Naruto Fan Fiction ❯ Rosemary For Remembrance ❯ Carolina Rose ( Chapter 8 )

Chapter 8 - Carolina Rose

 

This was the unkindest cut of all. - Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

 

For the six hours between intelligence reporting Hinata's elopement and her father's startling decision to leave her sister unmarked, Hanabi had been safe for the first time in her life. Until she had overstepped herself. Which just proved what she already knew - even after executing a perfect kaiten, the spinner is still left in the same place where she began.

 

Still, she mused - as she lay on her back, arms folded behind her head, and allowed her former teammate to trail kisses down her taut stomach - because of Hinata's choice, Hanabi was this much closer to becoming head of Hyuga after their father's death. Though not quite close enough.

 

The outcome wasn't certain, and Hanabi's life was built on uncertainties. No one was sure who would be the next head of their house; no one was sure whether Konoha should go to war with Hidden Grass; no one was sure whether to bow extra low to Hanabi or to make her a poultice for her forehead. And no one was sure if her mother had killed herself because she did not want baby Hanabi or...

 

“Do you love me?” she asked Konohamaru suddenly. He was resting his head on her stomach now, drawing idle circles around her navel.

 

He propped up on his elbows, looking up at her with trusting eyes. She was his first and only love. He thought he was hers.

 

“Yes,” he answered simply. “I love you.”

 

Hanabi's life was built on uncertainties, so she was careful to cultivate sure-things.

 

()()()()()

 

Hanabi did not bother to hide how her lip curled in displeasure upon seeing Neji in their private council. After the ceremony that declared her the new Hyuga heir, her father had foisted her cousin on her as her Councilor, to serve her in the same way he had served Hinata.

 

“He sees far,” her father had remarked. “That one always has.”

 

Hanabi had never known her uncle Hizashi, but it was not hard for her to surmise what her father saw when he looked at his nephew. Neji was growing up to look remarkably like them, after all.

 

She attributed her father's leniency to this link.

 

“He does not know his place,” she had disagreed, her rising voice in sharp contrast to her father's implacable calm. “None of them know their place anymore.”

 

The ceremony had been more like a funeral. Hanabi knew that she had never been a favorite among the lesser members of her Clan - the unwanted daughter, the girl that should have become one of them as soon as she was old enough for her first Byakugan.

 

She watched them all, breaking thousands of years of tradition in the process. She often eavesdropped on them as they talked about her. And, once, about the woman who would have been her foster mother if she had been marked. After all, there would have been no sense in her living with the Main Family if on her third birthday she had been carved into just another homogeneous Branch House member.

 

She was an old woman, this would-be mother, by the time Hanabi secretly sought her out. Through many walls, she would observe her doing laundry, or cooking or any of the other mundane day-to-day tasks that Hanabi supposed mothers did. She had children, a teenage son and a married daughter about Hanabi's age. Her almost-sister apparently fought with her husband often, and she would run to her mother's cottage, blotchy with tears. While Hanabi watched, they would sit at the kitchen table and the mother would take her daughter' hands in her own, or pat her shoulder or sometimes even hug her.

 

She would watch those scenes until the daughter left, until the mother turned out the light and went to bed. Sometimes she would even watch beyond that, observing the feeble eye movements indicating that her almost-mother dreamed. What a Branch House member could possibly dream about, she had no idea.

 

Especially Neji. Despite her protests, her father insisted on including him in their hastily called meeting today and he stood beside her, as stiff and proper as ever.

 

“Report to Hanabi,” Hiashi commanded her cousin Tetsuo. Her cousin had always been a nervous man, and now his fingers had been twitching toward his vest pocket as if craving a cigarette. He realized that they were all watching them and quickly dropped his arms to his sides.

 

“It is Hinata-sama er… Hinata-san.” He nervously waited for Hiashi's approving nod before continuing. “She's…” he obviously turned the words over in his mind before proceeding. “…with child.”

 

Mistaking Hanabi's surprised stare he modified, “She's pregnant.”

 

“I know what `with child' means,” she ground out. It gave her time to take in her father's mild expression. There would be no clue there as to how she should react to the news. On the other side of her, her cousin Neji looked on. The pair of them were like blank-faced mirror images.

 

She decided to buy time by assessing the situation further.

 

“Is my sister well?” She directed the question at Tetsuo, but it was her father who answered. There might have been a swell of pride in his voice, like he was speaking over a lump in his throat.

