WARNING Again, not sure what everyone's tolerance for violence is but just giving you guys another heads up: descriptions of death with some blood right in the middle.
***
The Hokage's advisor came for the fated visit and knocked at the door to the Hyuuga home. Her father himself answered the door and called out to Hinata to join them at his office.
"Hiashi," Shikaku said with a low bow towards him. "I apologize for interrupting you on this busy day."
Hiashi waved the apology away. "It's of no consequence, Shikaku. I know why you're here."
They both looked at Hinata.
Shikaku bowed again. "If you will permit me to say that Neji has performed extremely well these last few months. He's been an asset to our political prowess."
"The credit goes to his father, of course."
"Of course," Shikaku agreed. He cleared his throat. "But I've come to ask if Hinata is ready to take on her duty for the clan and for Konoha."
Hiashi looked at Hinata, who met her father's gaze unblinkingly. "I can't answer the question. Only my daughter can do so."
Shikaku then turned his attention to her. "Are you ready to add your name to the roster of assassins for Konoha, Hinata?"
Hinata nodded then said, "Yes, of course, Shikaku-sama."
She then bowed low, touching her forehead to the tatami mat. "I will do my duty."
Shikaku smiled at her. "Then we will be getting in touch with you in a few days. If you can prepare yourself to be ready to go at a few moment's notice, that would be ideal."
"I will be ready whenever you call for me."
"Thank you, Hinata." Shikaku then turned to Hiashi. "Thank you for meeting with me today, Hiashi. Please convey my respects to your father."
Hiashi bowed to Shikaku in response then led him out. But he didn't immediately go back to the office. Instead, he waited a few more minutes, composing himself as he watched the Hokage's assistant walk through the Hyuuga's courtyard, and finally out the gates of the compound.
There was a shriek of laughter from one of the children playing in the courtyard.
That's right. Today, some of the younger clan members were about to start practicing again for the taijutsu lessons.
He turned back to the house and made his way to his office, to where Hinata was still waiting for him. Before he opened the door, Hiashi quietly released a slow, laborious breath, weighted down by something in his chest.
From here on out, his own daughter was going to be an instrument of death.
Oh, Hinata, he thought. I wanted to spare you this burden, but it falls upon us to continue this responsibility. We must do what we can to keep Konoha safe from its enemies.
Hinata looked up when he entered the room. Already, the resolve was in her eyes.
Hiashi looked down at his hands and saw that they were clenched into fists. He wanted to cry. Though he always maintained an unflinching facade in front of his father, he found it difficult to do with his first-born daughter. She was being so brave and accepting of her fate, without even a whimper or a complaint.
She'd accepted the duty that had befallen the chosen Hyuugas.
And the worst part of it was she did it because of love.
***
The summons from Shikaku came sooner than she'd anticipated.
But she was ready.
She smiled to herself. After all, even her grandfather admitted that she was well-prepared for the job. She'd spent the last seven years rigorously learning in that room with him, working on the bodies, memorizing chakra points and nerve connections, slicing through flesh and tissue.
Yes, Hinata had trained long enough. It was time to show the clan and to prove to her grandfather that she was more than capable of doing the job.
For the first time in her life, at the age of fifteen, Hinata set off to kill a man in cold blood.
They traveled for a week, Hinata and her father. They came to a town that was rough, the atmosphere was filled with the hopelessness of its people.
"Normally, you'll be going by yourself, but Father granted my wish to take you under my wing," Hiashi explained to her. "I have business in the area anyway and I thought that it would benefit both of us if we traveled together."
Hinata smiled at her father. "Are you worried?"
Hiashi laughed. "No, Hinata. With you? Never."
So he stayed at the hotel while Hinata went to find her target, a man named Matsuda. He was in his forties, a leader of one of the gangs who were benefiting from profiteering. Unfortunately, they also ran a legitimate business that was wildly successful. Profits from the business funded their crimes, mostly murder, and ironically, elimination of rival gang members.
