Family Traits [Hanabi & Hiashiko]

[white_sky_eyes]

[dated back to the night Hiashiko is brought before the Hyuuga Elders to explain how the hell her twin is still alive]



For most of his life Hanabi had been a light sleeper, the kind of kid who woke up if somebody dropped a pencil down the hall and three doors along. It hadn't made life easy for his mother when he'd been a little boy, but now that he was older it was inconceivable that he'd be anything less than sure to wake if something was out of the ordinary. He was always trying so hard to keep an eye on the Hyuuga he'd one day be charged with leading, so it made sense he'd be awake and on his feet if he heard a sneeze in the night.

Not tonight, it seemed, however. Truth be told, Hanabi had been so anxious about his cousin, about his family, about his inglorious and highly traumatic first exposure to many dead people, and about other things he had no business even knowing about, that he'd barely been sleeping at all. A fact that had been ameliorated greatly by Suzumo's attempt at impromptu counseling a week earlier, but which meant that when he did sleep Hanabi crashed like a wagon into a wall.

Stuff went everywhere and the wheels came off, basically.

Moonlight lit the scene, bed covers bunched up under the open window's sill, clothes from the day uncharacteristically flung about the floor, cat toys casting odd shadows into the corners and in the bed under the window there was Hyuuga Hanabi. Possibly one of the most neurotically tidy boys in Konoha, splayed half in his bed with his arms and leg sticking off the side, one hand caught in the headband of a pair of heavy duty DJ headphones attached to the sound system he'd been allowed to use on the proviso that the clunky headphones were used too.

They were quietly humming a steady stream of rhythm & bass into the air, and you could almost imagine that the two little cats curled up on the bed with their human pet were purring along in their sleep. Hanabi, for his part, was so completely out for the count that somebody could have snapped the headphones onto his ears and cranked the bass to eleven and he might have turned over. Maybe.

The council of Elders had delivered her their verdict, and Hiashiko found herself sickly grateful that she had not needed the kunai tucked away in her left sleeve. But there was no time for more than a pause for gratitude--before they could reach him, she needed to talk to Hanabi.

She went straight to his room, letting the Elders disperse in small groups, bickering over the final details. Undoubtedly they would continue for the next several weeks, but what mattered now was to let Hanabi know, from her, not from them, the most important details.

It was late, yet Hiashiko thought her son would be awake. She was a little surprised that he did not answer her first, nor her second knock. If she focused, she could feel him beyond the door, so he was inside. Perhaps he was listening to that music of his.

She opened the door and slipped inside her son's normally tidy room. The cats were up and made little noises at her as she shut the door. Hiashiko brushed them aside and went to her son's bedside. "Hanabi," she said quietly. He looked so small in the moonlight. "Hanabi, wake up." She shook his shoulder gently as she spoke.

Her son made a small incoherent noise and woke up, white eyes bleary in the darkness and pale face marked with creases from where he'd been pressing his cheek into the mattress. Hanabi took a moment to realize his mother was there, and another to realize that it was the middle of the night.

He blinked and pulled himself up to sitting quickly as he could, fingers flinching open to drop his headphones with a clatter of plastic on floorboards that he didn't really hear. Haruhi and Hiroki silently eyed the pair of them, and the tinny whisper of music from the headphones seemed to vanish. Hanabi looked up at her, eyes meeting hers, and his eyebrows knit together in sudden concern. "Mother? What's wrong?"

Something was wrong. He didn't just need to know she was here, now, for proof of that fact.

Hanabi was a perceptive boy, and later Hiashiko would be proud of him. "Do you remember, what Nejiko said during her first chuunin exam?" Hanabi had been so full of questions afterward (after Otogakure and Sunagakure were finally driven away), it had taken hours for her to answer them all to his satisfaction. But he had been seven then, and he was thirteen now, and time had a way of eroding all but the strongest memories.

An awkward chill went down the back of Hanabi's neck. He remembered what Nejiko had said during her first chuunin exam. There had also been both an invasion of the village and a mercifully short international war to deal with that day, but it was Nejiko and his mother and Hinaji that Hanabi thought of first and most when he considered it. After the immediate aftermath, when he'd done nothing but need answers from his mother about why it was so suddenly apparent that there was something wrong with Nejiko, and wrong with much more, the whole thing had never been mentioned in his earshot again.

