It was dark by the time Shikamaru got back to the hospital room, and he nearly had to argue with the nurse to let him enter with visiting hours nearly over.
"Look alive." He called as he pushed Hinata's door open and lobbed the scroll towards the bed, startling Hinata so bad that her hand slipped where she'd been writing something in the notebook spread out over her lap. Shikamaru half expected the scroll to whack her in the face, but Hinata still managed to catch it without fumbling, even with her initial distraction.
Then, when her eyes focused on what was now in her hands, Shikamaru watched as Hinata's eyes went wide with shock, and he felt a small thrill of satisfaction at having put that expression there.
"Where-?"
"It was in your room, on your bookshelf, tucked behind a picture of you and your mom." He relayed, then scratched his cheek, suddenly unsure. "Or, I mean, I guess it was your mom, she looked a lot like you."
Then, he pulled out the vial he'd picked up along with the scroll and walked over to Hinata's bed, holding it out carefully, eyebrow raised meaningfully. "There was also this next to it."
When the girl visibly froze upon registering the contents of the vial, Shikamaru's suspicion was mostly confirmed, but he still needed to hear hersay it."Hinata. Is that blood?"
And Hinata, instead of acknowledging howunhingedone had to be to have a vial of blood in their room, just nodded.
"Yes." She confirmed, then- "Can you pass me a needle, please?"
Shikamaru blinked, then shook his head, but still moved to do as requested, wondering when Hinata was going to realise that this wasn't thenormalapproach to being handed a vial of blood. Still, Shikamaru watched as she dipped the tip of the needle he'd eventally located and handed her in the vial and carefully moved the needle over the unfurled scroll, then waited with bated breath for the singular drop to fall on the paper.
Once the blood made contact with the paper, Shikamaru had maybe three seconds to take in the sprawling writing on the page before Hinata was rolling the scroll back up, her eyes wide andpanicked.
"Shikamaru, you need to leave." She said suddenly, rolling the scroll roughly but very conspicuouslynotsealing it back up, and for a moment, Shikamaru was too dumbstruck to reply.
"What-?" he was glad he managed to restrain himself from completing the question, but it was a near thing. He stared at Hinata for a moment, then set his jaw and squared his shoulders.
Not this time.
"No." he snapped, annoyed and exhausted andhurt."Tell mewhyyou're kicking me out."
Hinata startled, clearly not having expected for him to resist, but then her expression smoothed out, that same unnatural, icy mask taking over her face that Shikamaru's dad sometimes got, the one that had never failed to send shivers down Shikamaru's spine when Shikamaru had been younger.
It was terrifying to see those same eyes in the face of someone who had been hispeer, though.
"I can't do that. Please leave, Shikamaru." Hinata repeated, and despite the 'please' and the soft tone, Shikamaru could tell that the words were not arequest.
"That's bullshit." He spat, angry now, their earlier easy rapport dead and gone, then jerked his chin at the scroll in Hinata's hands. "What's on that scroll?"
"Shikamaru." Hinata pleaded, and maybe once, Shikamaru would've hesitated, would've felt guilty at the clear anguish in her voice, but all he could feel was anger and hurt, and luckily, for the moment, the anger was drowning the hurt out. "Leave,please."
"Not until you start making sen-!"
"Girl saidleave." A new voice interrupted, and Shikamaru jumped when an ANBU suddenly materialised in the room, though his stomach dropped when the agent positioned themselves tellingly between where Shikamaru was standing and Hinata's bed. The ANBU's sheer presence pinned Shikamaru in place almost as effectively as his father'sKagenui,and the way the ANBU tilted their head, the motion almostpredatory,had Shikamaru's skin breaking out in goosebumps. "Need an escort?"
"N-no, no, it's okay, Rooster-san!" Hinata assured the shinobi quickly, her voice urgent, and though the ANBU tilted their head to show they were listening, they never let Shikamaru out of their line of sight. "Thank you."
The ANBU stayed still for another second or two, then glanced at Hinata over their shoulder and inclined their head before they disappeared, leaving Shikamaru alone with the Hyuuga once more.
"There are ANBU around?" Shikamaru demanded once he found his voice, the lump of fear that had formed in his throat at the ANBU's intense presence finally dissipating. Then a more important question pushed through the remaining fear clouding his mind- "How did you know their name?"
Hinata did not reply, though she activated her Byakugan suddenly, then turned it off before Shikamaru even had the time to wonderwhy.
"I am 'kicking you out'," she began, and this time, instead of pleading, her voice wasglacial,"because I am planning to commit treason against my Clan."
Of all the things Shikamaru had been expecting to hear, it hadn't beenthat.
"…What?"
"So, as the heir of another Noble Clan, I hope you can understand why youcannotknow any more than you already do." Hinata finished as if Shikamaru hadn't spoken, then reached for something on the side of her bed, tucking the scroll under her pillow in the same move.
"What on earth do you mean you're-?!" Shikamaru began, then cut himself off when he noticed that Hinata was reaching for the 'call' button on her bed. "Wait-!"
But Hinata had already pressed the button, meeting Shikamaru's eyes, her own not holding even a slither of remorse in the few seconds it took for the door to open.
"I'm sorry for disturbing," Hinata murmured to the nurse who came in, clearly having been summoned by the call, though a part of Shikamaru was absently surprised by the speed of their appearance, "but could you please remove Nara-san from my room?"
Nara-san.
Shikamaru hadneverbeen 'Nara-san' to Hinata, not even when they'd barely known each other beyond classmates that never , more than anything else, more than the ANBU, more than being treated like a child and pushed away yetagain, stung.
"Hinata-!"
But the nurse seized him by his elbow and marched him out of the hospital room, and though Shikamaru could've easily muscled his way out of the grip, it was clear he wouldn't be getting anything out of Hinata even if hedid.
He pushed that thought to the back of his mind, letting the nurse steer him wherever it was she wanted to take him, and absently hoped for the anger to win out once more so that at least he'd knowwhat it wasthat he was feeling.
No such luck.
He was left in what looked like a breakroom, the nurse leaving with a brief, disapproving look over her shoulder, but Shikamaru couldn't even bring himself to care. At least, he couldn't bring himself to care until his dad walked through the door of the breakroom sometime later, and Shikamaru froze once he spotted the expression on Shikaku's face.
He suddenly feltsmall, that same, uncomfortable feeling he used to get when his dad had to come to the Academy because Shikamaru had gotten caught skipping class one too many times, and hehated it.
"You need to learn not to pusheverythingyou find." Shikaku sighed as he gestured for Shikamaru to follow, and Shikamaru tried not to take the words personally, but he couldn't help his bitten out, accusative:
"Youtold me to visit her."
"Visit, yes." Shikaku confirmed, though instead of sounding annoyed or displeased at Shikamaru's tone, he soundedtired."Notget a retrieval mission to the Hyuuga Compoundandan ANBU at my office saying that you're making a nuisance of yourself at thehospitalof all places and not taking 'no' for an answer."
"They came to your office?!" Shikamaru demanded, incredulous, and Shikaku shot him a long look as they headed out of the hospital.
"What part of 'you are both Clan heirs' are you struggling to grasp?" Shikaku asked absently, and Shikamaru barely resisted the urge to throw his arms up in frustration.
"The part where what we do is suddenly everyone's business!"
His dad laughed then, sharp and sudden and humourless, but the smile he directed at Shikamaru after that was far warmer than before.
"Yeah, you're still a brat." His dad confirmed, but he sounded fond, reaching out a hand to squeeze the back of Shikamaru's neck like he was scruffing a puppy.
"Don't be too hasty to catch up to Hinata." Shikaku advised suddenly, startling Shikamaru briefly, though he just eyed his dad curiously, not willing to let his dad think that he had him completely figured out. "That kind of competence at your age is not without consequences."
Shikaku sighed then, releasing Shikamaru's neck and losing his smile, and that, more than anything, cemented the gravity of his next words, no matter how quietly they were spoken. "Ones I would rather you not have to pay."
Hinata waited until it was dark outside and the ANBU guard on her corridor had reduced to the two by the Elder's room before she unfurled the scroll again.
Finding out that there were ANBU guarding her room as well as the Elder's had been jarring, and what she didn't understand was why neither Kurenai nor Kagane had told her about it.
Not to mentionwhyshe had a guard in the first place.
Her second look at the contents of the scroll was just as shocking as the first brief glimpse she'd gotten when Shikamaru was in her room, but it was somehowworsenow that she could give it her full attention.
By the time she was finished reading, there was bile in her throat and tears in her eyes and drying down her cheeks, and whatever regard she'd still had for her Grandfather was but a memory.
He'd collaborated with ROOT.
It was never stated explicitly in the scroll, but Hinata could read between the lines of what was and wasn't written outright well enough to figure out why her Father had gone to such lengths to get the scroll.
