Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Thank you for coming, General Kaima,” High-Commander Senjuu Tsunade says almost absently, already turning her attention to the next guest. Isaribi barely manages not to shrug, remembering in time that Konoha is the peak of military formality; nothing at all like her little backwater that she practically rules after throwing out Orochimaru and his occupying force with a bare handful of farmers and fishermen. And successfully repelling any future attempts to conquer it as well, by means she’d much rather forget about and never think about again. Isaribi salutes just a tad sloppily--her sensei’s half-hearted lessons many years in the past--and far, far too late but no one seems to notice.

“It’s an honor to be invited,” she says, mostly to Commander Senjuu’s broad back. And it is, she’s not just saying that to be polite. The graduation exams and ceremony for the Konoha Military Academy are the most prestigious events in the combined Elemental Nations. Even being invited to the graduation ceremony alone is worth the trip. Though, Isaribi does feel very small and plain next to all these military and country leaders in all their finery; and Isaribi in the cleanest, finest thing her country could scrounge up that nevertheless still looks rather more like a farmer's clothes than any sort of uniform.

The names are called according to class ranking, Isaribi is told by Senjuu’s harassed looking aide and a champagne flute pushed into her hand without her asking before she is promptly forgotten again. Instead of waiting to be told what to do, she drifts between all these generals, warlords, and tyrants, all of whom ignore her like their armies ignore her people’s fields when they march through them.

War is a sport to these people, and she cannot compete fairly. Every battle she has won has been through sabotage and spite. Her skill set is different but no less devastatingly effective.

They are gently herded to the stage, more cocktails provided that don’t do a thing for her and she’s not going to drink. A blond is called up first, Namikaze-Uzumaki Naruto. A famous name, the son of two even more famous war heroes whose memorial statues she’d had to pass on her way into Konoha. Pleased murmurs that swell around her suggest he has a promising career ahead of him, as well.

Zako-chan’s scales shiver beneath Isaribi’s bandages when Namikaze-Uzumaki passes and she can tell--even apart from the playbill provided, once again, by the harried aide who’s name Isaribi still hasn’t gotten--that he is a full five sense sentinel, like herself, though with a full bond to the black-haired Guide on his heels, obviously second in rank, something she’s been told she’ll never have.

She recognizes the guide too, the last scion of the Uchiha, one of Konoha’s most prominent clans, their guides breeding true from even before the city-state’s founding right up until his older brother went crazy from stress and killed most of the clan. At least, that’s what Konoha tells people. One of Orochimaru’s more recent obsessions. Isaribi could sympathize.

Isaribi has always known that Konoha has more hypersensitives than other places, but the parade of sentinels and guides who pass by to receive their due rank--and for many a temporary bond partner as well, it’s tradition to set temporary bonds at the graduation ceremony, though a few already seem to have found theirs--is both impressive and sickening. She tries not to give them more than a cursory look over. More than likely she’ll see all of them on the battlefield. She’d rather not recognize them.

(They wouldn’t see her. No one ever sees her anymore, not until it is too late. No armies, no camps, no pitched battles full of blood and ‘glory’ for her Tea, her Rice, not when midnight raids and spoiled supply shipments worked so much better for her and her people.)

The line is still short, no matter how idly devastating, not nearly as many graduates in it as she expected; what with Konoha having the largest standing army in the world. Konoha is famous for their military schools, the same way Kiri is famous for sailing and smithing, and Uzu is famous for their jewelry and arts. Konoha turns out prominent military leaders like they have a factory line on them.

Perhaps, though, these are just those pre-selected to be officers. The Land of Tea--and the neighboring Land of Rice that also pays fealty to her, not that she ever asked them to--have no officers or anything even close other than her. Of course, the village leaders can and do order people to defend their lands; but as far as anything more is concerned, it is just Isaribi. (She’s so very tired of fighting, but she doesn’t know how to stop.)

A honey bee buzzes around her head and lands on the bandages on her face, it’s fuzzy body catching on a loose thread. Zako-chan’s scales itch where it sits, though not unpleasantly. Isaribi doesn’t want to hurt it though--such a small, harmless thing--but nor does she want to get stung and have it die, so she falls even more into the stillness of parade rest; something at once both familiar and so long in the past that it is also unfamiliar.

(Orochimaru had been a good teacher, once, she remembers. He had gathered all the hypersensitive or gifted children who didn’t have a clan or family to protect them, or a Village to teach them, and he gave them a home. Isaribi still remembers fondly how full of life and joy that compound had been after the solitary hunger that had marked her life before Orochimaru had found her: a rash-covered street-rat, drowning in too many sounds and smells and tastes on the wind, half-blind with unstable sight.

She also remembers, less fondly, watching it burn; all her friends--closest thing to family, really--becoming corpses twisted and blackened into un-recognition and Orochimaru’s mad laughter ringing in her ears.

It had been easy for him to twist her more metaphorically, she had been so full of hatred and rage. She had let him do whatever he thought was necessary for their revenge, gone along with his every mad scheme, and it was only when he had discarded her like trash that she really realized what kind of person she had become in service to him. Now if only she could figure out what kind of person she actually wants to be. She can still smell the fear of her tailor lingering on her clothes. Isaribi may not know what kind of person she wants to be, but she doesn’t think she wants that.)

Another name is called, and even though the woman is beautiful--a Guide, with delicate features that speak to a civilian, noble background and a demure, almost shy, bearing that makes it easy to overlook her, Isaribi only catches a glimpse of violet eyes before they fall to the ground--she’s easily dismissed compared to her fellows, unremarkable, and Isaribi almost misses her forgone acceptance in favor of paying attention to the bee that has freed itself only to busy itself trying to find nectar in her bandages.

“I do not accept,” the girl says in a surprisingly strong voice. The silence that follows is as deafening as a gunshot to Isaribi’s delicate hearing--although she doesn’t zone on it, she hasn’t zoned in years, even though it dials itself up like Zako-chan wants to hear every nuance--and she refocuses just in time to see the girl staring at her, mouth set and hands trembling.

“Hyuuga Hinata, you realize that if you do not accept your graduation and your diploma, that you will never be admitted into the ranks of officer and may be considered a second-class citizen should you choose to stay in Konoha,” Tsunade says sternly, after a long moment where Isaribi can only hear the bee’s faint buzzing. Zako-chan’s scales itch where it steps and she would like to shoo it away but the girl, Hyuuga, doesn’t even glance away, not even to the leader of her country. Those violet eyes bore into Isaribi’s and she wonders if she is just less intimidating than others on the stage, what with her plain, sturdy clothes and bandages. She doesn’t mind. People underestimate her all the time.