 

“She is having difficulty. Certain symptoms so early in her pregnancy are a good sign.”

 

A good sign? A sign that there will be one more Byakugan user in the family. A user who would follow behind Hanabi as her heir until she produced one of her own. And her father would put her off every time she made mention of a match for herself. Even banished to her tiny house across the river, Hinata managed to invade Hanabi's life. Their father had been right. Hinata was indeed their mother's daughter.

 

“This is cause for celebration,” her father added when Hanabi let the silence linger a few beats too long. Few would have noticed - few dared look her father in the face for extended periods of time - but the corners of Hyuga Hiashi's lips had upturned in a barely perceptible smile.

 

()()()()()

 

For the first time in days, Hinata felt well enough to sit on the front porch and direct Naruto as he pulled weeds from her tiny garden. The four foot square plot of land was merely a shadow of her former garden in the Hyuga compound. The one she still thought of as her mother's garden. One of the most beautiful quince bushes had even been planted by her great-grandmother, a noted flower gardener. Even though the small house she and Naruto had bought with their savings was all the way across the river from the Hyuga compound, she imagined the stink of all the burning herbs had lingered like a pall over her house for days.

 

Of course, Hinata had gathered clippings from her vital herbs before she left home early on the morning of her wedding day. She was no longer the young girl ignorant of the cruel things people can justify doing to one another when they call it love.

 

From her lounge chair on their wobbly porch, she cupped the slight swell of her belly with both hands and tried to smile when Naruto held up one of her immature rosemary plants and asked “Weed, right?”

 

Ever since the first time she had spent a whole day in bed with “morning” sickness, she had known. The being inside her was approximately the size of a peanut, but its nucleotides have already bonded together in that prized sequence. Hinata may have been weak, but her genes were strong and somewhere, deep inside her body, microscopic Byakugan eyes were taking shape.

 

She hasn't said it out loud yet, because she fears what Naruto might do, though the redness in his eyes and the way he squeezes the bridge of his nose when he thinks she isn't looking betrays the fact that he knows the truth, too. Just the day before he had brought her a brightly painted top from the market. The baby's first gift.

 

“I'll kill every Hyuga there is before I let them take this baby,” Naruto whispered to her that night when he thought she was sleeping. But through her closed eyelids Hinata was staring at the top where Naruto had deposited it on the nightstand. In her mind, it was already faded, gathering dust. A toy no child would ever play with.

 

()()()()()

 

Several evenings later, Hinata found herself in a low-voiced argument with Naruto over who would pour the tea. The Hokage, her councilor Jiraiya, and Haruno Sakura had shown up out of the blue, bursting in with barely a knock at the door, and Hinata was embarrassed to receive such illustrious company in their reduced circumstances. She finally won, and Naruto sat at the table with their guests while she pounded herbs with her mortar and pestle. She had been in bed more than out of it with her pregnancy, and the state of her house and her herbs all told on her.

 

The Hokage had impatiently pushed her carefully arranged centerpiece to the very edge of the kitchen table, and the combination of their low, serious voices and the stacks of papers Tsunade spread out before her, their kitchen soon took on the air of a war room. Though Hinata's ankles ached, she refused their invitations to join them. When Sakura, who had been so solicitous during her pregnancy so far, dropping in several times a week to check on her condition, did not insist she take a seat, Hinata realized it was worse than she thought. She redoubled her efforts with the mortar and pestle, though the truth can't be unsaid just because the listener covers her ears.

 

Even over her frantic pounding, Hinata still caught Uchiha Sasuke's name.

 

No one noticed Hinata finally drop the mortar. Naruto had been sitting across from the Hokage, their heads almost touching as they conferred. Now he jerked back in his chair.

 

“He's dead, Naruto.”

 

Outside their circle, Hinata clutched the pestle to her chest as her husband began to slowly shake his head.

 

“No,” Naruto whispered. “It isn't true.” Then a roared, “NO!” He jumped up, ready to fight anyone and everyone and Hinata crept back until her bare heels touched the wall.

 

They were all on their feet. Hinata watched as Tsunade reached across the table and gripped her husband's shoulders. Naruto suddenly went rigid.

 

“Don't. Touch. Me.”

 

There was something then. Maybe something in his eyes, or the growl in his voice, like he had glass in his throat, that made the most powerful person in their village gingerly remove her hands from her husband's shoulders and slowly fold them across her ample chest.