Or why he'd left it to her, in her room, in the one place her Grandfather wasn't likely to look, instead of keeping it on himself.
And Hinata- Hinata had always had her goal set as deposing herFather. All of her plans up until this point, all of her contingencies, had relied on it beingHiashishe'd be taking the Clan from.
But now, with Hiashi in a coma, and the scroll before her telling her that, evenifshe succeeded in beating her Grandfather in combat, it wouldn't be enough, Hinata felt something she hadn't felt in months:doubt.
Because her Grandfather wasn't alone.
He had connections, networks, allies, both in and out of the Hyuuga Clan.
She couldn't justfight himfor the Headship of their Clan. She had to throw into question his very integrity, destroy him in the eyes of the Hyuuga, expose him as a traitor both to the Clan and the Village.
Hinata's dream of a peaceful transition of power from her Father onto her was ash and dust.
This wouldn't be peaceful.
This would be arevolution.
Over the next few days, Hinata did her physical therapy, talked with Kagane-san, gave Naruto three more fuinjutsu lessons, and helped Hanabi with her homework almost every day, letting her sister chat about the Academy and the Inuzuka puppies and whatever else came to her mind.
She knew that the main purpose of Hanabi's visits was hiding from the reality in which she was no longer a Hyuuga, but Hinata, for all that she noticed Kagane's disapproving looks whenever she talked about it, was a selfish creature at heart.
She loved her sister. She would do anything to make her happy, even if it involved ignoring the elephant in the room, like Hanabi seemed determined to. Hanabi would walk out of Hinata's room at the end of visiting hours with a smile on her face, and for now, that was enough for Hinata.
(She didn't see Shikamaru a single time)
Then, finally, almost a month after she'd been brought into the hospital, Hinata had her final session with Tsunade, her burn scars still visible but no longer inhibiting her motion quite so badly, something which Hinata had nearly cried about when Tsunade had finished the healing session.
"Any final questions before I let you go?" Tsunade asked once she checked Hinata over for the final time, one of the nurses having helped Hinata into some casual clothes Hanabi had brought her the day before so she could finally be free from the hospital pyjamas.
"Only one." Hinata replied, hefting her pack that was singed and dirtied but miraculously intact and pulling out her sealing scroll. She unsealed the jar with Ao's Byakugan and held it out to a bemused-looking Tsunade, only then realising that she should have probably explainedbeforeshe'd pulled out a jar holding ahuman eye.
"I-I would like for this eye to be returned to one of my Clansmen." Hinata explained, watching Tsunade's eyebrow climb higher on her forehead. "Would that be possible?"
"Transplanting an eye? Yes. Transplanting a dojutsu? A bit trickier, but mostly doable." Tsunade paused, looking Hinata up and down before she continued; "Transplanting a Byakugan that has spent the last two decades in aMist-ninand may or may not be immediately destroyed by juinjutsu? No idea, I can't say I've ever attempted that."
"Would you, Hokage-sama?" Hinata asked, her voice almost inaudible with how quickly her confidence had waned in the face of Tsunade's tone and mien. "Be willing to attempt it?"
"I am not transplanting anything without my patient's explicit and informed consent." Tsunade informed her archly, face unreadable, and Hinata nodded, cowed. "…But yes. Give that here."
And Hinata was glad to hand the jar over, even gladder still to be all-but kicked out of the hospital by the Godaime herself, and the first rays of afternoon sun hitting her face when she finally stepped outside after weeks cooped up in her hospital room nearly made her cry.
Still, she wasn't expecting to see Jiraiya and Shikaku standing by the entrance to the small park by the hospital, nor for the Toad Sage to gesture for her to come over. Hinata swallowed, suddenly nervous, and longed for her usual jacket instead of the thin, jounin standard uniform Hanabi had clearly borrowed from the Inuzuka Compound.
But an order was an order, and she had no good reason to refuse, so with her heart in her throat and her feet feeling like they weighed a tonne each, she headed over.
"Shikamaru's upset." Shikaku greeted her once she came close enough, speaking before either Jiraiya or Hinata herself had the chance to get a single word out, his tone flat and factual, but lacking the accusation Hinata had expected.
"I know." she replied tightly, guilt in her throat and anxiety squeezing her lungs as she thought back to her last interaction with Shikamaru, but still, she forced out a quiet; "And you?"
Because she needed to know.
Needed to know how much Shikamaru had told his father, how much Shikaku may have told Shikamaru in turn, how much her reaction in the hospital may have damaged her relationship with the closest thing to afriendoutside of her team she'd ever had.
"As his father, I'm not happy with how you went about pushing him away, but I'm grateful that you did." Shikaku told her, something in his eyes softening slightly, though the usual warmth was absent from his gaze as he regarded her, and Hinata hadn't even been aware of its presence until it was gone. Then, Shikaku smiled crookedly, the expression entirely devoid of humour, and added, "The less Shikamaru knows about what's going on, the better I'll sleep at night."
Hinata nodded, the explanation understandable, and she was grateful Shikamaru had a father like Shikaku looking out for him even if it made her think about the situation with herownfather.
But Shikaku wasn'tdone.
"But, as an adult, and as someone who also cares aboutyou?" he continued, titling his head slightly and studying Hinata carefully, and Hinata wasn't sure she was prepared for the degree of scrutiny being directed at her. "You can lean on people sometimes, too, Hinata. Particularly if they're being as stubborn about offering the support as my son."
Jiraiya huffed, the only sign he'd given that he was even paying attention to the conversation between them since Hinata had walked up, but Shikaku didn't pay the man any heed.
"You're a stranger to reciprocity." He continued on a sigh, and the accusation hit Hinata like a slap despite the fact that Shikaku's tone hadn't changed in the slightest. "But it's not your duty to protect those around you just because the adults in your life failed to protectyou."
Hinata reeled back, eyes wide as she stared at Shikaku, the noise in her head suddenly cutting out as the Nara's words fully registered.
"Do you think-" she began after a few seconds, voice hoarse, simultaneously not daring to allow herself to hope andneedingto give in to the childish urge to seek comfort from one of the fewsafeadults in either of her lives, "if I explain-?"
"You're too interesting for him to cut you out, don't worry." Shikaku cut her off, not quite soothingly but far softer than he'd been at the start, as if reading her mind. "But let him in. He's worked hard for it."
"I know. I will." Hinata replied, aware now that Shikaku was right, and this was his way of giving her permission to involve his son, putting the final decision onher. "Thank you, Shikaku-san."
Shikaku studied her for a beat, then nodded, offering another nod to Jiraiya before he turned on his heel and walked off, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket as he went.
When Hinata turned her attention to Jiraiya, she found the man already looking back at her, an inscrutable expression on his face. "How much does Shikaku know?"
Hinata sighed, shaking her head.
"I don't know." She murmured, looking away, but when she glanced in the direction Shikaku had left, the man had already disappeared among the crowd. "Probably much more than he'd ever tell me."
Jiraiya laughed, sharp and sudden and startled.
"You can say that again." He muttered, something dark passing though his eyes before he shook his head, as if physically dislodging the thought, and started walking, waving Hinata along. "Alright. Come on, kid."
When Hinata obediently fell into step with him but couldn't help glancing up curiously, he elaborated with a snort. "I got you your blood room."
Hinata's breath caught, but she continued walking through the shock of the announcement out of habit more than anything else. Then, as they had mostly settled into walking in silence, a thought occurred to her and she nearly tripped again, the sudden stumble jarring enough for Jiraiya to glance at her, forcing Hinata to try to explain.
"Do you know- in Kiri- did Ao survive?" she asked haltingly, not sure what answer she was hoping to hear, but she wasn't prepared for Jiraiya to chortle loudly, a mean look in his eyes.
"As if." He replied flatly, shaking his head. "Idiot blew himself up. There was barely enough of him left tobury."
"I don't understand." Hinata murmured, horrified, staring at Jiraiya with wide eyes as they walked. "Why did he-? I wouldn't havekilledhim-?"
"Oh, because the secondary seal in his earrings malfunctioned." Jiraiya explained, then laughed shortly and corrected. "Well, no, notmalfunctioned. The seal worked precisely as was intended."
When Jiraiya noticed that Hinata wasn't following, he sighed and came to a stop. "There were two seals in his earrings: one was an explosive, and the other was meant to be a barrier seal triggered at the same time as the explosion to protecthimfrom the blast."
"The barrier seal didn't work?" Hinata checked, wanting to understand but notquitefollowing what Jiraiya was getting at.