(In another time, another life, Isaribi might have zoned on the beautiful Guide, one with such steel hidden underneath, but not after what Orochimaru made her into. It’s times like this that she misses Zako-chan’s voice in her mind the most, misses her spirit animal’s separate presence even if it means Isaribi would be useless without a Guide.)

“I understand, Commander Senjuu,” Hyuuga says, although she speaks to Isaribi only. Her voice trembles only a little, and Isaribi is sure that only the Sentinels can hear it. “I refuse the honor. I do not wish to fight. I will refuse any bond you ask of me.” Hyuuga’s violet eyes blaze at that and her stare almost turns into a glare. Isaribi can sympathize, bonds are far too intimate to share with someone you don’t trust. She’s almost glad she doesn’t have to worry about that. “I renounce your wars and pledge myself to peace. I’ll keep your secrets, but I will not reside in this city that bleeds pain and suffering anymore. Commander Senjuu,” Isaribi is captivated by the girl--no, she may be young, but she’s earned the right to be respected as an adult--woman who is clearly terrified of the cold sweat she can smell wafting off her is any indication, but she is still willing to speak her mind in front of her entire country. All her friends, her family, everyone she’s probably ever known, and she publicly disagrees with all of them. “I dedicate my life to undoing your circle of violence that my clan, and my country, have been a part of perpetuating for too long.”

There are angry mutters at that, whispers of violence meant, and vicious glares that leave no question as to who the violence is meant towards. Isaribi is breathless with admiration and incandescent with anger that anyone would think to harm such a brave, gentle Guide. How far have they all fallen, if they’ve forgotten that. Commander Senjuu is stony-faced, but the wafts of guilt that Isaribi can catch suggest that there’s something deeper there.

The other graduates whisk Hyuuga away, clearly something planned in advance by at least a few of them, and the show of support chokes her. Isaribi hasn’t seen that since Orochimaru ran out of use for her, and she hasn’t felt it in much longer.

Even if they did not go the same route, even if they stay in Konoha and ‘perpetuate’--to quote Hyuuga, something she might end up doing far more often than anybody will want her to--the same violence that their friend stands against, they still have protected the first glimmer of true hope and amity that Isaribi has ever seen. Hyuuga looks like peace and it makes tears spring to her eyes, even as she stretches her senses to their limits trying to follow Hyuuga and her friends.

“She didn’t stutter,” the man next to her hums, one of the few who doesn’t stink of anger or battle-lust. He’s her age, or maybe a few years younger, probably the youngest on the stage, and when Isaribi looks at him she sees Hyuuga in his jaw and the bridge of his nose. His words carry something like pride in them.

Isaribi nods, her mouth dry and her chest light with the enormity of what she just experienced. These types of moments are what history is made of. “She’s glorious,” Isaribi breathes and even in his height, even in her fondest remembrance of him, Orochimaru never did inspire the same awe, the same belief, in her that the memory of those violet eyes do without any work at all.

Chapter Text

Hinata knows that she is one person. Knows that everything she does is like throwing a branch into a river and expecting the current to change. She doesn’t stop, though. She can’t. Every life she saves, every battle she delays or averts, it has to make a difference.

It has to.

Years have passed, though, and war still breaks out with depressing regularity, and the few that she’s managed to gather that believe in the same thing she does all clamor for safety and security she cannot promise.

The Land of Tea is the last place Hinata wants to seek refuge, but it is the only place that seems to be left to her now. Hinata will not countenance endangering more defenseless towns and villages like she did in the Land of Waves. Whatever else Hinata thinks of her, Isaribi does a good job of protecting her countries.

(Wave had been her home for years after she helped the villagers overthrow Gato’s control peacefully, and with Konoha and Kiri turning a blind eye to her whereabouts for a time, she had stayed, and gathered people willing to listen, many of them drawn by stories of the uprising.

The resistance of the Villagers--Tsunami, grief stricken over her husband and father but determined, Inari, so angry and bitter but willing to try anything, and so many others as well--a passive, but unrelenting and uncompromising, wall of people who bore no weapons but that of their will, marching down Gato’s forces and prevailing: it’s a gratifying memory, but she’s not sure how much of a difference it makes anymore. A single event, no matter how powerful, seems small in the face of everything. She’s seen far, far too much and that eighteen year old girl that set it all in motion seems hopelessly naive now.)

Their motley group spills out of the forest onto a rice paddy field--the closest border must have been Rice then, but the tyrant Kaima’s reach is long--and their Kiri pursuers, more stubborn than Konoha about it, veering away from the border. No matter what reports come out of Tea and Rice of farmers and little else, she knows that more soldiers die trying to take those fields than even in the bloody border between Fire and Stone: a place where the rivers all run red and no grass or plants will grow anymore.

(She had been there, once, when she was training to be someone she wasn’t but that her family would like better. It had made her stomach turn and her shields fail, the negative emotions that seemed to be baked into the very stone battering at them until she felt like laying down and dying was the only option left. Hinata had been lucky that her teacher, Kurenai, was a proficient Guide and bonded besides. Without her shoring her up, Hinata knows she would have died or broken. It had been one of the reasons she wanted the war and fighting to stop. The idea that a place like that could exist… that people were forced to go there, to stay… it was too awful to comprehend not caring.)

A farmer lifts the brim of his hat to stare at them before he shrugs and goes back to his work. Konan pulls Hinata into a kiss on the cheek, Nagato clasps a shaking hand to her shoulder, Tsunami and Inari hug each other, and Haku stares into the forest, daring the Kiri soldiers to try and fight, protecting them all. Hinata knows they’re all happy, she can feel it, but she just wants to weep.

The air all around her feels like a sentinel intent on protecting the community and Kebadatsu buzzes curiously into existence above her head.

(Her spirit animal is a tiny bumblebee that she named as a very young child who probably misses Konoha more than Hinata does, seeing as she liked to appear mostly when she was gardening to buzz drowsily around her head. Lately, Kebadatsu has been appearing more and more as support as Hinata becomes increasingly overwhelmed by everything she has taken onto herself, and without a bond the press of emotion against her doesn’t help. Part of her wonders if she should have Kebadatsu at all, if she would find it easier not to be a guide at all, while the rest of her cries out in horror at the thought of losing her.)

The bumblebee swings through the air--lazily at first, then more excitedly--but Hinata feels only a curling dread.

She’d known, she had felt it the moment they’d locked eyes across the stage that Isaribi was the best match for her gifts that she could find. If she believed in them, Hinata would even say Isaribi was her perfect match--a seemingly romantic trope that only leads to heartache and death in her experience--like her father with her mother. Hinata never thought she would be lucky enough to bond to someone kind and gentle, she had thought her entire life that should would end up the fragile prize of some war mad tyrant.