 

“It's true, brat,” Jiraiya said in a placating rush. “We have it from the most reliable of sources. His body lives, but its Orochimaru's mind inside him now. I'm sorry, boy, but your friend is gone.”

 

Hinata blinked and for some reason noticed again how startlingly blue her husband's eyes were.

 

He ran his hands through his hair, mussing it into frenzied spikes.

 

“If you have a reliable source, then you know where he is. If you know where he is, then I can go end it once and for all.”

 

The whole time, Sakura had sat quietly to one side of him, but now he grabbed her hand, pulling her closer.

 

“I promised you I would do this.” He spared Hinata a glance. “As teammates.”

 

The naked hurt on Naruto's face when Sakura gently extricated her hand could have broken Hinata's heart.

 

“I absolve you of your promise. We were kids, Naruto. Just kids.” She softened her tone. “He's never coming back, Naruto.” A charged pause. “He never was.”

 

There was nothing to say after that, really. They left soon after, but not before the Hokage and Sakura subjected Hinata to a full examination.

 

“You don't need any stress right now,” Tsunade had opined significantly, loud enough for Naruto to hear where he still sat with Jiraiya at their kitchen table.

 

But in the end, he had gone. Just like she knew he would. He had gone even though the mission had a low chance of success. He had gone even though the nin in command was none other than her own father. The Hokage had begged this special favor from Hyuga Hiashi, and apparently he had agreed that Orochimaru's threat was serious enough to marshal the forces of the Hyuga Clan.

 

On the nights he was gone she dreamed of dark water closing above her head.

 

()()()()()

 

Several weeks later, Hanabi awoke to a pounding on the door of her private suite.

 

She was instantly up and alert. She had her underlings trained well enough that they would only interrupt her if the situation was direly important. With her father on his mission to capture the legendary Orochimaru, she ruled the Hyuga Clan with strict discipline and an iron will. She had already implemented several changes, and looked forward to her father's return so she could demonstrate their efficiency.

 

“What is it?” she called sharply.

 

“It's Hyuga-sama,” a timid voice reported. “He's back and he's hurt. It was a trap! One of Orochimaru's poisons! He's- they say he's dying.”

 

Hiashi lay on the tatami in the dining hall. His Byakugan was activated and the chakra coils around his eyes puffed out hugely. He thrashed wildly as if in the grip of the cursed jutsu, and several Branch House members gingerly attempted to hold him still. Two non-Hyuga nin --Hanabi surmised they had been on the mission as well -- stood over him. One began to babble frenetically as she swept toward them. She cut him off in mid-sentence.

 

“Get out of my home! You are trespassing on Hyuga territory!” She turned from them, confident that her orders would be obeyed. “You,” she pointed to her cousin Tetsuo, “get my sister. She's something of a healer. Everybody else, out!”

 

“But Hinata…” Tetsuo began.

 

Hanabi regarded her cousin with flinty eyes. Her father's prone body, twitching more faintly now, lay between them. “Is what?”

 

“Hyuga-sama gave me explicit orders to watch her.” He rushed. “She's too sick to leave her bed.”

 

“If my father dies,” she said evenly, “I will be Hyuga-sama.”

 

It was all the incentive her cousin needed.

 

And then they were alone, father and daughter.

 

She looked down at him for a long moment, marveling at the reversal in their situation. In a flagrant breach of etiquette, she had failed to remove her slippers when she entered the dining hall, and now she prodded her father's flank with her toe. His only reply was a soft murmur. He had ceased struggling altogether now.

 

Hanabi sat down beside him, primly smoothing her yukata over her knees. With her Byakugan activated, she could see his heart beating wildly, though her inexperienced eyes could not detect the poison saturating his blood stream.

 

The chakra coils around his eyes were still inflamed, and Hanabi placed her cool hands on them, massaging his temples until he finally relaxed and deflated. His skin was silky under her hands. She allowed herself the luxury of running her fingers through his thick hair.

 

“Nori?”

 

Hanabi pulled her hand away as if bitten.

 

“She isn't here,” she spat.

 

“Himiko?” He was looking at her, but didn't see. The poison or the pain had blinded him.

 

“She's not here either. Nor Hinata. It's just me. Hanabi.”

 

“Himiko, something is very wrong. I can't move. Bring Otousan now.”

 

He was mewling like a kitten, a sight pathetic to behold. Hanabi gripped his shoulders, shook him a little. She would make him her father again.

