripple.

Only Tsuno's words, edged and brittle, as if it ravaged his throat to speak them. "In all worlds, I am ANBU."

The answer rang hollow.

Empty of…so much.

Empty of truth. Of emotion. Of the shadow of Shikaku that Hiashi had hoped to find. Foolish. This was not Shikaku. And while Hiashi sensed no aggression emanating in the air between them, his question had foolishly invited it.

To speak of the Mugen Tsukuyomi was not permitted.

It was tantamount to kicking tripwires, not knowing what might detonate inside an individual's mind if the wrong string were touched. No brain that'd been caught in Madara's thrall was exempt from that explosive territory. Though, clearly, some minds were better geared to navigate it.

Minds like Tsuno's.

ANBU minds.

ANBU in all worlds, he'd said. Not Nara. Not son, father, husband, uncle, brother, lover, friend, or whoever or whatever else Tsuno might've been before he'd forfeited his former life and walked into the ANBU's world. A world that Hiashi had heard ex-operatives refer to as a world of "walls within walls and wheels within wheels". Walls and wheels that Tsuno saw in all the worlds he'd ever walk.

Or so he claimed.

Liar, Hiashi thought again, though this time, he felt no displeasure or distrust as he regarded the other ninja. No. He felt something infinitely more disturbing…something damaged, fragile, and rusty from disuse.

Empathy.

Truly, Hiashi's fate was not so different. Because even in that Tsukuyomi world, that heaven-holding-hell world, Hiashi had still chosen his chains. As much a cage as any black-ops world, given what it crushed within him. His spirit. His soul. A fair trade for his father's love. His mother's life. Hizashi and Neji's freedom. In that Infinite Dream, that absolute lie, Hiashi was the perfect unbroken link, the dyed-in-the-wool Hyūga heir. Dedicated to the clan, yet somehow able to accomplish a miracle so impossible to the Hyūgas' destiny it should've been obvious to his bewitched brain that it was all just a dream…

…all just a lie.

Because in the real world, Hiashi could never have been both the dutiful son and the devoted brother. In the real world, he could not have spared his brother nor saved his nephew any more than he could've spared his wife or saved his mother. Their destinies were changed in the Dream World, but his was not.

His destiny played out in all worlds too, it seemed.

Truly, not so different at all.

Drawing a slow breath, Hiashi's brows pulled together softly, the empathy he did not want still phasing through the chambers in his buried heart, unearthing questions he did not want to ask – and yet he carried on, compelled by some stubborn unnameable urge.

"If you are who I assume you to be, then you were with Neji in Kusa," Hiashi said, recalling the reports he'd read. "You would have seen first-hand the darkness Shikamaru unleashed."

"If I were who you assume me to be, then yes, I would have."

"Were you present when the same thing happened to Shikaku?"

Dead silence.

But the stillness cracked.

Tsuno turned a fraction, the left side of his mask waxing moon-like once more, a single eyehole coming into view. "No ANBU were present when Shikaku unleashed his darkness. Though many ANBU were present when your brother helped to contain it."

Whether those words were spoken tactically or truthfully was so hard to tell. Hiashi's brows knitted tighter at the mention of his twin. He took a slow indrawn breath.

"And you, specifically?" he pressed. "Were you there to help contain it?"

"Does it matter, Hiashi-sama?"

"Shikaku was your kin. Nara was in your blood, long before ANBU."

The mask did not move. Neither did the gaze which peered out from the eyehole's sunken depths. Hiashi could feel that stare upon him like a brand. But if there was any emotion to be found in Tsuno, those emotions ran deeper than the darkness in which he stood, a darkness that began to gyre and coil once more around his body, the shadows thickening in great cords. He seemed to be marshalling his chakra, for a kage shunshin exit or for some other purpose, Hiashi could not tell.

"Chi dake ga rekishi no sharin o ugokasu," Tsuno intoned, his gravel voice carving out the words in the deep-throated drone of a sutra.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history, Hiashi translated silently.

A trite response, and yet one to which Hiashi could still painfully and pitifully relate. He laughed despite himself, a bleak and bitter sound which rumbled up into the daidōjō's high concaved ceiling.

"If history is indeed a wheel, it seems destined to repeat," he added hoarsely, gazing up into the pitch-black rafters with a grim twist to his lips. "My brother and Neji. Shikaku and his son. Blood begets blood. Some destinies, it would appear, are damned long before they play out."

The masked face ticked again, sharper this time. Like Tsuno had caught something in those words, or perhaps in Hiashi's expression, that he could not let slide.