"The barrier seal, both of the earrings actually, were made by an Uzushio refugee Kiri had captured and tortured for information. After weeks of this, Ao had allegedly stepped in and promised to let them go if they made him two seals to protect his stolen Byakugan." Hinata wasn't sure what her face showed at that, but Jiraiya laughed quietly, though it wasn't a nice sound. "As you can imagine, that was complete bullshit, and Ao killed them as soon as the seals were done."
Hinata nodded, having expected something similar, so Jiraiya continued. "Well, it seems that the Uzu-nin must've figured that out, too, because I had the Mizukage show me a photo of Ao's 'barrier-seal' earring, and, well. It was a middle finger masquerading as fuinjutsu – there was nothingremotelylike a barrier seal coded into the matrix."
"The Uzu-nin…intentionally made a bad seal?" Hinata double-checked, trying not to offend in case she'd misunderstood.
"They probably knew they were going to die anyway." Jiraiya confirmed, and Hinata winced at his blunt wording. "At least this way, they had the slightest shot at revenge."
"The military alliance the Mizukage had offered-" Hinata began, the thought only just occurring to her, though she hesitated, unsure how to finish, "did it-?"
"It didn't fall through, no, but talks stalled when Terumi realised that she needed to start looking for a new Commander." Jiraiya cut her off, though not unkindly, and Hinata nodded, relieved.
"Um- thank you for telling me." She mumbled, not sure how to continue now that the implication that the talks ceasing was at least partly because of her fight with Ao.
"It's not your fault, kid." Jiraiya sighed after a beat, and Hinata nearly jumped at how easily the man had traced her thought process. "This is actually the best-case scenario for Konoha."
Though Hinata wasn't sure how much she believed that, she nodded and turned her attention back to their surroundings. To her surprise, she realised that while she'd been thinking about Ao and Mist, Jiraiya had steered them out towards the outskirts of the Village. A closer look revealed that they were near the Forest of Death but notquite, making their way through a land almost overrun by too-big, sprawling trees, but ones Hinata knew were too important to cut down or repurpose, because-
-but surely Jiraiya wasn't leading them to-?
"Senju Compound, yeah." The man muttered, and Hinata wondered just how loudly she must've been thinking for the Sannin to pick up on itagain. "The hime owed me a favour."
Jiraiya led her through the overgrown Hashirama trees, past half-collapsed roofs and broken shogi doors, and down into a sloping staircase leading underground. It didn't escape Hinata's notice that Jiraiya was moving with far more confidence and familiarity than she would've expected from a man navigating somebody else's Compound, not to mention someone who'd been gone from the Village for almost as long as Hinata had been alive.
Jiraiya opened the door at the bottom of the stairwell by swiping his bloodied thumb over a panel Hinata hadn't even noticed, and by the grim look on his face and complete lack of hesitation in his movements, Hinata had a feeling that it wasn't the first time he'd done it.
But she stayed silent.
Jiraiya let her inside, and Hinata tried not to flinch when the stone door closed behind them, cutting out the only source of natural light to what was, in essence, a basement carved in stone. She shuddered, the temperature difference between outside and in becoming exceedingly noticeable the more the door closed, but she was more concerned by the way the walls lit up with chakra as soon as the door fully slid into place than her own discomfort.
Seals, some she recognised, others so far beyond her comprehension she couldn't even guessed at their function, lined the walls from floor to ceiling, engraved in the rock and likely pumped with chakra for generations, for they briefly glowed so brightly that they made Hinata's eyes sting, though she didn't dare shut them.
Then, the bright light faded and the seals settled back against the walls in the same muted glow as the chakra stones in the Kumo mountains, and Hinata felt as if her ears had popped at the same time as she lost access to her chakra.
She swallowed back the instinctive panic that rose up, though she couldn't control the way her heartrate had picked up at the perceived vulnerability; she'd asked for this, she reminded herself. She was in the Village, with Jiraiya of the Sannin, in a blood room she herself had asked for.
She tried to convince herself that she was as close tosafeas she could get, but it was becoming more difficult with every moment that passed in silence, with her chakra sealed, and in nigh-complete darkness, the seals' glow having faded to the point of barely offering any light at all anymore.
"This is the way this'll work." Jiraiya began suddenly, startling her with his words just as much as his sudden movement.
Hinata stared at where his voice had come from and watched as he lit a match, using the small flame to light an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling by the door that Hinata hadn't evennoticed.
Yet, instead of offering comfort as was clearly intended, the flickering light of the oil lamp only added to the eeriness of their situation, casting half of Jiraiya's face into darkness and making Hinata twitch at shadows.
"You will be completely honest with me, or it's a one-way ticket to a cell in T that neither your sensei, nor your shrink, nor even Shikaku himself will be able to dig you out of." Jiraiya informed her, moving past her and taking a seat on one of the small tatami mats arranged in a circle in the centre of the room. "Are we clear?"
Hinata took a shuddering breath and tried not to choke as the cold air stabbed her lungs. "Yes, Jiraiya-sama."
Jiraiya sighed, and for the first time since she'd known him, he looked his age.
"You're smart, kid, I'll give you that." He told her frankly, gaze on the small, stone pillar in the centre of the circle. "Not like Kakashi or Itachi, but something else."
Jiraiya glanced up at her then, wordlessly beckoning for her to take a seat as he smiled humourlessly. "Still not sure if good or bad, but definitely something."
When Hinata didn't visibly react, he huffed and sobered. "Alright. Let's start easy. Any headway on finding that scroll you told Tsunade about?"
Hinata shouldn't have been surprised that the Godaime had told Jiraiya about Hinata's suspicions. She really shouldn't, but she was. Still-
"Yes."
Jiraiya arched an eyebrow, but whether at the lack of elaboration or the fact that Hinatahadactually made some headway, she couldn't be sure. "And?"
It was Hinata's turn to sigh, because, well. This was why she hadn't gone to Shikaku as soon as she'd first glimpsed the contents of the scroll.
"And I will hand it in, but I need it for an internal Clan matter first." she confessed, resolute in her decision even though she knew it wouldn't be well received.
Jiraiya blinked at her, absorbing her words, then barked a startled laugh, seemingly genuinely entertained, though the look in his eyes was too sharp for Hinata to becomfortedby the show of amusement.
"To clarify, theliteral Hokageasking you to do something is not arequest." He chortled, but his expression grew completely serious when their eyes met.
"I understand." Hinata replied, aware that she was treading dangerous waters, but unwilling to give herself over to the tide quite so easily. "But that scroll is imperative if I wish to remove my Grandfather from the position of Head."
"Somehow, I don't think Hyuuga Hotaru is someone who'll step down just 'cause youask nicely." Jiraiya huffed, not quite snidely, but far from his easy-going persona Hinata had been conditioned to expect, and Hinata-
Hinata rarely felt any kind of Clan pride and even rarer still did she feel the need to remind people of or enforce her position, but she was theHyuuga Grandfather's scroll and its contents were aHyuugamatter first, and a Village matter second, and she would not let anyone change her mind on that, not even Jiraiya.
"I am not planning on asking nicely." She told Jiraiya curtly, expression icing over, and though she lacked the mask, her voice came out not too dissimilar to how it would have had she spoken through the modulator.
Flat. Cold. Factual.
Jiraiya stilled briefly at her words, his earlier mirth dying just as fast as it had appeared, the same calculating glint passing through his eyes as she'd seen in Shikaku's earlier, and Hinata straightened unconsciously.
"…Understood." The Sannin nodded after a beat, his gaze never leaving hers. "Now, the more difficult question."
And Jiraiya's gaze gainedweight,pinning her in place almost as effectively as Shadow Possession would have. "How thehelldo you know ANBU Sign?"
And thus, just as it had gone any time Hinata had dared consider any eventuality in which she might be caught, she was presented with two options.
She could lie. She could spin the same white lie she'd told Kagane, slip in enough details to shift suspicion, but never the full story, or…
Or.
She took a …
She let it out.
And as the last of the oxygen rattled out of her, so too did the last of her resolve to withhold the truth from the one man who might be able to do something about it.
So she met Jiraiya's gaze squarely and announced, her voice the most stable it had ever been: "I was taught."
Jiraiya's eyebrow was nearly at his hairline now, his tone so flat the words were barely a question. "By whom?"
Another breath, one for courage this time, and: "Agents Spider and Rooster."
"When?" Jiraiya pressed, and Hinata smiled humourlessly at the man's directness even as it made her heartrate pick up.
This would be the moment of no return.
She took another breath and glanced at her hands, both pleased and angry to find them steady where they lay in her lap. Then, she glanced back up at Jiraiya and said, "When I was eighteen."
Jiraiya stilled, then his face smoothed of all expression and Hinata hadn't realised how jarring that might be on a man as emotive as Jiraiya of the Sannin until she was watching it happen in real time.
"Do you remember what I said about T ?" Jiraiya asked, his tone deceptively idle, but Hinata had no doubt that the question was rhetorical. "You better start making sense, and soon."
