Chapter Text
Who will wipe this blood off of us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?
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Year X. of the Cloud campaign.
DECEMBER 12
Cloud Northern front
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Weak.
It is a word Hinata has known. A word she has clung to all her life, turning it over, and over in her mouth, carving into its edges, peeling it back until it was nothing but four fragile letters held together by cuts and bruises and years of training.
And her eyes.
Her treacherous eyes. A mark of what she was. What she is. A testament really, to everything Hyuuga Hinata is worth.
A truth stitched into her heart and carved into her bones, much like her luck as well which she knows to be more of a curse. The kind that always follows her from one moment to the next, for Hinata has never been the girl fortune protects; she is the kind it forgets. Always turning the wrong corner. Always the one left behind.
Perhaps this all simply comes down to her blood.
The Hyuuga blood that flows in her veins, carrying its own contradictions.
A privilege and curse.
Love and loss all in equal measure.
The heritage she bears does not simply give—Hinata has learned that much at least—it takes, and takes, and takes, until all that remains, all that she can offer to give, is duty dressed as devotion.
The Hyuuga have never been lucky. She thinks of her mother, her father, her sister, uncle and cousin.
She thinks of him, too. Him with this sunbound smile and warm hands.
But in the end. In the end, it came back to her. It always did, and perhaps she should be more bitter about this terrible fact.
Hyuuga Hinata and her treacherous heart that betrayed her at every turn.
She had cursed it before. Would curse it again. This unreliable thing inside her that had never done anything but ache. It falters, this damning heart of hers, failing more times than she could ever possibly count, but it does not stop.
Always reaching. Always giving. Always aching for what would never stay.
A heart inherited from a woman who could never show her how to take care of it.
One that is too soft, too weak for the world it had been born into. Turning outward first, even when it knew better, never knowing when to harden, even when it hurt.
It was this very heart that had led her here. This heart that had set her on this mission despite knowing how these stories end. It was because of this very heart of hers that had decided she must agree on this arrangement to that man.
Because of her heart and her luck she must suffer.
This was her fate.
It had to be, Hinata concluded as the glow of purple chakra envelopes her hand whole. Her vision stretching outward, veins branching, roots unfurling beneath porcelain skin.
Until all she can feel. All she can become is the pounding pulse in her head, her eyes.
In her soul.
Chakra floods her veins activating her kekkai genkai and the world comes alive before her. Every artery, every vein, every fragile thread of life. Hinata can see it all, the final second before her hand moves, the breath before a heart goes still.
She sees what might have been. What could have been. A life folded out, whole for a moment.
Then gone.
She collects these faces, each name she never knew, collects them like stones in her palm, heavy and cold. They press against her chest until she is choking on the weight of it all.
She knows she is pathetic. Knows that she should be used to it. That she should take the death of the enemy in stride, accept it as easily as drawing a breath.
The notion of ending a life as familiar to her now as a tree becoming barren in winter. Hundreds of leaves falling to the ground. Hundreds of lives slipping through her fingers. Kindle at her feet and Hinata becomes a pyre of what this war asks of her.
It is the way of the shinobi, after all.
She knows this all, but—she hates it.
With everything in her she truly hates it, and it is in those treacherous moments especially, when the enemy becomes none other than her own mind does Hinata imagine being back in Konoha. The Hokage monument towering over her, stone faces carved deep into the mountain watching over the village like they always have. Evergreen forests ring the outskirts, endless and familiar, the scent of pine and damp earth settling into her lungs.
It is warm and safe and so so peaceful.
For a moment, the war is very far away.
She walks the streets she knows by heart. Somewhere laughter can be heard and when she turns to look, it is everyone she has ever held dear, gathered together in a way that feels impossible.
For a moment, they do not look as she last left them. They are blindingly bright and alive. Loud in a way that makes her chest ache and Hinata desperately wishes for it all to be true.
Then the cold seeps into her lungs. It steals her breath so slowly she almost doesn’t notice, until clarity crashes into her all at once. It is not her that is melting. But blood. It is blood–dripping and dripping—
Oh
The enemy had landed their mark.
Pressure. She needs pressure. Her hands move on instinct, slick and shaking.
Place pressure on the wound Hinata
Yes—just like that.
She imagines Sakura’s voice, firm and unyielding, pulling her from the edge, and then she is back in the med tents again, younger, terrified and the Cloud had just unleashed a barrage of attacks and there were so many injured. Her first surgery and everything was going wrong. Her hands trembling until Sakura’s were there, steady and sure, guiding her fingers.
Focus, she’d said. And Hinata had, green chakra blooming beneath her palms, warm and certain.
That's really what she should be doing now. But there is nothing left to give. Her chakra is used up, dredged and spent, poured out of a chasm that never fills. A hollow she knows she cannot mend–not with blood, not with will, not with the bodies of the dead at her feet.
She can’t stop the bleeding. Scarlett spilling down her chin, pooling at her boots, mingling with the enemy's blood until she can no longer tell where one ends and the other begins.
Her chest tightens. Her lungs seize and—she can’t breathe.
She can’t breathe.
She can’t—
Her vision blurs, fractures at the edges, the world dimming into something small and so distant and there must be a lapse in time because when she blinks again, she is met with darkness, black as a raven's wing, and she thinks, dimly, this must be the end. Then she realises it is only her husband's hair, dark and familiar, falling forward as he bends over her.
Sasuke
“Breathe.” He seems to finish her thought from earlier, seems to be yelling too. And she wants to tell him she would if she could but all she seems to manage is another cough, something wet and burning, tearing its way up her throat.
“Don’t do that.” he snaps low and tight. “Don’t close your eyes. You hear me?”
She huffs weakly despite herself. Even now, he’s commanding her around.
“Sasuke,” she manages, the sound barely there.
“You’re—” Injured, she wants to say. Bossy too. Overreacting. Always like this.
“Shut up!” he hisses.
“Breathe…breathe!” He lifts her into his arms, holding her close as her knees threaten to give out and she can feel the world tilting on its axis.Her head lolls back against his chest.
Dizziness spinning through her, sharp and so hollow, but all she can feel is him, his hands pressing her close, his steady pulse beneath her ear, the shallow rhythm of her own stuttering to sync along.
Her fingers twitch, curling faintly into his sleeves as if to anchor herself.
“Can’t—my lungs.”
His voice drops, rough around the edges.
“I know. I know, just—stay awake. Hinata. Hina–’’
Her vision darkens, the edges of the world softening, pulling inward. She wants to argue again, wants to tell him that he’s being ridiculous, that it’s his fault they are in this situation, that they are too far away for any help, but the words slip away before she can catch them.
She thinks she hears her name again, sharper this time, fraying at the edges, like it’s being dragged out of him—but the sound soon fades, swallowed by the dark.
And then Hinata closes her eyes.