None of the Konoha shinobi had been able to find evidence or catch Matsuda's organization in the act of committing any of the murders. But bodies had piled up, all with suspicious injuries, all heavily marked by the clumsy hack of a blade across necks and torsos.
In this atmosphere of fear, nobody willingly reached out to the legitimate shinobi who'd come to help.
They needed a stronger solution.
Shikaku had received word from one of the rival gangs and had approached the Hyugas to request their assistance.
"This is your target."
Hinata immediately memorized Matsuda's face. She looked at the other photos of rough-looking men and recognized the man who had sought Shikaku out.
"They're all gangs," he'd explained to her. He pointed to the face of their reluctant ally. "But I'd prefer to have a leader with at least a semblance of loyalty to Konoha. Plus, he'll bring stability to the region. Out of all the bad guys, this guy is the strongest."
Shikaku looked at her and knew she would understand. "I know he's an evil bastard, but he's our bastard."
Hinata watched her target walk down the street. No bodyguards for someone with a lot of enemies. But he had a penchant for raping girls, which gave her the advantage.
Matsuda was one of those men who completely believed in his invincibility and thought less of others, especially a young girl who looked like she'd make an easy plaything. It didn't matter that Hinata had resisted and had pretended to fight him off when he'd suddenly grabbed her off the street. His hands had cruelly pinched and grasped at her. When that didn't work, he'd slapped her hard across her face.
Hinata let herself accept the blow, let herself be dragged into his arms. She needed to get close to him, and this was the only way to do it.
It had been easier than she'd thought, a simple brush of her fingers to his back, the slightest pressure to the appropriate chakra point, five inches below his left shoulder blade. He'd collapsed instantly at her touch, one she'd skillfully inflicted when she'd struggled against him.
He'd fallen, completely unable to move but now completely at her mercy.
With the greatest pleasure that she allowed herself, Hinata touched his left breast, injected enough chakra, like a needle, and targeted that tenketsu that happened to intersect with the vein controlling the beat of his heart.
But before he completely lost consciousness, though, she had some play-acting to do so his death could be recorded properly. Even while she fought her revulsion, Hinata leaned down and placed her lips against his.
When the medical examiner inspected the body and had probed into the man's memories days later, the picture of a heart-stoppingly lovely face was all he saw. The young girl was trying to save the man, desperation in her face as she tried to breathe life into his mouth. It was all he saw before the man's memory faded to black.
He never found out that the face had been the true cause of his death.
But then other people come to try to help the man. In the confusion and the panic that startled everyone when the man had stumbled, Hinata made her escape. She sobbed and let herself be pulled up away from him.
She continued to gasp and babble incomprehensibly about the collapsed man. Even while she did, Hinata was already manipulating them, diminishing the strength of her chakra so that she faded into the background and slowly, unobtrusively walked away.
Like Neji said, it was surprisingly easy to take a life, she thought, as she walked sedately, looking completely different from the hysterically crying girl a few minutes ago.
Bile suddenly rose up in her but she took a deep, calming breath and willed it to subside. Not yet, she told herself as she walked composedly, putting as much distance as she could from the crowd.
She found the perfect place. When Hinata was far enough for anybody to suspect, she leaned forward, held her arms against the wall of the alleyway and retched into the dust. She took another deep breath, but her body shuddered one more time as the contents of her stomach emptied out again.
She clutched at the wall, hanging on, and just desperately keeping hold so she wouldn't lose her balance and fall face down into the mess. Even now, the smell of her own vomit was causing her to jerk again in response.
She wiped her face and stood up. Hinata could still hear the crowd creating a ruckus over the man. After all, he was a well-known gang leader. There were more shouts and screaming. A male voice called for somebody to get a doctor. She could also hear Matsuda's thugs frantically searching for her. But they wouldn't be able to find her because nobody could ever remember her appearance—she was that forgettable.
But in all the chaos, nobody had questioned how an otherwise healthy forty-year-old man could suddenly die of a heart attack.