Hinata threw all caution to the wind.
"I've been thirteen before, Jiraiya-sama." She told the man tiredly, feeling the weight of that fact hit her with such impetus that it would've made her knees weak had she been standing. "I'velivedonce before. And then I woke up ten years in the past, a few days before my Academy graduation."
There was silence for a while, Jiraiya having frozen the moment she'd gotten her first sentence out, but when he spoke, his tone didn't fill Hinata with much confidence.
"What are you saying?" he demanded, voice sharp and far from convinced, but Hinata could give him nothing but honesty. She was too tired to lie, too suddenly exhausted by thoughts she hadn't allowed herself to seriously entertain since she'd confirmed that she really had been thrown ten years in the past.
"I don't know." She replied, because that was , she added what, to her mind, was far more important, and just as true: "But I am less concerned about the 'how' I am here again and more with how I am going to make itcount."
"'Count'?" Jiraiya echoed, and Hinata watched as the distrust and disbelief that had flashed through his eyes shifted intohorror."God, this is why you barely seem to care about the danger of it all, isn't it?"
He laughed, short and sharp, but the sound was far from happy, and if she were going solely by the look in his eyes, Hinata would've thought Jiraiya had been struck over the head from how dazed he suddenly looked.
For a moment, Jiraiya just looked at her, that humourless half-smile still curling his lips.
"Assumingwhat you're saying is true," he began, his voice an odd mix of wonder and distaste, "you never planned onsurvivingyour little revolution, did you?"
And Hinata-
-Hinata did not notrespond.
Because Jiraiya wasn't wrong.
Tsunade had never thought she'd ever begratefulfor Jiraiya's insistence to keep his very first apartment from when they were genin. Especially after the area around it had been renamed the civilian quarter.
But as she left the Tower and allowed herself to disappear among the crowd with a seal-less henge, walking through the streets of milling civilians and off-duty shinobi with no rush, Tsunade grudgingly acknowledged the benefits of someone as notorious as Jiraiya having old ladies and harried new parents for neighbours, instead of the sharp-eyed, nosy elite of the other members of the shinobi force.
Particularly as she slipped into the apartment and found Kakashi and Inoichi already there, Kakashi clearly having helped himself to Jiraiya's pantry judging by the coffee stain on his mask, and Inoichi slumped over at the rickety dining table.
"Tsunade-sama." Inoichi greeted, while Kakashi inclined his head. "Will Jiraiya be joining us?"
"He's otherwise occupied." Tsunade replied, eyeing Kakashi absently, wondering if the man would be a pain about the vague answer. "Shikaku?"
"Here." The Nara called out, closing the front door behind himself, and Tsunade let the man slip further into the main room while she headed over to activate the silencing and security seals Jiraiya had put down back when they were still brats with what had felt like the weight of the world on their shoulders.
"Alright." Tsunade sighed, moving past Shikaku and collapsing onto the as-of-yet unclaimed sofa that was as lumpy as the last time Tsunade had sat on it almost three decades previous. "Progress reports, get to it."
"I'll start." Inoichi announced, moving to take the armchair to Tsunade's left, sinking into the seat with an exhausted sigh that Tsunade empathised with. "I have scoured the lists of KIA and MIA Nara, Yamanaka, and Akimichi from the last decade and cross-referenced them with the areas of paperwork Shikaku had suggested in Intel."
Tsunade sat up straighter, concerned when Inoichi didn't immediately elaborate.
"Of the seven hundred and eighty-three shinobi declared KIA or MIA across our respective Clans, twenty-two Yamanaka and five Nara have appeared as signatories on Intel paperwork after the dates of their disappearances." The Yamanaka finally declared, his face perfectly expressionless but his voice hard and bitter in a way Tsunade hadneverheard from the man before. "And those twenty-two Yamanaka have not miraculously returned to their families. I know because Ichecked."
"Ino-?" Shikaku began, but Inoichi barrelled over him, and that was another thing that had Tsunade's hackles up.
"Ibiki went to check for the same for T . He's not done, because T is largely made up of civilian born or Clanless shinobi, but the numbers are even higher there."
There was a moment of silence as they all absorbed Inoichi's announcement, the confirmation of the worst-case scenario they had suspected yet futilely hoped against leaving a bitter taste in Tsunade's mouth and a weight in her stomach, but she swallowed past her discomfort and nodded at the Nara.
"Shikaku. Tell me you have better news."
Shikaku sighed, pulling out his hairband and raking a hand through his hair in a gesture Tsunade had come to associate with bad news.
"Yes and no." The Nara admitted, and Tsunade felt that weight in her stomach becomeheavier."I have three ANBU and two chunin sensors capable of measuring the volumetric flow rate with the naked eye."
Shikaku leaned back against the wall, inhaling deeply, then delivered the clear 'but':
"I also have two additional witnesses who can corroborate Shimura stepping into Intel Archives during the time when the three of us know he was at the Council of Clans meeting."
Tsunade scowled, but they were all aware of Shimura's past-time, so she didn't understand why Shikaku looked so-
"In addition to that, I had a very pissed off Psych-nin currently waging guerrilla warfare with the Academy drop a list on my lap a few days ago." Shikaku continued, cluing Tsunade in as to the fact that the information about Shimura had been merely anintroduction."The list contained three years' worth of failed genin graduates, and where in the ranks they were slotted for upon failing their genin sensei's test."
This time, Inoichi also frowned, tilting his head at Shikaku and clearly trying to see what the Nara was getting at.
Shikaku didn't keep them waiting long.
"Of the one hundred and seventeen kids that failed to become genin, forty-seven of them never made it to the sector they were assigned to."
Tsunade did a double-take, because- "What do you mean, 'never made it'?"
Inoichi nodded, as if agreeing with her question, but Hatake had gone still as a statue.
"I mean that when I showed their names to those who were slated as their supervisors, they said those children had never arrived for their first day." Shikaku explained, but instead of horror at the announcement, Tsunade was filled with disbelief.
"Did nobody think to chase that up? Report it?" she demanded, but Shikaku shook his head.
"Some did." He revealed, though the quirk to his lip was more bitter than amused. "Except the records got disappeared."
"Missing persons report then." Tsunade shot back, because for all that the administrative system was a pain in her ass at times, it was alsoveryuseful for the purposes of creating paper trails. "Surely, if your kid doesn't come home, you're going to report it. We're notChigiri."
"The demographics of the failed genin were bleak." Shikaku said dully, the light in his eyes Tsunade was usually used to seeing dimmer than she was comfortable with. "We're looking at upwards of ninety percent of the missing kids being made up of civilian-born children or orphans of shinobi parents."
"The civilian born should've still beenreported." Tsunade argued, sitting up now, because it was becoming clearer by the second that Shikaku knew something that he wasn'tsharing.
"It's…not that easy." The Nara finally allowed, and Tsunade stilled.
"What the hell do you mean by that." she demanded, but the words were too flat to be a real question.
"The Civilians' Guard doesn't have as much power as they'd like." Shikaku explained on a sigh, ambling over from the wall to fall into a chair opposite Inoichi. "They can go door-to-door or put up missing persons posters, but that's about the extent of what they can do."
"Where the hell did Civilians' Guard come from? What happened to Konoha PD?" Tsunade asked, incredulous, not liking the way Inoichi, Shikaku,andKakashi flinched at her question.
"The same thing that happened to the Uchiha Clan." Shikaku revealed after a beat of silence, drawing another wince from Kakashi.
"And nobody thought to reinstate it?!" Tsuande all-but yelled, moderating her volume at the last second when she remembered that they were in the civilian district.
"The Nidaime gave the Uchiha Clan a monopoly on the maintenance of order and public safety." Kakashi muttered woodenly, speaking up for the first time since Tsunade had walked in. "Nobody but the Uchiha could have legally worked in the police department, evenifthe Uchiha hadn't been as exclusionary as they were."
At Inoichi's surprised stare that even Tsunade didn't miss, Kakashi shrugged uncomfortably. "Obito used to brag about it."
Tsunade let that sink in for a few seconds, then levelled the Uchiha with a disbelieving look. "So because my grand-uncle had a grudge against the Uchiha, we don't have anything approaching a police forcealmostfifty years after his death?"
"That's…unfortunately correct." Shikaku cut in, sparing Kakashi from the brunt of Tsunade's glare as she shifted it over to the Nara.
"Shikaku, this should've been on my desk the moment I took the hat." Tsunade informed the man flatly, knowing by his wince that he understood the severity of his fuck-up, so she switched her attention back to Kakashi. "Hatake. Your turn."