Hanabi had never met his mother's twin sister, but he remembered the first time he heard her name. "She said you got her mother killed, because she had to go into the Branch and you were in the Main House," he said quietly, adding immediately and emphatically- "Which wasn't true. But she didn't know any better."

Hanabi, personally, couldn't imagine anything worse to be accused of. He frowned up at his mother in the darkness, and let the informality of the situation they were in really strike him.

What was going on? Why did she look so... so urgent and small? His fingers twitched, wanting to reach out and touch her for a moment.

She wasn't certain she could name the emotion she felt as Hanabi quickly came to her defense. It was somewhere between amusement and gratitude and with something motherly thrown in for good measure. "There was something else Nejiko didn't know, Hanabi. No one else knew but me."

Hiashiko took a deep breath. "I betrayed the clan, Hanabi--"

"No you didn't," Hanabi didn't even think about it, or about the fact that he was interrupting his mother and the head of the clan. He simply flat out denied it. She could have been standing there drawing him diagrams, or presenting him with photographic evidence, and he'd have denied it. So far as Hanabi was concerned, his mother was the Hyuuga Clan.

So there was no way that could happen. He simply paused and waited for her to extend her metaphor or whatever the hell she was saying, make herself clear.

Hanabi chose not to focus on the fact that never in his entire life had his mother failed to make herself clear.

Somehow telling Hanabi was so much harder than telling the Elders. There, only her life was truly in danger, but here...

"Hanabi, please listen." Hiashiko rarely said please to anyone--she had no need to normally--and she hoped he would listen to her. She was too tired to argue with him, to convince him after everything that had happened this day. "My sister volunteered to die in my place." She laced her fingers together. "Instead of letting her die, I gave her a drug that simulated death in the hopes that she would be able to escape after the Kumogakure delegation left the village." The next words came out slow and heavy. "I gave them a live Hyuuga."

Silence met that confession, heavy and suffocating. Hanabi didn't blink, didn't twitch, and didn't say any of the hundred things that flooded into his mind as he struggled to sort them into their most important order. His mother had lied. To the Clan and to Sandaime-sama. She had broken ranks over the defining trait of their blood - the secrecy of their eyes. Which meant...

Hanabi's hand went out, and like he hadn't since he was a toddler he held his mother's hands. Her intertwined fingers were stiff and rigid, and his hand was far larger than he'd realized it would be next to hers. With her hands together, he could almost cover them both, so he tried.

"What's happening? Who found out?" He didn't mean it, but his voice took on an edge that made him sound so much like her. Because if she was telling him, it was because somebody knew, and she was in trouble.

Hanabi wasn't naive enough to think his mother would come to him for help, but he'd be damned and dead before he let anybody do something to her. She was his mother.

When had Hanabi's hands gotten so large? For a moment, Hiashiko was reminded of her husband and the way he held her hands. She chased the thought away. At least Hanabi wasn't insisting she had done no wrong anymore. But she was disproportionately grateful that he seemed so concerned about her.

"Tsunade-sama found out," she answered. "Hizashiko...she's alive. She's back, in the village, under the Hokage's care. I verified her identity this morning." Hanabi's hand was warm. "I told the Elders tonight."

Later Hanabi might feel guilty for the fact that, in the face of the news that his mother's sister, Nejiko's mother, his aunt, was alive, the reaction he had was preparing for calamity. He still didn't believe his mother had done anything wrong (saved her sister's life when the cowards in the Elders ranks wanted to throw her to the wolves; Hanabi would have started a civil freaking war in her place) and that only made it harder to see her so...

Threatened. That was what this looked like on his mother's face. His fearless, peerless, and often impossible mother had never looked so much unlike the image he had in his mind of her. Hanabi swallowed, and didn't stop his eyes from darting quickly over what parts of her he could see. His mother didn't have the caged bird, but that didn't mean the Elders wouldn't have done something.

"They didn't hu--," he stopped. The word wouldn't come out. "They didn't do anything to you?" He wouldn't know what to do if they had, besides trying to kill them.

She had escaped physical harm, and Hiashiko prayed Hanabi wouldn't notice the kunai tucked away in her sleeve. She should have taken it out before coming here. Not that it would likely matter--it was dark, he wouldn't use the Byakugan, and for now, one of his hands was resting on her interlocked fingers.

"There were consequences, Hanabi." She prayed he wouldn't react badly, but this son of hers was a little more volatile than she knew what to do with. "I've been stripped of a great deal of my power, and much of this is going to impact you." Hiashiko studied her youngest son's face. "Forgive me."