"Some destinies are damned," Tsuno seemed to agree, his voice falling lower, almost lost within the cold acoustics of the mask. "Others are chosen. Decided."

Hiashi considered this, wondering which of the two destinies had belonged to the man behind the mask. Surely that was who was speaking now. Even if it was just a shadow of that former man.

"And you?" Hiashi asked. "What was your destiny before the mask? Were you damned to it? Or did you choose it? Decide it?"

A rough breath, half-laugh, half-exhale, the black spiky ponytail tipping back as the masked face turned up towards the rafters, the unseen eyes staring heavenward into the same darkness Hiashi had contemplated just seconds ago.

"Both," Tsuno answered before adding, "Neither."

Hiashi frowned, not understanding – both the response or his strong need to comprehend it. Only knew that he wanted to. Had to. Something in his own destiny seemed to hinge on the answer, and yet he could not fathom how or why. He knew nothing of the road this man had travelled…and yet, this man knew something of the road Hiashi's mind had travelled a hundred times in the past few weeks.

"We look to the dead when we cannot look to the living. That is a dangerous road."

A road Hiashi was damned to walk?

Or a road he had decided to walk?

Both. Neither.

Hiashi's skin raised in a prickle of awareness. The awareness that Tsuno's words reflected so much of Hiashi's own inner world and conflict but revealed absolutely nothing of the ANBU's own. How like a Nara, always executing their scripts and schemes so masterfully from the shadows, concealing their movements all the while.

Shikaku had been the same, in many ways.

Even dead, the Nara's spirit had situated itself in Hiashi's mind. A voice of unwanted conscience that did nothing to alleviate his constant state of confliction. Disturbed by the thought, as much as the possibility that he was searching for Shikaku's shadow in this ANBU ghost, Hiashi's question still begged an answer.

Tsuno spoke before Hiashi could ask again, his voice quiet, almost contemplative.

"The storm has passed," the ANBU said.

Indeed, it had. And Hiashi hadn't even noticed, his mind stuck in a house of mirrors maze, his questions causing reflections and refractions at every turn; the kind of inside-out tricks Shikaku would've played to confound and infuriate him.

Not just for those reasons…

No. Because for all his troublesome meddling, Shikaku had wanted more for the Branch House; more than the ANBU's cult, more than the clan's cage. Yes, Shikaku had wanted more. And yes, Hiashi had hated him for that. Not because Shikaku was wrong about the Hyūga chain of oppression. But because Hiashi could not bring himself to break it. Was that loyalty, or lunacy? Fear, or fortitude? Courage to continue the age-old legacy, or cowardice not to defy it?

Both? Neither?

Those damning words entwined inside him; a serpent eating its own tail.

Staring across at the figure that was so familiar, yet so obviously foreign, Hiashi had to remind himself…

This man is not Shikaku…

Gods, was this man even who Hiashi assumed him to be? Neji's ANBU handler. Shikaku's close relative. Both. Neither.

Oblivious or indifferent to Hiashi's conflict, Tsuno turned into the umbral roll of his shadows once more and began to walk away, his right hand raised with both the index and middle finger held in a seal, resuming the kage shunshin.

Rousing himself, Hiashi glared across. "I've not known the ANBU to speak in riddles," he called after the other ninja, watching the shoji and amado storm-shutters pull open, the velvet night pouring in even as the shadows poured back out. "But then, you Nara strategists are nothing if not calculated."

Perhaps it was the brazen use of his disowned clan-name that caused Tsuno to stop at the edge of the roofed veranda. Or perhaps it was the eerie post-storm silence of a world gone deathly still. The rain-washed stones and dripping leaves shone black as lacquer outside, the damp petrichor of the late autumn woods rich with the scent of pine and loam.

"No moon," Tsuno observed. "A bad night to be Nara."

Was that sarcasm, or yet another evasive comment?

Breathing deep to keep his patience in check, Hiashi followed in the ANBU's wake, whorls of shadow parting around his robes in a sable drift until at last, Hiashi came to stand at the threshold close behind, squinting out into the unlit gloom. Tsuno's figure now appeared more shadow than solid, threatening to drift away entirely, opaque as his answers had been.

Taking the ANBU's pause as an opportunity to continue, Hiashi did. "There is a great distinction between a destiny that is damned and a destiny that is decided," he redirected, refusing to be misled, or evaded. "You claim your destiny was both yet neither. What did you mean by that?"

"This answer matters to you."