Having it confirmed was the worst experience of her life.

Naruto waxed lyrical about proving everybody wrong about him, about being more than the legacy of his parents, being a better war hero than them, in spite of them. Neji had been driven by revenge so thoroughly that even as a base he could stand proudly next to warmongers and tyrants as the pinnacle of Konoha’s military achievement while his uncle languished in the family compound sense-numb and broken-hearted and his father was buried in some celebrated mass grave. Sasuke burned with so much grief and hatred towards his mad brother constantly, to the point that he’d needed to be put on a learning team with only sentinels until he learned enough to at least hide it better. Revenge, spite, and hatred. It’s all she’s learned to expect.

Hinata had never hated anyone, not really, until that moment, locking eyes with the Kappa of Tea and Rice. She’d found strength she didn’t know she had in it--not stuttering once when she threw the woman’s world back in her face--but even that memory makes her stomach turn and her skin crawl like it’s caked with mud and sewage.

How can she say she’s any better than them?

Isaribi knows the moment someone crosses her borders: a group of unbonded guides, bases, and a solitary sentinel who makes no effort to really infringe on her psychic territory.

The message from the farmer comes almost an hour later and bears more information. Hyuuga and her band of pacifists, seeking refuge from Konoha and Kiri; something Isaribi is all too willing to give to someone so inspiring.

The fire of Hyuuga’s conviction still burns bright and warm in her memory, dearer and more potent than almost anything else she remembers. Isaribi knows that she herself may be too much the monster to answer that calling publicly, but letting the Lands of Tea and Rice stand as testament to the power peace may eventually bring, the role a sentinel may play in that life? There is nothing she is more proud of.

It’s a week, though, before they come to her, and Isaribi has almost forgotten about them in the minutia of everyday business.

Hyuuga is thinner than she remembers, unhealthily so, and her long black hair is pulled into a dirty, messy braid. Her clothes hang off her frame, patched and darned enough to obscure the original fabric. Dirt smudges across her sunburnt face and she is still the most glorious woman Isaribi has ever seen.

She stares, transfixed, while the group shifts and the youngest base mutters to what smells like his mother, a low level guide, about zones.

Len, her neighbor’s kid and a regular hellion, comes out of nowhere and slaps a wet towel at her face before she can even react. “Your scales are looking a little dry, Miss,” they scream, because the concept of quiet is just lost on that entire family, and they run away laughing maniacally, of course. Isaribi, meanwhile, is trying not to choke on it, thinking furiously about how to reprimand the little brat.

When she finally manages to unwrap the clingy towel--and how did they manage to sneak up on her?--Hyuuga is standing in the middle of Len’s scent trail, pale and shaking but her mouth set stubbornly into a line.

“Oh.” Isaribi almost blushes, shifting her shoulders into something less shy and awkward than the hunch they almost immediately tried to fall into. “Hi.” She’s completely forgotten what it is she’s supposed to be doing--it’s probably not staring at the woman smiling nervously but Isaribi’s last bit of wit went out with the sight of her--and she can hear the snorts of amusement and the titters of the gossips who all say that Isaribi has never shown such interest in someone before.

Hyuuga’s lips press together even more firmly until they are so white and thin they’re trembling with the effort and Isaribi has only just seen her, they haven’t even really met officially, but she already wants to protect her like the rest of her people. For the rest of their lives if need be.

The tall, brown-haired sentinel next to Hyuuga leans down and whispers urgently, softly enough that only her or another sentinel could hear, “Hinata, stop. No one’s afraid. No one needs to be.”

The moment that Isaribi had been living--the one where she might not be the monster she was shaped to be, that she might be able to grow and change and thank the person who showed her the way, have that person acknowledge her success--breaks and Isaribi feels cold and bereft, her scales suddenly dry as though all the water in the world was not enough for them even though she’s just been soaked through.

Of course, the too-rapid flutter of Hyuuga’s heart is because she’s afraid of Isaribi. She’s a monster, after all, a killer, and barely human anymore at that. Most days she doesn’t even regret the experiment that Orochimaru did, that she’d let him do. Doesn’t regret the atrocities he’d committed on the psionic plane in pursuit of never needing to rely on the guide who’d betrayed him ever again--the way she should.

Her sense of touch spikes--heightens without her permission for the first time in so long that she almost doesn’t recognize what is happening--and she can feel the brush of a bumblebee’s leg across her bare cheek. Miraculously, it doesn’t bother her, so she just stills and lets it wander. Falling into parade rest like it’s the most natural thing in the world for her to do.

It hurts when Hyuuga--that glorious woman who inspired her so much--looks at Isaribi, looks at the harmless little bee, and chokes on a sob. Like she thinks Isaribi would be, could be, so heartlessly cruel to something that would only hurt her if she hurt it.

Hyuuga turns, runs, and Isaribi stays where she is. Only the ashes of her dreams go with the other woman.

Kicking her bare feet through the water is the closest Isaribi can feel to Zako-chan without fully giving into her monstrous side these days, her bandages off and her scales shimmering strangely in the setting sun.

At least two of the village leaders have been by to offer to remove Hyuuga and her company from her Lands and Isaribi doesn’t think she can stomach hearing it again. She won’t let them, in any case. Those poor people--even Hyuuga, maybe especially Hyuuga--are all used to fighting on every side, defending the fragile idea of peace when most don’t even know what it is; they deserve a place of refuge, a home. Somewhere that won’t turn from them when the rest of the world would like nothing better than to hunt them down and spread such an unprofitable and impossible ideal anymore.

Whatever else he taught her, Orochimaru taught Isaribi that much.

And, well, she is the monster Hyuuga sees her as, and she rarely ever bothers to even try and hide it. The only reason she keeps bandaging her scales is that it’s easier to keep them wet that way.

Why does she even care about one woman’s--no matter how much Isaribi might have admired her morals and resolve once upon a time, no matter how much she still might--opinion anyway? She kicks the water extra hard and winces when some of it splashes her face.

Isaribi smells the man before she sees him--early forties probably, definitely in the late stages of Sudden Bond Loss Syndrome--obviously one of Hyuuga’s closer associates, her scent all over him. Another guide--though not for long with how ill he must be for even a sentinel to sense it--from what little he is able to project her way. What little she can feel from him.