"Tenzo can't get into Danzo's office." The Copy-nin informed them dryly, perching on the arm of Jiraiya's ratty armchair. "Our working theory is that Danzo modified the seal on his door the moment Yamato was integrated into ANBU, and then didn't see fit to update Yamato's, or, more likely, didn't trust him enough to do so, when he was reinstated as ROOT."
"So we need to find another ROOT kid?" Tsunade asked rhetorically, but Kakashi nodded regardless, then rolled his shoulders, tilting his head as he considered his next words.
"Pretty much. And we might have another problem." He revealed, and Tsunade wondered whether it was naïve of her to hope that the Hatake would've been done after the Tenzo bombshell.
"I was talking to agent Stag in the hospital a few days ago. Standard hospital guard rotation, nothing too interesting. Except I mentioned to another ANBU acquaintance of mine that I was gladsomeonewas keeping up the tradition of being flippant to authority, and that I'd officially pass the baton of public menace to Stag if I ever saw him again." Kakashi slanted a look at Tsunade, adding a not-at-all subtle; "Since, you know, I'm not likely to be allowed back into the ranks anytime soon."
"No chance." Tsunade confirmed, not willing to let one of her best kill himself off in some nameless field just to escape the burdens of sensei-hood, and was treated to something as close to apoutas she'd ever seen from Kakashi.
"Well. Fox took issue with that. That, and the pronoun I'd used." The Copy-nin continued, as if he'd never paused. "Turns out, she'd ran a few missions with Stag over the last year. Except, her Stag was allegedly silent as the grave and akunoichi."
Tsunade's 'fuck off' slipped out before she could quite bite it back, but Shikaku was nodding, so she didn't feel too bad.
"I asked Bear." Kakashi retorted, rolling his neck. "Real Stag apparently had a Sandaime-approved deep-cover mission last year that he only recently got back from."
"So there's no way he would've been running ANBU missions, is what you're saying?" Inoichi checked, and Kakashi huffed a humourless laugh.
"Unless he somehow found a way to be in two places at once?" he asked rhetorically, and Tsunade knew the answer even before he finished with an emphatic; "No."
But Tsunade had already moved on, away from the implications of ROOT impersonating ANBU and onto solutions – "Do ANBU files contain photos?"
"No." Kakashi replied, and to his credit, he didn't seem at all surprised by the path Tsunade's thoughts had gone down. "But Bear has been Commander even before I joined. He's the one who sees every new recruit without a mask when they join."
"It's been over two decades." Tsunade pointed out when what the Hatake was implying registered, frowning at the man. "You can't honestly expect him to remember the face of everyone in the ranks."
At that, Kakashi just shrugged, seemingly over his unusually cooperative moment. "It'sBear."
Tsunade tilted her head, considering. "On a scale of one to ten, how likely is it that Bear will flip his shit if I ask him to go over the entire ANBU rota and make sure the agent behind the mask is the actual agent, and not a ROOT plant?"
Kakashi laughed quietly, but didn't hesitate with his response: "…Fifteen."
"Well, tough shit, because it's going to happen." Tsunade retorted, then pointed her finger at the Hatake. "Andyou'regoing to help coordinate."
"I'm technically not allowed in HQ." Kakashi pointed out, drawing a quiet 'And yet...' from Shikaku that Inoichi snorted at, but Kakashi clearly pretended not to hear.
"If you help Bear with this, I'm willing to let you go back to ANBU part-time after your kids make chunin." Tsunade bargained, and she reckoned that it was both funny and tragic how quickly Kakashi snapped to attention at that promise.
"When do I start?"
Jiraiya stared at the girl, waiting for her to deny it.
No such denial came.
"Spider and Rooster." he muttered woodenly, choosing to stick to one of the few things that had come out of the Hyuuga's mouth in the last five minutes that madesense, shoving all his personal shit to the back of his mind and focusing onproofanddataand things he could rationalise.
He flipped open the file Bear had needed Tsunade'sorderto surrender, keeping its contents away from the Hyuuga, and raised an eyebrow at the girl. "Know their given names?"
The Hyuuga blinked, and then-
"…Am I allowed to tell you?"
Jiraiya wasn't sure what his face did at the question, but if he'd needed any proof that the girl was part ofsomekind of Black Ops, he supposed he had it now. Luckily, upon seeing whatever expression her question had inspired, the girl explained without further prompting.
"Rooster is Yamanaka Tetsuya." She divulged quietly, and there was a flash of something like wistful fondness in her eyes as she shared the mask name, "And Spider- I never learnt their first name, but they were an Aburame."
Jiraiya flipped through the folder until he got to the designations with R and tried to distract himself with Bear's shitty sense of humour to have – allegedly – given anAburamethe codenameSpider.
Then, he stared, because- well.
Rooster:(Yamanka Tetsuya); joined[REDACTED,infiltration and interrogation, med-nin
No photo, but that was to be expected. He checked Spider too, just in case, and wished he was more surprised than he was upon findingAburame Shinzustaring back at him next to the codename.
But that didn't mean anything.
(it meant a whole lot, actually)
"You ever worked with Shiranui?" Jiraiya asked absently, going back to what had led to them finding themselves in this situation as he pretended to read through Spider's file.
"No." the girl replied, something almost sad in her voice now, the change startling enough to make Jiraiya glance up. "I didn't really…know him, then."
"So, what are you saying, really?" Jiraiya pressed, snapping Bear's precious folder shut and setting it aside as he redirected his full focus to the girl in front of him. "Are you older and under henge?"
"No." the Hyuuga denied, shaking her head as if the thought hadn't even occurred to her. And,fair,Jiraiya reasoned, the kid's jounin-sensei was a literalgenjutsu mistress– even when he'd asked, he hadn't actually thought that could be the case, but he was more interested in thereactionshis questions were getting.
"Then what?" he prodded, discomfited by the Hyuuga's calm exterior and giving in to his need topush. "Time-travel? Space-time fuinjutsu bullshit? Reincarnation?"
"I don'tknow, Jiraiya-sama." The girl repeated, a new stress on the words now even as her temper still refused to flare. If anything, rather than annoyed or exasperated, she sounded resigned. "I didn'tdoanything. I remember dying. I remember seeing Kakashi-sama's Sharingan-"
"Kakashi-sama?!" Jiraiya couldn't help but interrupt, the title momentarily jarring him from his resolution to grill the Hyuuga.
The girl blinked at him, as if surprised that this was what it took to gethimto react, then nodded slowly. "He was the Rokudaime."
And Jiraiya- Jiraiya felt his stomach twist uncomfortably, bile rising up his throat.
"Was Tsunade- Did Tsunade-?" he began, unsure how to verbalise the very real fear that suddenly gripped his heart, but the Hyuuga was either clairvoyant or Jiraiya was more transparent than he liked to believe.
"Tsunade-sama was alive." She assured him quietly, managing a soft smile that didn't reach her eyes. "But she never wanted kageship. She named Hatake-san Hokage after the War."
"War?" Jiraiya whispered, the reaction shocked out of him, as was the muttered, "Another?" that followed.
Then, he shook his head, dislodging the concept from his mind for the time being, and focused on the morepracticalpart of what the Hyuuga had mentioned. "You saw Kakashi's Sharingan?"
"Yes. In the Mangekyo stage." The Hyuuga confirmed, and Jiraiya stilled.
"Kakashi doesn't have that." he denied, the words ashen in his mouth, his knowledge of the Uchiha limited compared to his teammates but thorough enough to know that Kakashi not having the Mangekyo was a blessing in disguise.
Unfortunately, the Hyuuga just smiled sadly and shook her head.
"Notyet." She corrected quietly, and Jiraiya allowed himself five seconds to feel horrified before he locked up his personal feelings on the matter, threw away the key, and shifted tracks.
"See, none of what you're saying right now is actually discouraging me from the hypothesis that you're a plant." He told the Hyuuga conversationally, watching the way shetwitchedat the sudden shift and feeling almost meanly satisfied. "In fact, I think that Kakashi might've been right about you."
The Hyuuga's eyes widened, andthis– the first trace of real fear she'd shown since stepping foot in the blood room – was precisely the reaction Jiraiya had been looking for.
"Everything you're saying – it's nottoofarfetched." He continued, watching her closely now, and the Hyuuga seemed to realise this because every muscle in her face seemed to still in the effort to control her reaction. "Everyone with half a brain knows Hatake is an obvious candidate for the hat. And the existence of the secondary stage of the Sharingan wouldn't have been too unknown back when the Uchiha were around. Plus, out of all the Clans, the Hyuuga have never been too subtle about their rivalry with the Uchiha, so I wouldn't be surprised ifdaddy dearesthad told you about the second stage."
The girl stared at him then, and for long seconds, there was only silence. Then, she sighed, and her face lost the expressionless mask, shoulders squaring and gaze hardening as she met Jiraiya's eyes.