Not even a hint of mocking, just another dispassionate observation, and yet Hiashi set his jaw against the bitter feeling of insult…and exposure.

This is not Shikaku, his mind repeated.

And for the first time in his life, Hiashi hated that it wasn't. Because he needed an answer – and Shikaku might've given it.

Biting back a string of cool sarcasm, Hiashi swallowed his pride and spat his honest answer like a pulled tooth. "Yes. It matters."

Tsuno caught the tone and might've turned. In the darkness it was difficult to perceive his movements. The candle still alight within the dōjō had neither the strength nor the reach to extend beyond the threshold. But even without its glow, Hiashi felt the ANBU's gaze burn cold upon him, regarding him for quite some time.

"It shouldn't matter," Tsuno rumbled, an odd inflection to his tone now – impossible to interpret with the mask's distortion. "I am a shadow. A stranger. I am no one to you."

It was true, and yet it made no difference. It did not erase Hiashi's inescapable need to know what Tsuno had meant regarding his destiny. Perhaps it was a need borne of that bitter sense of fatalism that lived within the pit of every Hyūga's heart. Even now, it twisted in Hiashi's soul like the karmic doom of that tail-eating snake, or was it the unbroken Hyūga chain?

Both. Neither.

"It's true," Hiashi husked. "You are no one to me. But I am asking you all the same."

"This is a conversation you should have had with Shikaku."

Stiffening against his own transparency, Hiashi realised with belated regret that there were so many conversations he should have had with Shikaku. Forcing his jaw to loosen, he acknowledged Tsuno's words with a nod that probably went unseen. He hoped the same was true of the strain pulling at his expression. His next words came at great personal cost.

"I suppose that is just one more regret I shall have to live with."

"You shall have far more regret to live with if you take the road the Hokage has permitted you to walk," Tsuno warned, his voice honed like a blade, serrated by an edge of threat. "Find another way."

"I know no other way…" Hiashi breathed, the chill in his tone reflected in his moonstone eyes. Had he used his true eyes, he might've attempted to screen past the fog of all this confusing misdirection to the true meaning behind the warning.

What is this about?

Tsuno seemed determined to run Hiashi off the road to Suna – despite delivering the travel permit that now allowed Hiashi to walk it. "If there were other roads to take, do you not think I would have suggested them? Taken them?"

"It doesn't matter what I think. What matters is what you're attempting to do."

"What all of us are attempting to do. Saving Nara Shikamaru is a shared objective."

"Provided that's your only objective."

Gods above, give me strength, Hiashi thought. It was like being back in T&I all over again. Having his motives questioned at every turn. No matter the risks and the responsibilities he was juggling. A prickling sensation radiated outwards from his fingertips and up along his arms, warning him to settle his nerves before the chakra sickness began to pluck them like shamisen strings.

Possessing neither the patience nor the strength he'd prayed for, Hiashi let his contempt carry. "Just because your kind operate from the shadows, doesn't mean I have a hidden agenda."

"It's not so hidden, really," Tsuno challenged, once more reflecting a hint of private knowledge without fully revealing what he knew.

Or what he might be pretending to know…

Hiashi went abruptly quiet, the thought of Neji's chakra imprint invading in his mind. Along with the question of whether Ibiki had betrayed that confidence. Hiashi doubted it. Perhaps Tsuno merely suspected and was calling Hiashi's bluff just as Ibiki had done, sending out the psychological feelers like shadow-tendrils.

Or…Tsuno knew…

And he wanted Hiashi to know that he knew, without explicitly stating it.

Wary now, Hiashi's defences went up and the fierceness went out of his voice. "You will say anything to avoid answering my original question, won't you?"

"I answer as I must."

"You do no such thing. You are different from your kind. Not the Nara. But the ANBU."

"The ANBU are my only kind. You mistake me for Shikaku. He'd have been amused."

"The fact that you can say that tells me you are either directly related to him, or you were close to him – in your other life, of course."

Tsuno neither confirmed nor denied, simply deflected, "Again, you look to the dead for your answers."

Whether Tsuno was referring to his former self or Shikaku wasn't clear. But Hiashi sensed he'd doubled back onto the road he'd mentioned earlier. Tsuno seemed to confirm it with his next words.

"You risk more than your own life, pursuing this path."

"I risk more than my own life, by doing nothing. If deciding to act damns me, then so be it. It is not an uncommon destiny. Not for my kind." Struck by the irony, Hiashi gave a brief laugh, which seemed to break in his chest, the strain cracking through his voice. "Is that the "both and neither" destiny that you too were allotted?"