 

“I'm not her. I'm Hanabi. Look at me! Look. At. Me!”

 

But his white eyes never focused. He was struggling for every breath now.

 

“I can't move,” he panted again. “Hanabi, I can't move. I'm dying. Orochimaru…”

 

He had called her by name.

 

“Shhh!” Hanabi soothed. She trailed her fingers down his chest, loosened the neck of his uniform.

 

“We have to talk, Otousan” she said conversationally. “It's important.”

 

Her father seemed to be regaining some of his old equilibrium. He didn't ask for the healer this time, or call out for the women he had loved.

 

“There need to be some changes with the Branch House. They need to know their proper places. They want to know their places. They need firm rules, strict boundaries.” His chest was cold to the touch. She imagined she could feel his rapid heartbeat beneath her fingertips. “Don't you agree?”

 

He didn't say anything. She sensed that he couldn't. She cupped his chin with one hand. It was icy too, yet his heart still fluttered.

 

Hanabi pressed both hands upon her father's chest then, one atop the other.

 

“You can't feel that, can you?” She ran her tongue over her sharp teeth. "Then again, you never could.”

 

Impossibly, his mouth moved. His voice was a husky whisper. She imagined that sound might be what Nori heard in her ear just before she dropped off to sleep at night.

 

“I did love you, Hanabi. The best way I could.”

 

A fat round teardrop landed on the back of her hand. Emotion threatened to clog her throat, but she managed to grind out her final words to him.

 

“The sad thing is, Otousan. I loved you, too.”

 

Her father watched, in a resigned way, as she prepared to execute his favorite technique. She flexed her fingers as the chakra pooled there, then took her time positioning them over his heart again. When she measured herself later, she would always find herself lacking in one respect. She could not summon the nerve to watch her father's face when she killed him.

 

()()()()()

 

The two nin Hanabi had summarily kicked out of the compound summoned the Hokage from the hospital. Hyuga Hiashi was by far the most badly injured of the group returning from the Sound Country, so she abandoned her duties there to hurry to his bedside.

 

She had dealt with Orochimaru's poisons once before, of course, and had no doubt that he had refined them in their long years of separation.

 

She tried to process all of her new information as she jumped from rooftop to rooftop. The supposed Uchiha Sasuke was a look alike, and Orochimaru had not even possessed that poor soul's body. No, he had been disguised as a lowly prisoner. Her former teammate was finally putting his great vanity aside, and that could become a very dangerous thing.

 

Naruto had failed to complete their mission. It was a clear dereliction of duty, but she could not help but pity him. He had caught Uchiha Sasuke's trail in the mountains, and when the others wouldn't listen to him, he had followed his own instincts. She would pay a visit to his poor wife after this long night was over, she decided. Or perhaps send Sakura. Sakura could break the news more gently.

 

But now to the business at hand. Bursting into the room, she found Hyuga Hanabi lying curled beside her father's prone body. Ignoring her, Tsunade knelt beside him and began assessing the situation. No aspiration, cold to the touch. She pushed his uniform shirt aside to begin chest compressions. What she saw made her draw back as if struck.

 

The quickly fading welts on his chest could have been the last flush of life leaving his body. Or they could have been chakra burns.

 

By this time the rest of the Hyuga Branch House had crowded into the room behind her. She was astonished to see that even Hinata, supported by Hyuga Tetsuo, was out of bed to pay respects to her father.

 

Tsunade was careful not to look at Hanabi.

 

“I'm afraid I was too late,” she reported to the sizable crowd.

 

The quiet, even voice of the new leader of Hyuga carried to the far corners of the room. It was eerie really, stranded like a fish on a hook in the middle of all those white eyes.

 

“If you're not here to help, then you need to go.”

 

Nodding, her suspicions intact, the leader of the village did just that.

 

()()()()()

 

The day of her father's funeral, Hinata began to bleed. She became aware of the pain sometime after the service and sometime before she saw her sister order two burly Branch House members to forcibly escort Sugino Nori away from the graveside.

 

“There's nothing you could have done about it,” Sakura would later pronounce, though they both suspected that it was her overexertion that ended the already fragile life.

 

Hinata's only wish was that Naruto had been home the afternoon she lost their baby. Instead, he was four hundred kilometers away, still on the elusive trail of Uchiha Sasuke.

 

So Hinata began to truly understand what her mother meant when she said women do not have the luxury of crying.