"I know that in the Second War, after your team fought Hanzo the Salamander," she began, and Jiraiya twitched, "you stayed behind, in Ame, to teach three orphans."
Jiraiya held his breath while the girl held his gaze, and she seemed to realise the edge her words had given her because she softened, ceding the advantage instead of pressing it, though it didn't stop her next words from hitting Jiraiya like a slap.
"Konan, Nagato, and while I never knew the third boy's name, he had the Rinnegan."
Jiraiyafroze.
He had only ever told Hiruzen-sensei about the Ame orphans, but he hadnevertold him about Yahiko's dojutsu. Despite Sarutobi's benevolence compared to the Nidaime, despite Jiraiya's fondness for his sensei, and despite Konoha's reputation as the 'soft' Village, Jiraiya had held no doubt that Hiruzen-sensei would've ordered for him to go back to Ame and kill Yahiko for the threat the boy posed.
"I know that Naruto is the Yondaime's son." The Hyuuga continued, as if unaware of the crisis Jiraiya was already going through because of her. "And…I know that Uchiha Itachi isn't fully to blame for the Uchiha Massacre."
When Jiraiya's gaze snapped to hers, the girl smiled humourlessly and added quietly, ruthless despite how softly the words were said, "And I know that you know that."
Jiraiya held her eyes for a moment, wondering what she saw when she looked at him, then gave in to the urge to close his eyes and rub his hand over his face.
He couldn't- not then, not right after the reminder of all his failures, to the Ame orphans, to Minato, to Itachi- hehadto shift tracks.
"How old were you when you died?" he asked, hand still covering his eyes, the change of subject far from subtle, but the girl didn't call him out on it.
"Twenty-two."
Jiraiya wanted to despair at the injustice of it all, at the old remaining while the young died young, but what he said was; "During the war?"
"No. After."
He bit back the sound that wanted to escape and managed a dull, "How?"
"I was reporting back from a track and retrieve mission with my team." The girl relayed quietly, as if recognising that Jiraiya needed a moment, and Jiraiya both loved and hated her just then. "Foreign assassins attacked Kakashi-sama in his office. I…stopped them."
Jiraiya tensed, then slowly straightened, dropping his hand from his eyes and regarding the girl evenly, the implications of what she was saying-
"…You gave your life for Kakashi's?"
He wasn't sure what it was, whether his almost robotic tone or the question itself, but the Hyuuga's genial expression faded into a severe frown and a stubborn set to her jaw.
"I did my duty to my Village and my kage." She replied, andoof,Jiraiya didn't have the time to unpack that mentality just then.
But it did reveal abigbutton for him to step on, and, well. Jiraiya had always been an opportunist.
"He threw you into T a few months ago." He pointed out, having been brough up to speed on the 'Hyuuga and the Kiri-nin' fiasco that had resulted in the Hyuuga being thrown into T before the unlikely proposition of a military alliance had saved her. "Didn't that sting?"
"Yes." The girl replied, her voice almost distressingly even, "But Tsunade-sama was right when she said that I would've been accused of treason if it had been anyoneotherthan Hatake-san."
Jiraiya stared at her for a few seconds, then snorted bitterly.
"You're too rational, Hyuuga. Even for twenty-two." He sighed, sounding world-weary even to his own ears. "How old were you when you realised you got a do-over?"
"…Twelve."
This time, there was no hiding the way that Jiraiyatwitched.
The Hyuuga inclined her head, as if aware of where his mind had jumped. "I became…aware of myself a few days before my Graduation."
"So that bullshit you told Kagane about prophetic dreams starting before your Graduation-" Jiraiya began, staring at the girl intently, and a distant part of him was amused at the way the girl flinched at the curse word, "-that wasn't all bullshit, was it?"
"I do get dreams of my time in ANBU." The Hyuuga replied quietly, meeting Jiraiya's eyes briefly, though her gaze skittered to the side when she added, almost a whisper, "Of the War, too."
"But they're not of your future, but of your past." Jiraiya realised, thinking out loud as the pieces came together in his mind. "Ididwonder how you snuck it past Kagane."
At the Hyuuga's visible confusion, Jiraiya laughed. "The woman is a walking lie-detector. Surely you knew that?"
"No." The girl denied, shaking her head, a small frown twisting her brow. "I don't know what Kagane-san did as a kunoichi."
Jiraiya wondered whether it was worthwhile to correct the girl to present tense; after all, Kagane Natsume was stillvery muchan active kunoichi, still terrorising friend and foe alike with her skills – but decided against it.
"So you've been conscious of yourself here for, what, two years?" he asked instead, getting a head tilt and a quiet 'more or less' in response. "And the Hyuuga revolution. Is that something you accomplished in your first go, too?"
The Hyuuga was very,verygood at controlling her reactions. Which was why it was almost laughably easy to spot the moment that control slipped up, her whole face screwing up, shoulders drawing up to her ears before she visibly forced herself to relax, though the pained grimace twisting her mouth remained.
"No." she bit out, and though it didn't sound like she was angry atJiraiya,the Hyuuga's usual mask was nowhere to be seen just then.
And Jiraiya- Jiraiya didn't want to pick fights withkids, but-
"Hit a nerve, have I?" he asked, aiming for idle and landing somewhere to the left, between genuine concern and open mockery.
The Hyuuga flinched again, then bit her lip, her shoulders rounding in, her hands twisting in her lap until Jiraiya heard her knuckles pop, and Jiraiya could only watch as that famous composurecracked.
"I was never the heir my Father wanted." The Hyuuga whispered, her eyes far away even as she seemed to dislocate one of her knuckles with how tightly she was wringing her hands. "I lost the spar with my sister the day after my Graduation. She became the de facto heir after that."
Jiraiya sucked in a breath, absorbing the new details and rearranging his picture of the girl before him to make itfit."And you were sealed?"
"No."
"So your trajectory here is, what-" Jiraiya demanded, torn between pushing further and letting the girl take the time she so clearly needed to process everything, "-disappointed ambition raring its head?"
The girl took a shuddering breath and blinked back to the present, and though nothing had outwardly changed about her, the look in her eyes was different in a way that made Jiraiya's skin break out into goosebumps.
"My cousin died in the War." The Hyuuga relayed, toneless and flat anddead."He died forme,and he died sealed."
While Jiraiya froze as he absorbed that, and as he processed the new information, the girl seemed to come back to herself some more, her fingers releasing their death grip and her eyes losing some of their emptiness.
She took another breath that trembled on the inhale, but as she let it out, she seemed almost back to normal as she admitted, "Not doing anything about the seal before his death was…one of my biggest regrets."
And Jiraiya- Jiraiya had nothing. No comeback, no snarky comment, no more buttons to push.
"…Fuck, kid." He finally groaned, raising a hand to rake over his hair as he studied the Hyuuga before him. "That's a lot of guilt to carry around with you."
The girl smiled humourlessly, but stayed tellingly silent, the lack of a response a response in and of itself.
"Tell me about yourself, from before." Jiraiya requested, half indulging a whim, half completely serious. At the Hyuuga's baffled look, he offered a faux-careless shrug. "I like 'spot the difference' games."
The girl stared at him for a beat, processing, then seemed to take his request at face value, because she slowly, hesitantly, began to do just that.
And as Jiraiya listened, his flippant explanation for the request only half-joking, every new piece of information the Hyuuga haltingly revealed made the puzzle of the girl sitting before him a tiny bit easier to piece together.
He listened to a story about a lonely childhood, though the Hyuuga never put it in quite so many words. Listened to a brief overview of the Academy at peace-time, something Jiraiya had never experienced but something that the Hyuuga before him now clearly appreciated. Listened to tales of what a genin not during wartime might get to do; listened as the girl talked about D-Ranks, her team's slow progression to C-Ranks, their failed first Chunin Exams, wincing despite himself at the manner in which the girl had lost her preliminary battle, no matter how much the Hyuuga tried to gloss over the details.
Finding out that the last Uchiha had defected in the Hyuuga's first life stung, but less for the defection itself and more because the knowledge of what the defection would've done to Kakashi's psyche. For as much as Jiraiya complained about the brat, Sakumo had been part of his and Tsunade's generation just as much as Kagane, not to mention Kakashi's role in Minato's life, and Minato had been as close to a son as Jiraiya would likely ever get. Realising that, for all that the Kakashi Jiraiya knew was a walking bag of triggers and trauma, it was stillto a lesser extentthan the Hatake in the Hyuuga's first life was- well. It was not apleasantrealisation.
Still, Jiraiya listened intently to the Hyuuga's summary of standard chunin tracker missions, to tales of teenagerhood on the active-duty roster interspersed with snippets of Clan life, the latter tinged by what must've been obvious mistreatment due to the Hyuuga's status as thefailedheir. But what stood out to Jiraiya, whatconcernedhim, if he allowed himself to name the emotion the Hyuuga's dispassionate retelling of her experiences in the Hyuuga Compound inspired, was that there was no anger, no resentment in the Hyuuga's eyes as she talked about it.