"It makes no difference," Tsuno repeated, a rough dismissive sound husking out behind the mask. "Damned. Decided. Two sides of a double-edged blade. No matter which side falls upon your neck, it kills you just the same."

Only it wasn't the same.

Hiashi knew this because he knew the blade. Had buried it in his brother's back the second he'd decided to sever his ties and damn them both. Steeling himself against the onrush of pain, Hiashi drew a steady breath, slow to anger because his sadness moved faster – despite its heaviness, despite its size. The weight of sorrow rolled through him, a boulder down a mountain of steep grief and insurmountable regret. A mountain he never stopped climbing.

"You're wrong," Hiashi whispered harshly. "It's not the same. Not to the Hyūga." He faltered briefly, hearing the rasp in his voice though he forced himself to go on, speaking past the tightness in his throat, "Many believe that both Neji and Hizashi forfeited ANBU only to be killed by the very destiny they'd hoped to escape. But my brother…he said he decided to die, which he believed spared him from being damned by the destiny forced upon him. And Neji…"

"Neji decided the same," Tsuno broke in, his voice spiking oddly before levelling back to its flat baseline. "The choice was all he ever needed."

"Precisely," Hiashi near-snarled, exasperated both at the utter indifference in Tsuno's tone and at his own foolishness in having expected more from an ANBU.

This is not Shikaku.

And still, that didn't seem to matter.

Haunted by the War and exhausted by the battles he'd never stopped fighting within himself, Hiashi found his mind confronted by a new conflict. An army of unspoken words…and a horrid lack of closure with the man he wished to say them to.

But Shikaku, like so many others, was gone.

His life snuffed out by a bijū bomb. Burnt and buried. A line of duty death – one he'd chosen. Gods, that's why the choice, the decision to die, was so important. It was the only thing keeping Hizashi and Neji's names from the indelible story of the doomed Branch House destiny.

Hiashi could never say these words to his clan.

He could never say them to Shikaku.

But neither could he continue to carry them inside him. And so, he spoke them to a stranger, let them leak between the cracks of that great stonewall of silence he'd once kept between himself Shikaku, no more able to staunch the flow of words than he could staunch blood from a mortal wound.

"The choice…" Hiashi gritted out, feeling the weight of every word that followed. "If they decided to die, be it for brother or cousin, then they were not damned to their fate. They chose it. To have that freedom, after being born into a cage? How can you say that this decision, this choice, does not matter?"

"Because in the end, the blade still falls."

"Yes. But which way that blade falls shall always matter to those who were once damned never to decide their own destiny..." Hiashi faded off here, his expression clouding as he shook his head in resignation, wondering at the sad futility of emptying these words into an ANBU's ear. "Tch. Even with a Nara's mind behind that wretched mask, you fail to understand."

"And there's that Hyūga arrogance," Tsuno remarked a little too darkly, the growl in his tone unmistakable this time, a coarse grain of emotion scarring the flat wooden surface of his voice, splintering off into a scoffing laugh. "Destiny. Shirataka hated that word. Even in death he finds no escape from it. No peace. You dishonour him."

Everything froze.

In the same instant as Hiashi was gut-punched, he was paralysed. Silenced as if Tsuno had slid a blade across his throat. Stuck a knife in his chest. He could not react. Could not even respond. Stunned by the shocking display of emotion in the ANBU's voice and reeling from the disclosure of Neji's callsign.

Shirataka…

White Hawk.

A bird. Of course, it would have been a bird.

Would have…

Hiashi's heart staggered in his chest, his lips curling back in a rictus of pain, mouth moving before his mind could even process that he was speaking, his voice scaling in volume even as it dropped in pitch. "I did more than dishonour him. It was not Neji's destiny to die for my child on that battlefield, it was mine!"

Hiashi all but shouted the 'mine'…

And something changed in Tsuno.

Hiashi felt it.

But could not escape it.

A vast plunge of energy dropped through the ANBU's chakra and Hiashi almost dropped under the sheer weight of it. It pulled on the darkness holding all around them, dragging like a mass shadow-possession, a black vortex twisting inwards, the whole world appearing to warp like waves of collapsing gravity beneath the overwhelming mass bearing down. Timbers creaked, tiles shook, and the entire daidōjō groaned from the strain on its juddering bones.

And then it stopped.

A rough intake of breath and Tsuno's chakra scattered, its force lifted. Hiashi did stagger then, a single backward step as the jutsu – if such it was – released. The night tingled all around them. A charge dispersing. Tsuno remained where he stood, a ragged sigh hissing out of him, as if he'd just wavered on the edge of something held too long and too deep inside him.