(She doesn’t know if it would be a relief to lose her senses if she lost her bonded, or a curse. She’ll never know. Her ability to find her guide faded with Zako-chan’s independence from her. The moment Orochimaru successfully melded them together, Isaribi lost any sense of guide longing. It hadn’t mattered at the time--so consumed with grief and loss that she was practically feral--and it is far too late for her to regret it now. Isaribi knows she couldn’t survive a separation from Zako-chan now.)

“Please allow me to apologize to you,” he says the moment he comes to her seat. Isaribi doesn’t think an apology that Hyuuga doesn’t come to give herself is worth much and it must show on her face because he chuckles dryly, it turning into a rough cough quickly. (She also doesn’t think she deserves an apology but Isaribi is better at keeping that off her face and her psionic profile because that hits a little too close to the heart of her.)

He shakes his head like he can read her mind, though it’s more likely that he’s just good at reading people. Only the strongest bonded guides are able to glean enough emotional and psionic energy from people to even approximately claim being able to ‘read someone’s mind’ and while the man might have been an impressive guide once, he is no longer. “Not for Hinata. She will come to her senses eventually. No, I wanted to apologize for something a little closer to… well, home, I suppose.”

Nodding absently, Isaribi kicks her feet and wonders if it would be insulting to just… swim away. Probably. And it would be far more revealing than she is comfortable with right now, scales on display or not.

The man is quiet for a moment, and it stretches into the humid air. “My name is Nagato,” he says at last. Isaribi doesn’t recognize the name, but she bows lightly in his direction anyway. She doesn’t meet his eyes, or even turn her head much in his direction. Nagato coughs again, and it sounds like a laugh. “You may not know me, but I know you. Of you. Orochimaru’s surviving… is student what you would prefer?”

“Yes.” Isaribi knows others tend to consider her more of an experiment or at most a duped patsy, but that feels far too cold for what they had been to each other at one time. Student is better. It’s not an exact description, but then, even she hardly knows how to describe it anymore.

“His student, then. Perhaps you know my teacher’s name better. His name was Jiraiya.”

Rage flashes across her soul, brief but lasting like a bolt of lightning, and leaves her cold because she does know that name. Heard it over and over from Orochimaru’s mouth, both a curse and a blessing, and only once sobbed like Orochimaru’s heart was breaking before laughter--the same laughter that haunts her memories, hysterical and cold, something so unlike the fire that prompted it--drowned it out. Then she just aches for what her life could have been. Had been, so briefly. ‘Hyuuga has the right of it,’ Isaribi thinks, and she just wants to swim away from it all and finally find some small measure of peace.

Nagato starts talking again, ignorant of her inner turmoil. Just another sign of how far gone his illness is. “My sentinel and I were from Ame. We came online too young, as often happens in countries that place more value on war than people’s lives.” Isaribi was the same, so young she can’t even remember what it was like before. “Jiraiya was there--I believe Orochimaru might have been too, but I never met him if he was--and he simply… stayed. Never went back to Konoha. I did not even know he’d had a sentinel back there, much less who it was, until much later. Long after it would make a difference.” Nagato dips a foot--bare of the sandals she remembers him wearing and she idly wonders if he walked here barefoot or if he treated this dock like a house and removed them--into the water but doesn’t sit down next to her. Isaribi isn’t sure she wants him too.

“A man named Hanzō ruled Ame then, and well into my adult-hood. He was an awful, cruel, greedy man. My earliest memories are of hunger, lasting until we met Jiraiya. My war-torn Ame…” he sighs, “Yahiko wanted better for it. For us. Such an idealistic fool, sometimes I look at Hinata and can see him staring back at me. Hanzō found out about our grand plans and my brave, idiotic sentinel, my one blessed protector… well, I’m sure you can tell.”

Isaribi hardly cares. She has so little sympathy left, so little empathy learned so late in life and it has been too much recently. She lets Nagato talk only because it’s better than sitting by herself in silence, alone with her thoughts; thoughts that so often lead her down darker paths than she ever thought to walk. “Jiraiya apparently found something that convinced him that Orochimaru knew of Hanzō’s plans, I don’t know what. You must understand, I only found this out later, when Jiraiya came back dormant and I was well enough to listen.” Isaribi must understand nothing, but at least Nagato is telling her this. She wouldn’t have known if he’d kept it to himself, but it says something at least somewhat decent about his character that that doesn’t matter. “At the time, I was near death from bond loss and it was only Konan that kept me tethered to life.”

Konan must be the woman with origami flowers in her hair, her scent nearly as prevalent on him as his own. Strange to think that a base could have such an effect on a guide. “I… have never understood why he could believe something so terrible of his own sentinel. Whatever Orochimaru did in the recent past, and however he might have been in Konoha, the first time I’d heard of him, he’d been doing much the same thing with orphans that Jiraiya had done with us.”

It feels like being choked. Maybe drowning--not really an experience she can have anymore, but if anything, that’s what this feels like--she was one of those orphans. The words spill out of her mouth without her permission, “I saw him, he burned us, all of us, even the ones too small to run. Why? Just to hurt Orochimaru? Weren’t they in love? That’s what the bond is supposed to be. Orochimaru loved him.” It feels like poison or acid clawing up her throat and her eyes burn with tears.

Nagato doesn’t have any answers. He just sits next to her, with her, the first person in a long time to truly treat her like an equal for no good reason at all, and they drag their feet through the water, crying together.

When Nagato starts spending more time with Isaribi than with their followers, as everyone--even Haku, who hadn’t wanted to leave their guide’s grave--begins to settle into the Land of Tea, Hinata feels almost betrayed.

She should be happy for him. She is happy for him. Them. Guides so rarely survive their sentinels, and the other way around is even rarer. (She should know. Her father had felt like nothing but grief her entire life, a sentinel who’d lost his guide to childbirth and then embraced the subsequent Bond Loss Syndrome even in the wake of two young children to tend. Hinata doesn’t think he actually did survive her mother’s death. Her father always felt more like a ghost than a man after Hanabi was born.) Knowing how long Nagato has spent without his sentinel, she just wants him to be happy, truly happy. The empty place in her heart that aches--more so on the heretofore rare occasions that she thinks of Isaribi, not quite as rare as she’d like anymore--wants her friend to have a bond. But she knows Konan makes him happy too.

She doesn’t like the idea of them bonding.

And she can’t understand why.

At first Hinata had thought it was because clearly Konan would be upset at the prospect too. But when she had asked around the topic, trying to subtly hint at Konan’s feelings and what Nagato’s behaviour might be doing to their relationship, the woman had just laughed at her and set a paper frog on Hinata’s head before walking off.