Confusion crossed Hanabi's face, and then anger put a bright harshness in his eyes. He lifted his hand up from where his fingers had been clenching into the mattress and definitively held his mother's hands in both of his. He wasn't even thinking about it, he was just doing it: being strong for his mother.

"No," he said quietly. "I'm not forgiving you, there isn't anything to forgive. I'm glad your sister is home, and we have another Hyuuga to take care of." He frowned determinedly, and watched his mother's face, wondering why he didn't see the same anger or obstinance he knew was in his. Hanabi knew he'd always been the child more like his mother, and given that he'd grown up always at her side it wasn't a surprise... and it was starting to infuriate and frighten him that the Elders had done something to change her so much.

"What happened? What do I need to do?"

Hanabi's actions only beckoned her memories of her husband. How many times had Hiroshi held her hands like this and given her comfort or advice? For a fleeting moment, her throat ached, but she turned her mind away from the sensation before she could name it.

"The Elders haven't completely decided on all the details yet." Other than she wasn't to be executed at this time. "What they have decided on for certain is that when you come of age, I will step down. Much of your education will be overseen by them--" with the exception of the things only she knew and could teach "--and my own movements, power, and freedom will be restricted." Though how much was yet to be squabbled over by the council.

For now...they must wait. And endure.

Tension was starting to coil around Hanabi's ribs like a snake as the situation they both found themselves in became more and more real. They had threatened his mother. She was talking about becoming a prisoner to the whim of the Elders, and even though she didn't say it... Hanabi was starting to feel a real physical danger could be a part of those threats. The Elders couldn't seal the Clan's leader and hurt her that way, not until there was a suitable replacement. With Hinaji sealed that only left him; and suddenly a position he'd had a lifetime to grow into was only a handful of years away.

The familiar fear of failure, of disappointment, of catastrophic underachievement in the most important role any Hyuuga could take on, rose up in Hanabi's chest. But this time it was different. This time if he didn't perform perfectly the Elders were going to take advantage of his weakness and hurt his mother.

That had never been part of any scenario Hanabi had ever imagined in his life, and though he tried to put a stoic and calm face on it his concern was beginning to show though. Panic fluttered maddeningly in his stomach, and he couldn't will it away. So instead he nodded for Hiashiko's words, and finally let his eyes drop rather than let her see what was in them just then.

It was when his eyes dropped, that he noticed the odd way one of his mother's sleeves was hanging. He blinked. He'd had it drilled in to him a thousand times what a concealed weapon looked like under formal clothing, and he knew what he was looking at right then.

"Mother, what's that in your sleeve?"

Not that he wanted to believe it.

She should have gotten rid of it. It was too late now to deny its presence, and Hiashiko knew her youngest well enough to know that it would be better if she told him straight away instead of trying to deflect his attention. “A kunai, Hanabi.”

Hanabi opened his mouth to say something. Then closed it. Then looked up to his mother's face, saw the entire story right there and right then, then squeezed her hands once and let them go as he slipped off the bed.

For some reason it seemed important that he put his shoes on, so that's what Hanabi started to do. His voice was perfectly level, the kind of icy calm that comes with being beyond the realms of temper or firm reason.

"Excuse me a moment," he said automatically doing as he was taught and putting manners out to hide what he was about to do.

She had been expecting an explosion of some kind and had not been prepared for Hanabi’s preternaturally stoic expression or movement. It wasn’t until he finished putting on his shoes and spoke that Hiashiko felt the first thrill danger.

“Hanabi.” She didn’t want to yell, but she would if she needed to. “Hanabi, come here.” But instead of waiting for him to, she strode across his room and grabbed a shoulder to keep him by her side.

Hanabi's hand had already been at the door, and he was in fact stepping out into the corridor by the time his mother put her hand on him. He stopped, but only to look up at her from under uncombed dark hair that was falling into his eyes and reach up to try and pry her hand off.

"I'm just going to go see Tsurude-sama," Hanabi informed her, voice still unnaturally flat. "I'll be back in half an hour."

Behind them both, sitting in the middle of the floor, the two kittens glanced at one another... then scampered to hide under the bed.

For all his lack of inflection, Hanabi seemed almost brittle. "You're not going to see Tsurude-sama," she said quietly. Hiashiko barely kept from digging her nails into his shoulder as he tried to pry her hand off of him. This could go wrong--more wrong than this whole night already was--very quickly. "You're going to come with my to my office." This was getting out of control, and she needed to talk to her son somewhere they couldn't be overheard as easily.