The air beat like a drum…

Hiashi's heart along with it…

Tsuno's too, with the cadence of his breathing…

They both breathed and the world breathed too, the earlier post-storm stillness shattered, though no animal called and no insect chirped…

It was surreal.

But the strange moment held between them. And somewhere deep inside this strange moment, beyond Hyūga fortresses and ANBU walls within walls, in a place where feelings held no structure, no shape, and no sound – something was seen and heard and more importantly, understood between them.

They seemed to register it at the same time.

Tsuno turned, his movement now discernible to Hiashi's eyes, his Byakugan having activated when the world had dipped and almost dropped away beneath him. He set his eyes on the masked face, and out of a respect he could not fathom, looked no further than the ceramic's pale and painted face.

Tsuno looked back through the dark eyeholes, and this time the gravity was not in his shadows, but all in his voice. "What you fail to understand, Hiashi-sama…is that in the end, some destinies do not play out at all. There's no doubled-edged blade. No decision to make. No damnation to suffer. There's just…nothing."

Nothing.

Like a cold wind, the word floated in the air between them.

Hiashi felt its chill, and all the ghosts it might've carried, shaking his head. "And that is why you are ANBU in all the worlds you walk," he sighed, no hostility in his voice, just a sad and quiet honesty. "Because you believe this utterly."

"I have to," Tsuno said. "Or I too, would be nothing."

And this, Hiashi understood. Respected. Because he'd lived enough lies to appreciate the ones that ninja built for more than just deception, but also for the sake of survival. Both their own, and those around them. Hiashi had glimpsed the dark matter energy lying dormant in Tsuno's inner world – sensed its crushing power, its crushing pain. The ANBU walls within walls contained that power, and the wheels within wheels ground that pain like gris for the black-ops mill.

Another cage…

Gods, at long last, Hiashi fully realised. Fully understood. And the relief he felt, knowing Neji had rejected this path of 'nothingness', lifted some of his sadness and all of his anger; anger he'd harboured towards Shikaku because he could not express the anger he harboured towards his father, towards himself, towards the Main House elders. Shikaku had stepped in and saved Hizashi from this world of nothingness…it was not Shikaku's fault, that Hiashi had not stepped up and saved his brother from the clan.

"Shirataka," Hiashi said softly. "Who gave him that name?"

"It would have been Hizashi's."

And now it was no one's. And that didn't feel like a loss – but a near miss. That name could not have hung in Hiashi's private Hyūga shrine room anymore than the ANBU mask could've hung on Neji or Hizashi's face.

"Some destinies do not play out at all."

In this case, that was no tragedy. It was a mercy. Peace, or some semblance of it, briefly touched Hiashi's soul. There and gone. But felt. Acknowledged.

It took him a second to gather his voice. "I was told no one refuses the ANBU. That it angered you and Ibiki when Neji did."

Tsuno clucked his tongue, his masked face turning away for a second. "Not for the reasons you think."

"It does not matter. What matters is that others supported his choice when I could not."

"That was my purpose as his handler."

"It should have been mine, as his uncle."

"Then do now what you could not do then," Tsuno returned, his masked gaze centred on Hiashi once more, that earlier gravity still pulling at the edges of his voice. "Respect the choice he made on the battlefield."

The choice to sacrifice himself.

The choice to die.

Pulling himself away from the memory, Hiashi studied the other ninja.

And again, we come to it…

Because somehow, despite the rough and rocky path their words had taken, they'd come full circle, right back to the road Hiashi was set to travel, and the warning Tsuno had given him about walking it.

"We look to the dead when we cannot look to the living. That is a dangerous road."

Searching the masked face for a second longer, Hiashi eventually tipped his head in a false nod, sliding into the familiar skin of decorum because the time of understanding and unguarded truths had passed.

He was set upon this path.

The die had been cast.

Blinking, his Byakugan vanished in the same breath as he spoke, "You have my thanks for delivering the permit. I've cautioned Ibiki about the Hokage requesting other Hyūga eyes to examine Shikamaru in my absence."

"I'm aware."

Clearly, Hiashi thought, you are aware of a great deal more.

How or why, concerned Hiashi less than what the ANBU might do with this knowledge. He seemed to be part of Ibiki's System, which put them on the same team despite their different territories. That explained why Tsuno had delivered the travel permit, despite his reservations. Orders were orders, after all.