From the moment Hinata had seen Isaribi, from the moment she knew that the one who was meant to be her sentinel was also someone who had murdered thousands at a word, who was the reason her uncle did not leave the compound anymore; retired, scarred, and almost as much of a ghost in her life as her father, without even the loss of a bond to explain it. From that moment Hinata had passed Isaribi on that stage, the moment their eyes had locked, she had given up any lingering hope of having a bond, a sentinel, someone to help her and protect her if she needed it.

Being labeled a ‘fragile’ guide from a young age, and being more like her delicate, civilian mother than her teachers in the Military Academy and her extended family in Konoha’s service were comfortable with had nearly done away with such illusions. Finding out who her best match was was simply the last straw.

War is all she’s ever known. All she’s known since the beginning of her life. Hinata may long for peace, may hope for it, imagine it, and work towards it; but she’s never known it. And Hinata doesn’t think she can imagine a peaceful world with Isaribi in it.

(Granted, she’s never tried.)

She can’t imagine it, but if she could, it might look a lot like the Lands of Tea and Rice.

Everyone is… happy.

The feel of it washes over her like sun-warm waves on a summer’s day, and Hinata almost wants to sleep all day, something she’s done a few times at the beaches in Nami. Safety radiates through the rice fields, rustles through the squat tea shrubs. Hinata can’t honestly remember the last time she has felt so protected and soul-warm.

Perhaps… there might have been a shadow of it when her mother was still alive. Some touch of it when she was in the cradle.

Even then though, war touched her life. Violence permeated her clan, webbed its way through their compound’s halls.

Violence is a way of life in Konoha, always couched in the idea of protection of clan and country and fed that way to the children from the first bit of mother’s milk--the way her father raised Hanabi and tried to raise Hinata--but in practice is just meaningless and vile. It has always disturbed her, from the time she was old enough to understand the world around her, even if she didn’t know how to say such until she was given access to the library’s archives.

Hashirama’s journals--the progenitor of the Senjuu clan, Tsunade’s own grandfather, how she must hate him to disdain his legacy so much that she became Konoha’s military commander--spoke of peace, of what he thought it would look like, of how he felt it was missing from their world even if he’d never known it. It gave her that language she lacked to describe how intolerable the world around her was.

(And Hinata fears that she will fail as surely as he did. Hinata was always better at history than tactics or strategy: she knows that Hashirama was killed by his own true guide after being forced to take another due to Madara’s lust for war. Mito had lasted only long enough to give birth to their son before she followed Hashirama, no matter how their bond was initiated.

Privately, Hinata has always wondered what kind of guide Madara was, how he could be so corrupt and not be dormant, but her suspicions on the accuracy of the historical texts doesn’t stop the nightmares. Once a faceless sentinel, now Isaribi, ripping out Hinata’s heart; a slavering monster whose only love is war. She thought that coming here, being under Isaribi’s rule, would make the dreams worse, that she would have them even more. Nothing has surprised her more than finding out that the opposite is true.)

Not long after they first met and Nagato and Konan began following her from town to town--mostly out of curiousity at first, and then somewhere along the way she had managed to get them to take her at least somewhat seriously--Hinata had asked him why he thought she was naive. It was something he would often say to her, more so after one of her impassioned town square speeches failed to hold a crowd, or her more one on one entreaties ended with her being sent off like a child; even though he still followed her and engaged with her often on the subject of peace.

He had said, “You don’t even know what it is you need to change.”

Hinata thinks he might be right, for the first time in her life.

For years she had been sure that it would be easy to stop the wars and bloodshed. Surely everyone was as tired of the endless death and violence as she was? They just didn’t know that there was another option. There were many who were, too. But not enough.

Many more were okay or even happy with the status quo. These were the people who fought back with traditions, stories, and their own experiences until Hinata spun with the effort of keeping their emotions out let alone trying to fight back with her own words.

She had grown up with the same traditions, the same stories, the same experiences. Hinata’s earliest memory is of being kidnapped from her own bed, and her father snapping the man’s neck right in front of her, a feral sentinel protecting his clan. If she longs for a world where that didn’t have to happen, why doesn’t anyone else?

(Hinata can’t help but dwell on her last meeting with Naruto, their last conversation.

She’d had doubts before--nothing in her life before had prepared her for being an outcast from the trappings of society and perpetually reliant on the goodwill of others--but if she had to pinpoint a moment, the moment, when her confidence wavered, it would be then.

Honestly, she doesn’t even remember most of it. Just the part when she asked what he would do after he achieved his dream, after he climbed to the highest rank he could.

“Protect my precious people, of course! Believe it, Hinata, you’ll be able to come back and everything will be fine. You won’t have to fight if you don’t want to,” he said, so earnest and sincere, and his smile still lit up his face but Hinata was wet and cold and hungry and had no time for stupid, childish crushes on someone else’s sentinel.

“But what about everyone else?” she had asked, just because Hinata knows Naruto, knows he has a lot of people he counts as precious, but what about the people he doesn’t know, doesn’t care for like that?

“What about them?” His voice was so blank, so confused, like he couldn’t even understand why she had asked about random strangers’ wellbeing.

Hinata remembers the way Sasuke looked between them then, the way his black eyes--which had always been so scary to her when they were growing up--had filled with understanding and radiated stubborn sympathy. The way that Sasuke had stepped between them and said, “just drop it, she’s not coming back.”

And, when Naruto stubbornly thought that he could make her, force her--and with Haku grieving and injured behind her, Nagato losing more of his gift everyday, Konan beautiful and deadly with her sword but still no match for a trained, bonded sentinel, and very few of her other followers anywhere close to being capable fighters, he would have been able to--she remembers the way that Sasuke reeled him back and with hardly a glance at her said, “she’s still your friend, you don’t want to hurt her. Just let her go starve in the woods some more, she’ll figure it out eventually.”

Sasuke had even kept Naruto and the others busy long enough for Hinata and Haku to be whisked away to the border, given them enough of a head start that they made it to Rice’s border with Sasuke’s words as they fled, “for what she used to be to you,” ringing in her ears.

They didn’t even like each other, had never gotten along in that quiet way of them both that looked much more like polite courtesy and staring through each other when forced to interact than anything else, and yet he was less cruel to her than Naruto was in his unthinking way.

She doesn’t want to be grateful to Sasuke, of all people, but Hinata knows that without him she would be back in Konoha awaiting house arrest or worse and the violence would just continue. It still makes her doubt herself, makes her doubt that anything she ever says will make a difference.)

Hinata ached to ask how this place was possible. A place that didn’t fear, didn’t hate--although given the nasty looks and the mild anger she gets when people think she isn’t paying attention, Hinata’s not completely sure on that one--and simply shone with contentment. She wanted to know if Isaribi was playing some long convoluted game with no clear end in sight or if Hinata had actually been wrong about her. She pokes her teacup and frowns at the grain of the table below it.