Sadness, yes, but resignation, too. Like she thought she'ddeservedthe treatment.
And then, the Akatsuki. The Kazekage's kidnapping, the Twenty Platoons.
War. Itachi dying at his brother's hand. Konoha levelled with the ground by Jiraiya's own student.
"The real leader-" the girl paused then, and for the first time, it didn't feel like she was struggling to get the words out, but rather, like she'd intentionally cut herself off.
"What?" Jiraiya pressed, snapping out of his daze when he realised that nothing more was forthcoming, frowning at the girl. "Who was it?"
And the Hyuuga sighed, and her next words shocked Jiraiya almost as much as everything that had come before: "Please don't tell Hatake-san."
"Tell himwhat?" Jiraiya demanded, growing worried now, and the Hyuuga met his gaze and, with a deep breath for courage, dropped her bombshell.
"The real leader was Uchiha Obito."
Jiraiyafroze.
That's not possible.
"Uchiha Obito has been dead for over fifteen years." Jiraiya relayed woodenly, not certain what he was feeling but convinced that it wasn't anythinggood.
"He survived." The girl merely replied, seemingly nonplussed, but there was a crease between her brows and a vicious glint in her eyes when she said it, and had Jiraiya been any less winded, he'd havewondered.
"The kid was crushed by aboulderin Iwa territory." Jiraiya denied, shaking his head, as if that could dislodge the thought of Obito having somehow survived.
But his body was never found…
No, Jiraiya couldn't go down that road. Besides- "Itachi said Uchiha Madara is the Akatsuki's leader."
The girl smiled humourlessly, shaking her head.
"I don't know when Uchiha Madara died." She divulged, and the answer to that should've beenwhen Hashirama defeated yet. "But it was Obito who created the Akatsuki."
Jiraiya just sat there as he tried to absorb that, wondering whether the knowledge the Hyuuga had just shared was a blessing or a curse. Wondering how far Obito must've fallen between from cheerful Uchiha Jiraiya had briefly known to a man who wanted to collect the bijuu liketrinkets.
"Here." The girl murmured, sketching something on an empty seal tag Jiraiya hadn't even seen her pull out. She extended the paper to Jiraiya, who took it with numb fingers, though he nearly dropped it at the girl's words: "This was Kakashi-sama's Mangekyo pattern. You can ask Uchiha Itachi-san if his 'Madara's' matched this."
"'Itachi-san'?" Jiraiya parroted, once more choosing to stick to the safe part of what the girl had said instead of all the implications her words brought about. "How unexpectedly respectful."
He hadn't meant it to be mocking, but he also hadn'tnotmeant it in jest, but the girl just shrugged, the motion so tiny Jiraiya nearly missed it, and her gaze drifted to the side briefly before it returned to Jiraiya's.
"He sacrificed a lot." She murmured by means of explanation, and Jiraiya stilled.
"For the Village, or his brother?" he prodded, because that was an important distinction, but the girl, rather tellingly, did not reply.
"Why did you not tell anyone about your situation?" he demanded a few seconds, anger and indignation safer than the horror that floated just beneath his awareness, as if waiting for the moment to overwhelm him. "Do you know how many people this could've helped? How many lives this knowledge could've saved?"
But the Hyuuga, instead of growing defensive, just nodded, and she suddenly seemed older than even Jiraiya. Seemed old like Mito-sama had been, in her last days. Old like she'd seen too much, lost too many, sacrificed even more.
"I know." She murmured, and there was no denial in her words, no artifice, not even an attempt at defending herself. "I know it was selfish of me."
"But?" Jiraiya pushed, because surely, there was abutthat the girl was building up to.
And the Hyuuga just sighed, meeting Jiraiya's searching gaze with her own exhausted one, and answered his question with a question of her own: "But who would've believed me?"
Jiraiya barely repressed a shiver.
The girl's life, her second one, was turning out to be a horror story. Which was ironic considering that in her first one, she'd lived through a war with literalbijuu and aliensin it.
You possess information that can save or doom your Village,he mused, watching the Hyuuga with new eyes,but you have to live with the knowledge that nobody will believe you.
What do you do?
"The Yamanaka. If you'd gone to him- Sarutobi-sensei would've at the very leastlistenedto you." Jiraiya found himself responding to what had likely been a rhetorical question, but he wasn't prepared for the brief flash of pity in the Hyuuga's eyes.
"Jiraiya-sama." The girl sighed, and though she didn't sound as long-suffering as Tsunade, there was a note to her voice beyond the regret that caused his attention tosharpen."I'm sorry."
"Why?" Jiraiya demanded, his guard up momentarily at the sudden apology. "Why are you sorry?"
"The Massacre, my uncle, ROOT…" The girl whispered, meeting and holding Jiraiya's gaze as if urging him to believe her. "Sandaime-sama most likely knew about it all."
When the full implications of what the girl was implying, but rather artfullynotsaying registered – that Sarutobi would've tried to cover for Shimura, if she'd gone to him – Jiraiya blanched. "Hiruzen-sensei would not havedisappeareda child!"
The Hyuuga didn't say anything, but the look in her eyes told Jiraiya that her silence wasn't because sheagreedwith him.
Jiraiya took a breath, hating how it shook on the inhale, hating how the Hyuuga clearly noticed. "God, you really don't pull your punches, do you?" he managed, bringing a hand to his chest as if that could somehow slow how fast his heart was beating.
"I'm sorry." The girl had the grace to murmur, but she didn't sound as sorry as Jiraiya wanted her to be. Hardly sounded sorry at all.
"So, what was your plan?" Jiraiya forced himself to ask, pushing everything else into a box he'd only open once he was away from the girl before him. "Once you realised you got a do-over. What was going through that head of yours?"
"To get rid of the Caged Bird seal." the Hyuuga replied simply, and Jiraiya was momentarily stumped.
"That's it?" he demanded, more than a little incredulous, staring at the girl in disbelief.
"That's it." she confirmed quietly, but her eyes were hard.
Jiraiya had had enough. "You hadall that knowledge-!"
"-it wouldn't have been helpful to anyone but you!" the girl cut him off, firmer than Jiraiya had ever heard her sound, though she somehow managed to avoid raising her voice.
She took a breath, visibly trying to get herself under control, then tried again.
"I don't know the dates most of the important things happen, or the places, or the people involved. Only the end results." She confessed, then her face twisted in a grimace that was so defeated that Jiraiya startled. "And I am but one chunin, Jiraiya-sama."
"…Are you sure there wasn't a life in which you lived to sixty?" Jiraiya couldn't help but ask, staring at the girl with horrified eyes. "Twenty-two- I was abratat twenty-two. Kakashi'sstilla brat and he's even older. Were you always like this?"
The girl blinked, some of that earlier expressionless mask reappearing as her shoulders drew up and she pulled back from Jiraiya, visibly uncomfortable. "I…don't quite know how to answer that."
"You don't have to." Jiraiya waved her off, but it wasn't out of the kindness of his heart. "Tell me everything you remember about the events of the next three years. The build-up to the War, if you will."
And as Jiraiya listened to the Hyuuga do just that, there was one thing in everything that the girl was saying that just…didn't sit right with him.
The discrepancy betweenthenandnow,contrasted with the girl's insistence thatshehad not changed, merely her goals.
But for Jiraiya, the Hyuuga Hinata he knew and the Hyuuga Hinata from the story the girl was telling him might've very well been two completely different people.
The girl he knew was quiet, yes, but notshy,not anymore, not when it mattered. A shy girl would not have cornered Jiraiya in a coffee house and announced plans of revolution. A shy girl would not have held his gaze and told him in not so many words that she viewed the Hokage's orders more asguidelinesthan commands. A shy girl would not have been able to manipulate Hyuuga Hiashi, Nara Shikaku, or evenJiraiya himselfinto doing her bidding.
And while she was similarly far from cruel or mean as before, she was ruthless in the way that the girl in the story of her supposed first life hadn't been. Ruthless not in battle, at least as far as Jiraiya knew, but ruthless in how she saw the line connecting A to B, motive to means, goal to execution, and didn't care about anything but the solution. Ruthless in how she forwent reporting everything she knew, sharing all her future knowledge with the Sandaime or T or even her sensei and probably saving dozens, if not hundreds of lives in the meantime, all because she couldn't risk anything getting in her way of her goal of destroying the Caged Bird seal.