"If anything changes with Shikamaru while I'm gone…" Hiashi set a steady look on Tsuno, left the rest unsaid.

Tsuno held the look, a quiet hum escaping him before he finally turned, stepped off the veranda and melted into the shadows beyond, his parting words drifting like smoke over his vanishing shoulder.

"I'll send a white hawk."

A sweet and immediate pain trickled through Hiashi, and he almost smiled. Instead, he let his lashes drift shut and felt the sadness moving through him, a pale ghost rain, both cleansing and cold. When he opened his eyes, he gazed heavenward.

Though the storm had passed, a bank of clouds hung low and lightless.

There was no moon.

There were no stars.

There was nothing in the sky but a vast and lonely darkness.

Standing on the edge of the veranda, his heart heavy but his mind clear, Hiashi stared up into that vast and lonely darkness…and waited for the dawn to break.

---

TBC

Endnotes:

Hyūga no Daidōjō – The Great Hyūga Dōjō

Daidōjō – Great dōjō

Chadō – the Way of Tea

Tesuji – a Go term meaning 'clever play', tactically advantageous and skilful

Go – Go is an abstract strategy board game for two players in which the aim is to capture more territory than the opponent by fencing off empty space.

Zokusuji – a Go term meaning 'vulgar play/move' that refers to an unsophisticated move, which may achieve a simple objective in a desperate situation but costs far more.

Judan – in the game of Go, "judan" (十段) refers to the rank of 10 dan. It is an honorary rank bestowed upon exceptional Go players in recognition of their outstanding skill, knowledge, and contributions to the game.

Fūinjutsu – Sealing techniques

Tsurukirimura (鶴切り村) - Crane Cutter Village, home to the Taketori clan (their crest is bamboo with a crane motif). In the BtB-verse, this is the village Hyūga Hiashi's wife (Hayami) hails from.

Saisei Kekkai – Self-Repairing Barrier / 36-layer Self-Regenerating Barrier: a cooperation ninjutsu that by linking chakra from a team of ninja, will create a barrier which if damaged, will constantly repair itself with said chakra that emanates from their bodies. The barrier also prevents those outside of it from sensing anything inside it through traditional methods. The users can erect as much as 36 barriers, with the highest number being able to stop and contain any individual Jinchūriki.

Kishō Tensei – One's Own Life Reincarnation

The Taketori Clan (Taketori Ichizoku): Taketori" (竹取) means "bamboo cutter". They are a clan, presumably outside of Konohagakure. While not a great deal is known about them, this clan seems to have close connections to the Hyūga clan for political matters. Hiashi and Hanabi were noted to be absent during Pein's Invasion on account of political dealings with the Taketori clan [Naruto Shippūden episode 390].

Hayami – in the BtB-verse, the name of Hiashi's wife.

Izakya – a type of informal bar that serves alcoholic drinks and snacks; can vary in ambience and character.

Yakitori tare sauce – Tare is a soy-based seasoning / condiment used in various Japanese dishes including yakitori (grilled chicken).

Kage shunshin – shadow body flicker

Edo Tensei – Impure World(Resurrection Jutsu)

Shirataka – White Hawk. Neji's (and Hizashi's) provisional ANBU callsign

Author's Notes:

A/N: Hey my lovely readers and darling reviewers. I hope this update finds you guys well. I hope you enjoyed it? As always, I so appreciate your thoughts. A huge collective shoutout to all of you amazingly sweet, kind, supportive readers who take the time out to leave me your comments and drop some feedback. I appreciate it so, so much. I'm still navigating my way through this hellish burnout and reading your messages and reviews always lifts me on the days it feels impossible to get the words out. Those days are hard, so thank you for all the love and support which helps give me a soft place to hang for a while before I chug along again. You're amazing and I appreciate every one of you.

A/N 2: A pretty PLOT HEAVY and Hyūga-clan heavy chapter. If you got through it ok, give yourself a cookie and some cream. Thanks for hanging in there. It's paving the way for what's to come – ShikaNeji and more. I'm still feeling my way through the dark with my writing, reacquainting myself with it, so it has yet to find its balance and level out into a more even keel. Thanks for sticking with me as I fumble along.

A/N 3: Questions? Message me here or preferably hit me up over at Tumblr (under okamirayne) where I'm most active and drop me an ASK if you fancy (Anonymous ASKS are enabled); I'll do my best to answer. Your feedback is always deeply welcomed and warmly appreciated. I also drop updates and polls over on Tumblr, so feel free to watch that space for any future/upcoming news re: BtB or original works. Thanks!