Hanabi hissed quietly, eyes narrowing as his mother inexplicably got in his way. "I don't need to go to your office, I need to go see Tsurude and politely inform him that I'm about to kill some rather important people. There might be some forms I have to sign."

He was still trying to get his mother to let him go, but with no more effort or urgency than he'd first shown. Hanabi was quite detached from quite a lot of what was going on outside of his own head right then. The only thing he could focus on with much clarity was the fact that his mother had expected to die or have to kill herself tonight thanks to the Elders and quite honestly, he didn't think there was much else of note to consider.

The second he'd given the Hokage a heads-up that he was about to stage a coup d'etat he was going to come back here and deal with them. All of them.

Hanabi’s words sent a sickening flood of terror--and anger--through her, and it took all her self-control for her not to draw her free hand back and slap her son. She had never struck her sons outside of sparring, and she would not lose her control now, when it was one of the only things left for her. Not even if her youngest was so cavalierly speaking treason.

Hiashiko did turn Hanabi about so he faced her squarely, clapping her free hand onto his other shoulder. She couldn’t mask all of her fear or anger as she leaned down, but her voice, at least, was commanding. “Keep your thoughts to yourself, Hanabi, until I say otherwise.”

And then she turned him back around and, at a pace too quick to be called dignified, escorted her son to her office.

By the time Hiashiko boosted Hanabi bodily into her office, her son had moved on from the detached state of shock in which he'd been stoically planning mutiny (not treason, you didn't commit treason against bastards like this) to a raging state of seething fury. As his mother locked the door behind them, Hanabi realized he genuinely couldn't put a thought together that didn't include the words 'and then I'm going to kill those traitorous farts with my bare hands' at some point.

He didn't realize he couldn't stop shaking either, not even as he stalked over to the small empty rubbish bin to the side of his mother's desk and kicked it into the wall with a flash of furious chakra that smashed it into balsa wood splinters.

He may have been to keep this thoughts to himself, but his emotions were clearly taking advantage of the silence to make themselves heard.

Hanabi was swiftly losing control of himself, and Hiashiko felt a headache coming on when destroyed a portion of her office. Even though she could see he was shaking, she still snapped at him. "That is enough, Hanabi," she said as she strode to her desk. The new pile of kindling could wait for the morning, but she obviously could not trust Hanabi to show any sense or decorum. It was an unsettling realization.

It took just a second to unlock the top right drawer on her desk and draw out the small stack of spell notes. Though they looked similar to the explosion notes Hanabi loved, these were a different jutsu. Once placed in the four corners of her office, it would muffle their words, and she could then let Hanabi say whatever he wished.

Hanabi sank his teeth so hard into his lower lip that there were bloody marks left behind. He watched his mother silence and seal the little room they stood in, and then let fly with the only thing he could find to say - looking up at her with enough sudden fright in his eyes to betray everything he'd been trying to hide.

"They can't take you away! Nobody has any right to do that to you! And I can't even take care of Hinaji and Nejiko on my own, I'll lose all of you!"

And the brittle Hanabi finally cracked enough that Hiashiko could see the terror inside of him. It was oddly comforting--but even more worrying--that it was fear motivating him, not just anger. She didn't expect him to approach this logically, but she needed him to at least have some measure of control. She reached out and took him by the shoulders again, but without her earlier force as she looked down at his frightened face. "Breathe, Hanabi," she said, her voice quiet and calm. "I am here. I'm not going anywhere tonight."

"You're damn right you're not!" Hanabi yelled, raising his voice to a true height for the first time since he found out Hinaji was going to be sealed with the Caged Bird. He wanted to believe that his mother's hands on his shoulders, and her quiet and steady voice were all proof that she wasn't going away - but they weren't. Nothing was.

It was a horrible way to hit one of the highest steps of growing up - the understanding that everything that made you safe could be taken away. And for all his protests, Hanabi knew it, too. He knew it the same way he knew that what pieces of a life outside of being Hiashiko's heir he'd been trying to keep a hold of were suddenly slipping away.

Hanabi didn't have friends. He didn't go to school. He didn't have a rank and he didn't have comrades. He didn't have a father, or even a memory of one. He had his mother, who had always been the head of the clan first and foremost. He had his brother, who had a real life and a purpose, and close friends who Hanabi both envied and was envious of whenever he thought of Team Eight. He had Nejiko, who'd gone from hating him to tolerating him and not much more. And he had Suzumo.