And physically- while Jiraiya had seen glimpses of the stutter here and there, had seen the Hyuuga's gaze skitter after prolonged eye-contact, it was nothing on the girl from the story. The Hyuuga before him had a spine of steel and looked at him with ice in her eyes when their gazes met, and all Jiraiya could think as he held the eye-contact was wrong, wrong,wrong-!
-or maybe that was merely the price she'd paid.
She came back, yes. She got her do-over, she got her second chance, got her opportunity for atonement.
But she came backwrong.
Hinata got out of the blood room on shaky legs and with trembling hands, and it was only when the chill of the night air hit her face that the full extent of what had just occurred sank in.
Jiraiya hadn't fully believed her, but he hadn't sent her to T or, worse yet, disposed of her outright. That was…that was far more than Hinata had ever dared hope for, when she'd briefly entertained the notion of sharing what she knew about the future.
Her legs took her out of the ruins of the Senju Compound, but her knees gave in a few metres into the treeline of the forest, and Hinata didn't even try to fight gravity as she came down. She landed roughly on her hands and knees, her breath rattling out of her at the impact, and then it was as if a dam had burst, and every fear and worry she'd repressed since she'd first woken up ten years in the past began to try and claw its way up her throat.
She choked on a sob, desperately gasping for breath as her lungs burnt and her vision blurred with tears, but beneath the panic at not being able to draw breath, the catharsis at finally coming clean was already settling in, loosening the muscles she hadn't even realised were tense, and the pain of losing the knots of tension in her back and shoulders was one she welcomed with open arms.
So she cried, both in anguish and relief, cried until her throat began to hurt and her arms started to tremble from the effort of holding her up, cried in a way she hadn't allowed herself to cry since Neji's death-
-the sound of a twig snapping made Hinata tense, the movement all the more painful on her freshly loosened muscles. When she dared glance up, tears and snot running down her face in a picture of weakness she would've rather never shown, she came face to face with three inquisitive dogs only barely held back from lunging at her by their scruffs.
"We really have to stop meeting like this." Hana told her wryly, visibly straining with the effort of keeping the Haimaru still, and Hinata laughed, the sound startled out of her, her throat feeling like it was lined with sandpaper but her laughter too sudden to stop.
Then, it was as if that was the cue for the Haimaru to start wriggling for real, because she was suddenly pushed off balance when one of the dogs escaped Hana's grasp and barrelled into her, the other two following after Hana's bitten-off shout of warning, and Hinata found herself on her back on the forest floor with three snouts in her face and coarse-warm tongues at her cheeks and neck.
"I am," Hana called, and though Hinata couldn't see her over the amount ofdogcovering her vision, she felt the older girl step closer, as if in an attempt to rescue Hinata, "sosorry-!"
But Hana cut off, and Hinata became aware of another sound coming from nearby: a quiet, breathless, hiccoughing, childish laughter, almostgiggling.
It took her another few seconds to realise that the sound was coming fromher.
Almost as soon as the realisation registered, the sound stopped, Hinata's shock at still being capable of producing such a sound overwhelming her mirth. Hana moved to begin dragging the Haimaru away at the same time as Hinata sat up and began gently but firmly pushing the dogs away from her face, belatedly trying to salvage whatever remained of her dignity.
"Here," Hana offered as she held out a weapons-polishing cloth, a clear peace offering at the sight of Hinata's tear, snot, and slobber-covered face, "it's clean, I haven't used it since I washed it."
Hinata accepted the cloth gratefully and began carefully cleaning her face, wincing at the state Hana had found her in. But the other girl didn't have any judgement in her eyes when Hinata looked back up at her, having deemed herself as clean from tears, snot, and slobber as the cloth could get her, and Hinata knew that there were far worse people who could've found her then than Inuzuka Hana.
"You okay, Hinata-chan?" Hana checked, and Hinata's breath caught in her chest.
It was that same care that had endeared Hinata to the older girl in her first life, and even here, when she had much more of a relationship with the Inuzuka than she'd had before, Hana's easy kindness still surprised her at times.
"I will be, Hana-sa-Hana." Hinata replied quietly, catching herself at the last moment and getting a pleased smile from the other girl. "Thank you."
"Wanna come over?" Hana asked as she held a hand out, and when Hinata accepted it, hauled Hinata to her feet. "Your cousin and sister are still at ours, not to mention that Kiba has been worried sick about you since he got back."
"How is he?" Hinata found herself asking as she unconsciously fell into step with Hana, the Haimaru racing off ahead of them.
"I feel like you might have more luck at getting an honest answer out of him than me." Hana replied on a sigh, and there was unexpected anguish in her gaze before she glanced back at Hinata. "I miss the brat that used to wear his heart on his sleeve, you know? Any idea where he went?"
And Hinata- Hinata knew where that Kiba had gone.
To the same place as Shino's standoffishness, as Kurenai's desire to keep them at arms' length, as Hinata's own stutter and aversion to violence.
The Kiba who wore his heart on his sleeve had been buried around the same time as Team Eight had faced the Akatsuki, four years too soon.
All because of Hinata.
Her fault.
"I-I'm sorry." Was all she managed, aware that far too much time had elapsed between Hana's likely rhetorical question and her answer, but Hana just sighed, shooting her a small, exhausted smile.
"Yeah. Me too, Hinata-chan." She murmured, though she reached out and threaded her arm through Hinata's, tugging her closer to her side even as her smile faded to something small and melancholy. "Me too."
And Hinata could do little but let Hana lead her to the Inuzuka Compound, let herself be treated like family, let Hana show her to Kiba's room regardless of the fact that Hinata could make the trip up the stairs with muscle memory alone. She let Hana squeeze her shoulder fondly and shoot her a smile that Hinata didn't know what she had done to deserve, before the older girl disappeared into her own room for the night.
As Hinata let herself into Kiba's room, taking care to not make too much noise, she was surprised to find two futon already laid out beside the bed, Shino spread out on the one closer to Kiba, Akamaru at his feet.
"Was wonderin' how long you were gonna take to show up here." Kiba murmured sleepily, dropping his head over the edge of the bed to eye Hinata upside-down, though there was only fondness in his voice. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Something like that." Hinata murmured as she shucked off her jacket and folded it over the back of the desk chair, tugging off her trousers next and draping them over her jacket. Though she was leaps and bounds more confident than her original thirteen-year-old self had been, her t-shirt was oversized enough to preserve some modesty,andher exhaustion made her usual inhibitions seem smaller, Hinata was still grateful when Kiba tossed some loose shorts her way, touched beyond what she could articulate at the fact that she hadn't even had toask.
"Yeah." Kiba muttered in response to her non-answer, shuffling until his head was properly on the pillow once more, though he shifted closer to the edge of the bed, the sudden space between him and the wall a clear invitation. "There's a lot of that going around."
"Areyouokay, Kiba-kun?" Hinata murmured in turn, accepting the wordless invitation as she stepped over Shino's futon, ignored the empty one, and crawled over Kiba's legs and into the space on the bed he'd left free for her. She curled up until she was on her side, her back to the wall and her head on the other half of Kiba's pillow, and as she settled, the last of the tension that had been clinging to her musclesfinallybled out.
"Eh." Kiba sighed, and Hinata felt more than saw him raise a hand and wiggle it from side to side before he let it drop onto his stomach. "Shaken more than anything. Was worried 'bout you, too. They had to chase us out of your room."
"I know, sensei told me." Hinata whispered, reaching out and curling her fingers over Kiba's wrist, feeling how quick his pulse was despite his seemingly relaxed sprawl. "I'm okay, though. I'll be fine."
Kiba took a shuddering breath, and though he didn't reply, Hinata felt the mattress shift. Then, Kiba was moving his arm until he could interlace his fingers with hers, his grip tighter than he normally allowed, sharpened nails digging into the back of Hinata's hand in a way that was probably going to leave marks, but Hinata didn'tcare.
"You better be." Kiba breathed after a few seconds, almost when Hinata thought he wasn't going to reply at all. "Shino can call me a wuss if he wants, but you guys are family. Don't wanna lose ya."
"Not a wuss." Shino muttered suddenly, sounding barely conscious but coherent, and Hinata saw the way Kiba's teeth flashed in the sliver of moonlight as he smiled at Shino's words. "Not this time."
"Love ya too, man." Kiba whispered back, getting a grumbled 'fuck off' that had him shaking with silent laughter, and his desperate grip on Hinata's hand loosened a little.
"It'll be okay." Hinata murmured, squeezing Kiba's hand gently as she allowed her own eyes to finally fall shut, her breathing evening out. "We'llbe okay."
She wasn't going to make promises she couldn't keep, knew what an impossible task it would be to eventrygiven what awaited them all, but just because her priorities were different in this life, it didn't mean thateverythingchanged.
Much like before, there was shockingly little Hinatawouldn'tdo to keep her team happy and healthy andtogether.
No matter the cost.