“You should ask her these questions instead of speculating to yourself,” Haku says, wrinkling their nose over their own teacup. “You smell awful whenever you work yourself into one of these spirals.” Hinata blushes and switches her gaze from the wood grain to her lap.

“You should keep your nose to yourself,” she mutters, too low for anyone but a sentinel to hear. Haku snorts delicately, yet again making her feel inadequate. Hinata thought she had left that behind in Konoha with Ino, but it’s really just her luck.

“She’s really very nice, you know.” For Haku, that’s very high praise indeed. As polite as they usually are, Haku never makes a habit of lying about someone.

Still, she can’t imagine they’ve met very many ‘nice’ people. Kiri may not be as militarized as Konoha, but it is far more violent, especially against those who break the arbitrary mold of the day in Kiri. The year Hinata was born, there was even a massacre of sentinels and guides following one of the more prominent hypersensitive clans rebelling. They are lucky they escaped with their life, let alone their guide however mismatched Zabuza and Haku were. Hinata knows Haku still mourns Zabuza, mourns their bond despite how little it did for them. She thinks it has more to do with Zabuza himself than anything psionically they had for each other.

“Isaribi’s nothing like they say she is,” slips out before she can prevent it. Hinata can almost feel Haku’s eyes bore into the top of her head and their tolerant derision presses against her shields.

“Ah.” Haku sips their tea. “I thought it might be something like that.” Hinata pokes hers again, it’s Haku’s new favorite blend, one that the villagers say Isaribi herself prefers. It’s a bit too delicate for her tastes--more lightly flavored water than anything else--but she’s glad Haku likes it. “Tell me Hinata, are you anything like the naive, mentally damaged, stupid, fragile little girl that they’ve been painting you as?”

It’s so insulting it leaves her breathless. “Is that really what they think of me?” Even though none of her friends in Konoha agreed with her, even though her teachers largely thought she was prone to overreaction, even though her family mostly looked at her like she was a flower that belonged in the hot house rather than a person so many from Konoha had helped her, both family and friends. From that very first public stand at her graduation ceremony all the way to Nami. Hinata had thought that they respected her at least, that they could be friends if they couldn’t be allies or work towards the same goal.

Haku softens and shakes their head. “For those who know you, have met you, I doubt it. Namikaze wouldn’t have gone to the trouble he did if he thought of you like that. But that is still what Konoha publishes about you. What their leadership says about you.”

“But--” she cuts herself off, still sore from the revelation. “Why?” she asks instead, even if Hinata is not at all certain she wants to know.

“They say it because no matter how many doubts you may have, no matter how long--and it will take a long time, Hinata, you are far too idealistic, some people can’t even imagine what peace might look like--” Hinata wants to protest, but she’s met far too many people who continue to wring their hands and ask ‘what if’ after she’s told them safety and security without risk could be in their grasp if they just reach out for it, “--it might take for what you say to take hold, you are a threat to them. To their power base.” Haku bites the lip of the teacup to keep from laughing--Hinata doesn’t think any of this is funny but she’s given up on understanding their sense of humor--and grins around it. “Do you really think that any of those military leaders will have near the power they do now if there aren’t any wars to fight?”

They’re right, Hinata knows they are. Still, “you’re saying that things I grew up hearing, believing, are propaganda?”

Haku shrugs, fingers curling and uncurling around their teacup as they spin it slowly in their hand. “Isn’t every story?”

It’s so cynical but Hinata can’t really fault their logic and certainly not their experiences.

Logically, Isaribi is only five years older than Hinata is. Logically, Hizashi was scarred and crippled when she was four, and Hiashi went dormant when she was five. Logically, then, Isaribi may have been present for the battle that took her uncle from her, but she couldn’t have been responsible. Even less so her father’s dormancy, something Hinata still believes was because of her mother’s death, although her uncle retreating from the world couldn’t have helped.

It had been a battle against Kumo- -the same country who had arranged her kidnapping, or at least were blamed for it her entire life- -and Orochimaru was said to have been assisting the enemy. Hinata doesn’t even know if any of it’s true now.

“Why lie? About her, about any of it?”

“I’m sure it was because of the same reason they lied about you,” Haku returned, eyes closing, their senses stressed. Hinata tries to soothe them, but there’s little she can do without a bond and neither of them want that complication in their friendship. “She was a threat then, and is a bigger one now.”

Isaribi smells Hyuuga before she sees her. Her sense of smell has always been her strongest, and Hinata’s is very… enticing?

The woman is layered with the scents of her party as well as dried herbs and flowers from working with both all day. Underneath it all Hyuuga smells simply… clean. The closest parallel Isaribi can draw is that it is like cool, fresh water, but it isn’t really the same at all. It is just uniquely hers.

“I, um, I wanted to ask you something,” Hyuuga says when she’s close enough, fidgeting with some hair that’s fallen out of her braid; twisting it around and around her long, pale fingers, the contrast of dark and light--like ink against snow, but warmer, alive--it is mesmerizing.

Isaribi swallows and cuts her eyes away from Hyuuga’s fingers.

“Oh.” It’s not an apology but Isaribi didn’t want one of those anyways. At least Hyuuga is talking to her now. It’s a step. Isaribi isn’t quite sure where it’s a step to, but talking to each can only be a good thing. She can sort out her feelings about the woman later--or never. “Sure. Whatever you want to know.”

A bee buzzes around Isaribi’s head slowly before settling on her hair. It’s weird, there’s been more bees than normal around lately, but the fields could probably use the pollination. Kami help her if she has to sit through another one of Asuka’s rants on the subject.

Hyuuga’s heart rate and temperature are up again. Poor girl must have some kind of blood pressure problem. Isaribi closes her eyes and focuses on the drowsy buzz in her hair. Hyuuga stammers nonsense for a couple of long moments before the woman does some rudimentary breathing exercises to calm down.

Finally, she says, “Your countries are beautiful… peaceful. No one stays upset or unhappy or scared for very long. I just… I don’t understand how. Why?”

She doesn’t know how to answer that without revealing more than Isaribi really wants to, but she doesn’t care anymore. Hyuuga is right that negative emotions don’t stick around long. Since their meeting is the longest Isaribi has had to smell lingering anger and upset in a very long time. Both Rice and Tea are her home, she shouldn’t have to tiptoe around Hyuuga anymore. Even if her poor opinion of Isaribi hurts, maybe lancing the boil will help it not to fester.

