Epoch - Chapter 3
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto, blah blah blah. You know the drill.
Thank you, Celia, for being the best beta everrrrrr!!
I climbed up a mountain, and looked off the edge
And all of the lies that I never have led
Is one where I stayed with you, across the sea
I wonder do you still think of me
The Ocean, The Bravery
Epoch Chapter 3.
How did I get to this point? Hinata thinks to herself as she stares into the hard, pupil-less eyes of her father.
Being in Hiashi's presence effortlessly unsettles Hinata's nerves.
"Hinata." The three syllables boom like never before, and she flinches. Gone is the strong, confident kunoichi who gained the Hokage's respect.
How easily Hinata regresses in her father's company.
How could I allow myself to get here again? She asks herself detachedly.
So Hinata closes her eyes, and remembers.
"Hanabi told me a lot today," Hinata says to Neji as she slowly wipes Eiji's wounds with a wet towel. She frowns as she watches the rapid rate at which the towel absorbs Eiji's blood. Hinata turns to the side and soaks the bloodied towel in a pail of fresh water.
"Hn." He pretends to be completely fixated on the transformation of the freshwater as it turns into a cloud of murky red.
"You didn't tell me they activated your seal."
"You didn't ask."
If Hinata were forward enough--or upset enough--she would have distinctly rolled her eyes and demanded to know everything, but she isn't. So she settles for a sigh, and a soft, "I see."
Neji frowns slightly as he watches her petite shoulders slump with disappointment. She's disappointed in his secrecy, in his carelessness, in him, and he hates it.
"It would have only pained you to hear it," he says grudgingly, eventually, as way of apology. It hurts his pride a little to apologize, but it pains him more to disappoint the only woman who really honestly matters.
Hinata continues wiping the blood from Eiji's back religiously. She turns, and wrings the towel. Her eyes follow the path of her younger cousin's blood, as it drips from the towel and into the pail and down, down, into the water. "Yes," she replies caustically. "Leaving me with the terrible ache of ignorance is much more painful than the activation of your curse seal."
Neji says nothing.
Hinata sighs, already regretting her sharp words. She looks up from Eiji's back. "I'm sorry; I was being selfish. But, Neji-nii-san…you don't need to protect me from the truth. My ignorance…the level of my ignorance is unforgivable."
Her voice is far away. Mechanically--but still very gently--she begins to slather restorative lotions to their younger cousin's back.
"Had your ignorance been converted to knowledge, it would have produced the same inaction. Nothing would have changed." The words are spoken frankly, and without apology. The bluntness of her cousin's simultaneous rebuke and attempt at consolation force Hinata out of her guilt trance.
"What?" Hinata falters, barely fathoming the bitterness behind the almost cruelly spoken admission.
Neji shakes his head. He has never been totally honest with Hinata about her disownment, but if she wished to release any veils of disillusionment, it would be his duty to relinquish them. "What could your knowledge have solved? Your rejection of the family ensured that you could not do anything to help. What could you do to stop the curse seal activation? What could you do to stop Eiji's punishment? Nothing. You forfeited the right to interfere two years ago."
Hinata looks downward, her vision beginning to be blurred by tears of anger, indignity, guilt, and a thousand other emotions. Did he think she left on a whim?
"Do you understand, Hinata-sama? You have no power to change anything unless you come back."
"And how do you suppose I do that?" Hinata asks quietly. "Would you like me to bribe the elders with some tea and biscuits?"
"There is no need for sarcasm," Neji snaps. He can feel his anger rising steadily and briefly he wonders how Hinata so easily knows which buttons to push to get him angry.
"Really? Because I cannot see how I can skip into the estate and claim my rightful throne back." The last three words are barely laced with sarcasm but Neji glares at his cousin anyway.
"It would obviously take more than that, Hinata-sama," he grits out.
"Nothing would convince the elders to allow me to return," Hinata says, turning to Eiji and dismissing the conversation before tempers flew. Her own was rising alarmingly and she wished to avoid the confrontation. "Hanabi is next in line, and she will make a great leader."
Neji's fist pounds the wooden coffee table. "Can you not see through your own foolishness?"
If Neji did not previously hold all of Hinata's attentions, he definitely has them now.
"What foolishness--
"Can you not see how desperately the Hyuuga are in need of you?--No," he says, interrupting himself. "How could do, when you deliberately ignore all the signs in front of you?"