Who... he wasn't going to be able to spend any time with if the Elders got their way on it now. Which they would, or they'd make good on any threat to his mother they liked.

Hanabi's face crumpled. It was just one thing too much to have snatched away. He shrugged his mother's hands off his shoulders and turned away, not wanting her to see his eyes and the obvious truth of his thoughts that sat in them.

He was probably already proving every fear she'd ever had about him right, she didn't have to watch it happen.

Hanabi pulled away from her, and Hiashiko let her hands fall to her sides. She was suddenly and fiercely reminded just how young--how fragile--Hanabi was, and seeing him try to hide his reaction made her simultaneously proud and upset at the same time. Hiashiko had never been good at comforting anyone, much less her children, and she had no idea what to say to make this situation better.

There was no way to make this better, other than to lie, and even then that would only be temporary.

"Forgive me." Hanabi had already aired his opinion on an apology from her, but it was the only thing that was even partially fitting. But what was she apologizing for? That he was feeling fear and pain? A stupid thing to apologize for; it was something he needed to experience so he could be in control of it in the future, she knew that. And yet watching his face in profile, the marks left on his lower lip, the way his body was all tense lines made her chest tighten. She ached to reach out to him, but he had been the one to pull away.

Hearing his mother say those words again just made Hanabi constrict into himself even further. No. No he wasn't going to forgive her. He wasn't going to act like she'd sinned against anybody by trying to save her twin sister; because then he'd have to believe that was what he was doing when he tried to protect Hinaji, and Nejiko, and his mother.

Hanabi shut his eyes and tried to collect himself. He loved his family. He'd protect them. He had to pull himself together.

And anyway he had known for a while that his immediate family were the Hyuuga leaders, but not the Hyuuga model. It had started with Hinaji and the way he'd been so different, so gentle and hesitant; and then with Nejiko and the brilliance and violence that had surged out of her when she hit thirteen. After that, Hanabi had watched his mother, and seen that her own separate nature wasn't just the result of her status and obligations... it was because she really was different.

And so was he. The Elders, the representatives of the clan and the power which kept the traditions and secrets of the Hyuuga strong, would require that he conform even more strongly than they ever had before. And now he'd do it. He'd be whatever they wanted him to be, because otherwise his mother and his brother and his cousin and his aunt would be at their mercy.

So he straightened his back and took a deep breath and crossed his arms before he looked back at his mother. She looked so pale, and tired, and small. He imagined he didn't look any better.

Some fearless leaders the pair of them were making right now.

"What are the Elders going to ask me to do, so you'll be safe from this?" he asked, voice quiet in the wrought air.

The surge of pride and sorrow threatened to choke out her words. Hanabi had regained control of himself and was looking at their situation with logic, even if she hated to see him shoulder the burden of protecting anyone. Hiashiko wouldn't lie to him and say she didn't need to be kept safe, but she was the parent, not him. He at least deserved for her to honor him with something more than apologies.

"I don't know specifics," Hiashiko answered simply, and she finally reached into her sleeve and removed the kunai from its hiding place. Even sliding the weapon back inside a desk drawer did not relieve her of any weight. "The Elders are still finalizing the details. But I know they will be taking charge of your education, as much as they can."

She laced her fingers together before her and did not sit. She would stand as her son did, for this was the world changing beneath their feet. "I will likely begin preparing you to succeed me when you come of age." There were secrets only the Head of Hyuuga could know, and the creation of the cursed seal was just one of them. Hiashiko had not begun to instruct Hanabi in any of these secret things, for she had thought him--truthfully, still thought him--too young. But the choice had been ripped from her, feathers from a bird. "I will argue for some continued instruction from Suzumo." Hiashiko knew how much her son enjoyed the man's tutelage, and she also knew that what Suzumo taught was worth having Hanabi learn.

Hanabi nodded quietly, not trusting himself to say anything. There was so much uncertainty now, about things that Hanabi had lived his life believing would never change, but at least one thing was the same. His mother was still his mother, and for all that she'd just lost for trying to protect her sister she was still trying to do the same for him. Suzumo mattered to Hanabi more than he'd ever let on to anybody, but his mother must have known anyway.

They sat down eventually, started trying to talk, beginning to fortify themselves for what was to come, and Hanabi supposed that at least tonight had given him some good news with the bad. He knew where he got his love for his family from, no doubt about it.