“What I saw in myself and around me, I didn’t like but I didn’t know how to change it. Until you. So everything you see, everything you like here… it’s because of you.”

There’s a gasp from Hyuuga, and her heart rate kicks up again into a hard, pounding drum beat in Isaribi’s ears. She screws her eyes shut even tighter and wishes for water to sink into so she doesn’t have to hear it anymore, get yet more proof of how much she frightens Hyuuga. “My… sensei wanted to know peace when I was young. His guide had believed in it too, and left him to find it long before my sensei rescued me. He had no idea what it would be like, or how to achieve it, and no instincts toward it either but… he tried. He said we weren’t animals, even if we could go feral, so no one should use sentinels’ territoriality as an excuse for war like a lot of the bigger countries do. Right up until… he didn’t anymore.” Isaribi rubs at her bandages, careful not to do anything to dislodge the soothing presence of the, well, exceedingly affectionate bee.

“I’ve never had any family but him. Him, and all the other kids he tried to help, but they’re all… gone. When he came here, I followed. When he… tried to kill me… he wasn’t thinking clearly anymore… I fought back. I didn’t want to die.” Isaribi huffs, she left out all the most embarrassing parts, the most incriminating ones, but there’s one left that is far too integral to what Hyuuga wants to know from her. “I didn’t mean to liberate Tea and Rice. It just,” she shrugs, “happened.”

Hyuuga chokes and Isaribi almost gives herself whiplash looking up to make sure the guide is okay. Hyuuga’s turning red trying to hold back laughter which is both relieving and irritating all at the same time. Isaribi frowns at her, but from the look on her face Isaribi is fairly sure it looks more like a pout. “I-I’m sorry, I just-- you did this by mistake?” Hyuuga manages after a moment of gulping down air, her wide smile making her pretty, lavender eyes sparkle. Isaribi can feel her own cheeks go warm and she’s not even going to try to deny the fact that she’s pouting now.

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to take over someplace. Administration is terrible.”

The woman howls with laughter--apparently unable to keep it back anymore--a demure, but useless, hand over her mouth and tears streaming down her cheeks.

Isaribi tries to fight the urge to smile at Hyuuga, but she’s just as glorious like this--slowly suffocating from laughter--as she is defying nations, so it’s a losing battle. Hyuuga eventually calms down, hiccuping and gasping, returning Isaribi’s smile shyly.

“Well, anyway.” Isaribi looks away, stomach warm and floaty, and coughs to get rid of the feeling. It doesn’t work, damn it all. “The people here took care of me and I wanted to do the same for them. Mostly they’re farmers not fighters, no matter how many armies march through here. I did what I thought was necessary to protect them.” The bee is still there, still soothing, and Isaribi almost wants to focus back onto it. But she locks eyes with Hyuuga again instead, because if what she says next doesn’t scare her away entirely something that sounds like her Zako-chan tells her that things will change. For better or for worse. “But they were still scared. Of me. They had a right to be. I’m not proud of it, it’s just what it was. Then I heard you, at your graduation ceremony, and I could see… it’s like things clicked into place for the first time. What you said, that’s what my sensei searched for, that’s what I had been missing the entire time. And what I saw… it was beautiful.” Isaribi wants to say that Hyuuga was beautiful too, but she doesn’t. Can’t. Too much, too close, too soon.

“I-I…” Hyuuga goes beet red like she heard it anyways. Maybe she did. Isaribi hasn’t been around guides often enough to know when and what she might be projecting, not recently, at least. “I-I…” she stutters again, and Isaribi remembers the Hyuuga man that had stood on that stage next to her and been so very proud that Hyuuga spoke without one, in front of all those people. Thinking that she might have anything to do with a recurrence of that stutter, that hurts.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to say any--” Isaribi starts.

“I’m your guide!” Hinata yells at her, smelling sharply of anger, before she squeaks and hides her face behind her hands.

Time stops. Well, not literally, but shock is like that sometimes, even for a sentinel. Isaribi knows her mouth is open and some background part of her brain is hoping that the bee doesn’t get curious but she’s forgotten how to close it and all higher brain functions are replaying the past couple seconds again and again and coming up with nothing. “What?” she finally says, croaking. That word gets added to the confusion that’s become Isaribi’s mind and helps nothing whatsoever.

Hinata looks down, away, and shame colors her scent and her ears. “I’m your guide. I’ve known for years. I’m sorry. I just… I thought I knew who you were, without actually giving myself the chance to really get to know you, and I was… so wrong.”

“What?” Isaribi want to say something else, anything else, like maybe explain how impossible that is, or how those words make her stomach dive and swoop in something between nerves and hope. Hinata doesn’t stop talking though, so even if Isaribi did manage something else it would be lost in the flood.

“--I’ve never seen a happy bond that I can remember,” she says, tripping over the words like they’re jutting stones in her path, “every guide I’ve ever met who talked about it, their bond, framed it as some terrible burden, something they were happy to suffer because they loved their sentinel and because it’s what their country asked of them--I think it’s different for a few of them, the ones lucky enough to find their best match before the government can involve themselves, but they never talk about it--and I didn’t want that. My mother loved my father so much, it’s one of the only things I remember about her, and he loved her enough to go against the Military rulings and bonded with her anyways even though she was never anything but a civilian. You’re kind of… really wonderful, and I didn’t expect that, and maybe I could love you like that someday but my mother suffered under it too, under the weight of knowing the type of man my father was and she died and I don’t want that. But I do think I maybe want you--”

The air is thick with the acrid stench of agitation, fear, and panic, and Hinata’s lungs are practically vibrating under the stress of how quickly she is breathing and how little air is actually making it to them. Isaribi doesn’t know what to say to anything that Hinata’s just said, but she does know that if this continues Hinata’ll hurt herself, so she grabs Hinata’s hands and starts breathing the way Orochimaru first taught her: slow and deep, in and out, on a count of seven for each. “Hinata, come on, follow me, just breathe with me, you can do it.”

Isaribi tries to project calm, safety, security but she has no idea how successful she is at it. Suspiciously, the honeybee leaves Isaribi’s hair and settles into Hinata’s braid, right under Hinata’s ear.

They breathe together, holding hands--which would be more thrilling for Isaribi if she wasn’t so worried--for many minutes, and Isaribi just tries to take the time to think.

Eventually though, Hinata pulls away, huffing out a dry, derisive laugh--nothing like the pure joy that Isaribi’d heard earlier--her voice hoarse. “What you must think of me. Nagato was right. I’m so stupid, so naive.”