Hinata silently observes her cousin. Anger holds her deeply, and she waits a minute before she speaks. "This will be the last time we speak of the matter."
Her cousin's eyes narrow slightly, but he grits his teeth and sucks it up.
"Fine. Then listen to me, Hinata-sama, and listen to me well: the Hyuuga will never pick itself up without you and your kindness. The punishment Eiji has taken is a result of your lack of presence in the Clan. It is what I have to say, and it is what you need to acknowledge. Your presence is vital."
"I have told you repeatedly that you overestimate my abilities. I cannot return."
"You cannot, or you will not?" he challenges.
"Both."
The cousins eye each other, each tired of the repeated conversation and the other's stubbornness. After a silence that lasts for what seems like eternity, Neji relaxes from his previous tense position and leans against the lavender wall.
"What would it take for you to come back?"
Hinata looks into Neji's eyes with surprise, somewhat startled by the weary undertones in his voice.
He's given up, she realizes with a jolt.
She wonders why she isn't happier.
Hinata moves to an adjacent loveseat and sags into it.
"I don't know."
She looks down, unable to meet the intensity of his eyes any longer. Murderer, she reads in his gaze clearly. You're murdering your family. "I'm sorry," she barely whispers.
When she looks up he's gone.
"Hinata," a warm, loving voice calls to her.
Hinata swivels and runs towards the voice as fast as her stubby little legs will take her. "Mommy!" she fiercely hugs the woman's legs; they are as high as she can reach.
"Hinata," her mother reproaches gently. "You know your father doesn't approve of you calling me that."
"Mother," Hinata corrects herself, looking up into her mother's similar white eyes.
Hanae looks down and almost cries with bitterness. How can such an innocent, loving child become the Clan Head? Hinata's mother cradles her and kisses the top of her head. "I'm sorry," her mother whispers, nearly inaudibly. But Hinata, as the heiress to the Hyuuga clan, has started shinobi training, and has heard it.
"For what?" she asks with confusion.
"Your burdens," Hanae replies with an honesty that shakes three-year-old Hinata. As if realizing what she is doing, Hinata's mother laughs softly to break the tense moment. "But, Hinata, you will overcome." And she kisses her daughter's cheek and says, "Hinata-sama."
What?
"Hinata-sama."
"Mmpwhat…"
"Wake up. It's an emergency."
"Emergency?" Hinata replies groggily, waking up from her nap on the couch. What was going on? Didn't Neji leave the house? What time was it? What time did he get back? Wasn't he very angry with her?
"Yes. Eiji isn't waking up when I call to him. His chakra is weakening."
"What?" she asks in disbelief, the nap-induced haziness cut immediately by his words. She activates her own byakugan, and to her shock and horror, she sees Eiji's blue chakra slowly ebbing away.
Hinata, momentarily speechless, just watches Eiji's life force slowly ebb away. I don't understand, I don't understand…
"Hinata-sama!" Neji urges.
It's all she needs to break the spell. "We need to get him to the hospital now!"
Neji nods and scoops their younger cousin in his arms protectively, trying not to touch the open wounds. After quickly forming some seals, Neji disappears with Eiji in a cloud of smoke, Hinata in tow.
By the time she arrives at the hospital, the nurses already have strapped Eiji to a stretcher and are rushing him to the emergency room.
"God," Hinata whispers, wringing her hands together with so much force Neji has to hold them still.
"He'll be okay," Neji says to her briefly, still holding her hands down; she could have broken her fingers if she had kept wringing them in the same fashion. He leads her to a cushioned chair and sits her down gently. Neji relaxes slightly in the seat next to her when he hears her breathing slow a little.
"I can't do this," she mutters to herself, after a few minutes of fidgeting.
"What's wrong?" he immediately responds .
"…Bathroom," she finally comes up with. Hinata doesn't want Neji to know the extent of her worry, though she's pretty sure it's obvious.
He looks at her carefully. She knows that he knows she's lying.
"Be right back," she mutters. She can't sit patiently like him and wait for news of Eiji. Hinata gets up quickly. Before Neji can protest, Hinata shoots out the waiting room. Her anxiety clutches and twists at her stomach and all she can do is try to walk it off. However it doesn't recede at all and she feels it slowly working up her insides. Hinata tries to take a few deep breaths, and her anxiety cedes a few moments.