While Isaribi disagrees with her guide calling herself stupid… she really can’t on the naive part. Hinata is naive. And Isaribi finds that far more charming than she really should, because at least Hinata has found hope in that, that she might not have found otherwise. She can’t fault Hinata for wanting love and safety in a bond, not after what they’ve both seen in bonds where that only comes later if at all. Isaribi knows well the price an unhappy pair exacts on each other, collateral damage be damned. “It’s okay, it’s fine, you don’t have to be upset,” she says instead agreeing with the mildly insulting parts. The skin of her palm tingles with the touch-memory of Hinata’s hand in hers.

Hinata gulps down threatening tears--Isaribi can smell them, and see the way her eyes glisten--and tries to smile. It wobbles, and Isaribi shoves away the instinct to smooth it out with her thumb. “You can’t feel it, can you?” she asks, surprisingly calm and shrewd. That’s generally not the first thing people think when they get a hint of the downsides of what she let Orochimaru do to her. “That’s why you were so surprised, and why you didn’t try to find me before.” Isaribi’s hands clench, and she tries not to stare at Hinata’s pretty, delicate hands. Staring at the pretty, delicate bee nestled into a vee of braid on Hinata’s shoulder is only a little better now that she knows it’s Hinata’s spirit animal.

“I…” Isaribi flails for an excuse, a reason, something that will sound palatable and regretful and just comes up empty. “No.” Hinata’s face falls just slightly--Isaribi knows it sounds like a rejection, but that’s the furthest thing from her mind, she’s just not that great with saying what she’s thinking--and her brave guide puts up a neutral front.

Isaribi kind of really hates it, and would rather never see her do it again. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want you to be my guide!” she says quickly, before she can second-guess herself into oblivion. “I’d be honored, I mean, I really like you too, I have for a while--” she cuts herself off.

That was more than she had wanted to admit--to Hinata, let alone herself--more than she had thought that she could ever have when she woke up this morning. But, just like Hinata had all those years ago when Isaribi couldn’t see the way forward by herself, Hinata gave her hope for something new and beautiful and strange that she would have never thought possible before.

Hinata squeaks and instead of hiding behind her hands, she sets her jaw and tips forward to hide her face against Isaribi’s shoulder.

It’s a surprise, but a good one, so Isaribi only hesitates a moment before wrapping her arms around Hinata and pulling her close.

They fit against each other like they were made for each other. In a way, Isaribi believes that they were, given what she was taught about sentinels and guides growing up.

“We’ll have to talk more, get to know each other better, before we do anything,” Hinata whispers, but she doesn’t pull away. Isaribi hums an agreement into Hinata’s soft, silky hair and doesn’t let go or pull away either.

They’ll work it out. If Hinata needs her to, Isaribi will burn the world down to ash so they can all try again, but better this time. They’ll work everything out, and Isaribi will be happy, as long as they work it out together.

Chapter Text

Hinata hasn’t seen Konoha in over a decade. She had honestly never expected to see it again when she left.

At the time, it had seemed like a small price to pay for the greater good. Now, smelling the Hashirama trees on the wind and feeling the distant but distinct aura of her clan and all its’ members traced through the city streets, she wonders if she was so focused on what hurt about being there and all the pain that she forgot why she had wanted peace in the first place.

(Her home may be different now, may consist of Isaribi’s scales and soft skin, meals with fresh rice, and the scent of tea always brewing, may mean sturdy shields that can never be overwhelmed and a family of friends that she has made along the way but Konoha still means home to some small part of her. Hinata doesn’t miss it, but that part of her does, and she has to accept that. Parting with her past would only change her future, and right now that future is looking pretty bright.)

An honor guard leads them to the central tower, just Hinata, Isaribi, Nagato, Konan, and Asuka Ikeda, one of Isaribi’s closest advisors; not that Hinata doesn’t know the way. It’s the principle of the thing, even with how much things have changed. It’s still too new, too recent, and people aren’t in the habit of trusting yet. It will come. Once, the walk would have filled Hinata with fear. Now, with Isaribi’s hand in hers, there’s nothing here that Hinata is afraid of.

They pass a few familiar faces on the streets, but very few of them really recognize Hinata. Even fewer still do anything but walk away. She gets a nod or two, some gawkers who might be more interested in her sentinel than her, but very little acknowledgement.

Right before they reach the central tower, though, Hinata sees Sasuke. It’s very likely a deliberate action on his part, seeking her out, but she just tips her head at him and doesn’t draw attention to it. Konan puts her hand on her sword like she needs to rest it there anyway.

Sasuke nods back, and he brushes cool gratitude across her shields briefly before he walks away. Isaribi looks at Hinata curiously, but she just smiles and shakes her head, Kebadatsu already buzzing ahead of them.

(Naruto wouldn’t be so glad to see Hinata, not after all the work Isaribi and her did to make sure that someone more sympathetic to the idea of peace for all came to power. But for Sasuke to thank her, to deliberately come find her and thank her, bonded guide to bonded guide? That means that something good came out of all of it for them too, and she’s very glad for that. Naruto was an idol of strength for her for a long time, and even if he ended up having feet of clay, she wants him to have a good life. For what he used to be to her.)

Neji stands from behind his desk--his dream of achieving that high office of general as a base realized just as her dreams become closer to reality than the nebulous thoughts they were before--and rounds it to crush Hinata to his chest the moment they enter.

It makes her melt, almost to tears, to have her cousin be so happy to see her that Hinata can feel it radiate like heat from his skin. To have someone she shares blood with wrap her in almost as much safety as her blessed protector. Isaribi thrums sincerity and love down their bond, and then she coughs lightly when the hug goes on just a bit long, feeling very amused and not very possessive about it all.

They separate, reluctantly, and Hinata thanks every kami in existence that they’ll be in Konoha for a week because she’s not ready to leave her cousin just yet. Isaribi pulls out a chair for Hinata, and stands behind her. Nagato settles against the wall with Konan. One of the guards whispers lowly to Asuka, who nods.

“Are you ready to change the world with with me?” Neji asks, handing Hinata a pen. The papers on the desk in front of her--something she would never have thought of without Isaribi, without her peoples’ expertise in contracts and such--represent the first step toward something like peace. It doesn’t quite match her ideals yet, isn’t yet a guarantee of safety and security without violence dealt or meant… but a step forward is better than stagnation.

Isaribi’s warm hand is heavy and safe on her shoulder--if only everyone could feel this, they would know what peace truly is--and the sound of her sentinel saying softly to Neji, “she already has,” thrills Hinata to the bone.

The future has so much potential now, looks so euphoric in this one instance, now that she has hope and love to wake up for instead of merely stubbornness.