She walks a little more slowly, taking her time and breathing deeply. In and out. In, and out.
Instead of going to the bathrooms like she'd promised her cousin, Hinata walks past the operating rooms. The nurses don't pressure her to show ID, knowing that she is one of the Hokage's students. She looks in each room, hoping to find any sign of a healthier Eiji. As she goes from room to room searching through windows, she sees one room after another filled with grieving families. The image of one sobbing mother over a child's bed penetrates Hinata's mind and her heart pumps faster and her breathing becomes erratic and shallow.
She needs to see how Eiji is doing.
Hinata begins a slow trot down the hall, attempting to calmly looking through each window. In the back of her mind she knows she should just ask the receptionist which room Hyuuga Eiji occupied, but she can't pay attention to anything logical right now. By the time she reaches the end of the hallway, she's sprinting frantically and the world is moving so quickly and she can't keep up, and there's death everywhere, and FUCK, she doesn't know what she'll do if Eiji-if Eiji-
She stops suddenly.
I'm going to throw up.
Hinata pushes aside frazzled nurses and ignores the high-pitched protests that follow her as she rushes inside the nearest bathroom. She slams open a stall door and hurls into the toilet. Fat tears roll down her cheeks and fall into the vomit filled toilet. The pungent odor of her bile forces Hinata to gag, and she vomits again. She feels her hair being pulled back from her face and when she's finished vomiting, she looks up at her savior.
"Hinata-sama."
She can tell from the slightly raised veins in his face that Neji had recently activated his byakugan.
Hinata sags against the stall wall and watches Neji flush the toilet with his foot. He hands her a paper towel to wipe her face and helps her get up.
"You're in the men's bathroom," he says to her quietly. Hinata warily looks around. Upon seeing the urinals on the wall, she groans. She has a terrible habit of embarrassing herself. "There was no need for you to be so upset," Neji continues. "I told you he would be okay. If you wanted to know more I would have told you that Eiji was in no immediate danger."
"Then why was his chakra dying?" Hinata shoots back weakly.
Neji shrugs. "The nurse said it was a primary reaction. If we'd brought him later it could have been worse."
She heaves a sigh. "What a scare."
"No. That isn't what should worry you."
Hinata looks at his serious face, unease gripping her chest.
"Hiashi-sama is here."
"What?" she huffs, disbelievingly. How much worse could this night get? "Are you kidding me?"
Neji shakes his head.
"So what are we going to do? I can't leave the hospital, I need to wait until Eiji is really okay, but I don't want to see him, I can't see him--
"Hinata-sama." The gravity in her cousin's voice stops her monologue. "It's useless to try and avoid him. He knows everything."
"What do you mean, 'everything'?"
The door swings open at that moment and Hinata' stomach drops. A man with pale skin and long, dark hair backs into the bathroom but when he whirls around, she sighs with relief. It isn't Hiashi.
The long-haired man looks at Hinata like she's touched in the head. "This is the men's bathroom."
"We know that," Neji snaps, his anger flaring dangerously. The man's eyes widen as he takes in the image of Hinata in Neji's arms and he winks with no discretion whatsoever. He swings the door open, snickering on his way out.
Hinata would have blushed, and maybe she would have even fainted at the man's obvious insinuations if her mind wasn't so preoccupied.
"Idiots aside," Neji growls, what little patience he had quickly spent. "It's hard to say how much exactly your father knows. Did you think he stopped keeping tabs on you once you left?" Neji shakes his head. "He knows about Hanabi-sama and Eiji coming over. He knows about Eiji's wounds. And now he knows that Eiji's in the hospital being treated in the emergency room."
"How does he know all this?" desperately demands Hinata.
Neji, to Hinata's surprise, looks a little sheepish. "He may have felt my byakugan. I went looking for you when you didn't come back. I knew something was wrong. I activated my byakugan in my…haste. Hiashi-sama quickly found me after."
There's silence for a minute. Thoughts race through Hinata's mind. What is going to happen? Does he want to see me? Why is he here in the first place? Is Hanabi okay? Or is it his health that isn't right?
Hinata pales as the thoughts take a turn for the worse and she shakes in Neji's arms. Upon seeing her distraught expression and pallor, Neji allows his lips to whisper across Hinata's temple. He wants to ready her for his next bout of information and waits for Hinata to calm a little before dropping the bomb.
"He wants to see you."