Matsuda's memory would eventually fade as the rival gang and its leader stepped into the space created by his absence. True to his word, he kept the area stable and remained loyal to Konoha. He knew, of course, that he could be targeted and assassinated at any time, but he was a businessman, first and foremost. What he wanted was money, not a pile of dead bodies, so he held his power in check.
As long as he didn't rock the system too much, he would be okay from Konoha's brand of justice.
***
Hinata returned to their hotel and found her father sipping tea on the low table in the room. He looked up with a question in his eyes.
"It's done."
He nodded and reached for another cup to make her tea.
She came forward just as he poured hot water over the tea leaves. She sat across from him and waited for the steam to clear.
Hiashi sighed when their eyes met again. "This is a duty we have to do. We've provided this service to Konoha for centuries, which has allowed us to remain a powerful clan throughout the years. I only wish I haven't placed the burden on you, Hinata."
Her face was composed as she shook her head. "No, this is my responsibility and I will do my duty."
"Yes, I know," her father said, his tone heavy.
Hinata reached out suddenly and gripped his hand, surprising him with the flare of emotion in her eyes. "But we spare Hanabi from this fate," she burst out.
"Yes, at all cost, we will," Hiashi said, understanding and agreeing with her.
She took a deep breath and steadied herself. She needed to get back in control of her emotions. This was her father, and she was still in the middle of her mission. She needed to go back to Konoha and debrief the Hokage. Until then, she still had a job to do.
But her father was looking at her kindly, the expression on his face invited her to talk.
Hesitantly, Hinata tried. "I just want to confirm something. You and Uncle Hizashi knew what Neji and I had planned from the beginning?"
Hiashi laughed humorlessly. "Yes, we both hoped you would come to an understanding."
She didn't bother to hide her surprise but the only reaction she allowed herself was a slow nod.
Her father continued speaking. "This duty fell to me because I wanted to protect Hizashi, too, when I was younger. Just as you want to do it to prevent Hanabi from falling to the same fate. You and Neji planned it well. It was ingenious. You were both so evenly matched that Father had no choice but to appoint the both of you to this position."
Hinata nodded. "I'm glad." She looked at him, a fierce look on her face. "This is my responsibility alone. I don't want Hanabi to become another assassin. I want her to remain innocent, to have a childhood she can talk about with her own children someday."
"Yes." His tone was solemn.
He knew, of course. He'd felt the same exact thing for his younger twin when they'd been children. Hiashi was glad that the burden had been his alone to bear, sparing his brother from a life of horror. He was proud of Hizashi for using his skills to become a medic ninja instead, using his gifts to save people, not to take away their lives.
Hiashi inwardly smiled. The Hyuuga twins. The killer and the healer.
They fell silent again, Hinata stared into her tea until her father cleared his throat.
She looked up into his troubled eyes.
He was weighing what to say.
"Hinata, try to find a way to...cope. There will be times when it gets harder and bearing it will eat at your soul. Try not to think of it as a judgment. It is a job, nothing else. We do this because this is our duty, our responsibility since we are best suited for this type of work. Somebody has to do it. We just happened to be it."
"Just a job," Hinata murmured.
"Yes, so find something in your life that will ease it, something that will make you feel less of a monster."
A monster.
She looked at her father and thought of his hobby of sado, of preparing tea, of the calm and the serenity of it. The long hours in the teahouse where the only sounds were silence and the whisk brushing gently against a bowl.
She took a sip of her tea, tilted her head, and asked, "It gets harder from here on out?"
There was a laugh, one filled with irony. "On the contrary, my daughter, the killing becomes easier. But the emotional toll? Yes, it does. It weighs heavy and becomes unbearable sometimes."
She knew how much this admission cost him, his acknowledgment of this weakness.
Hinata nodded. "Then I will find a way to cope."
"You must. Because the guilt will weigh on you, even though this is not our fault." His familiar sardonic expression flitted briefly over his features.
She bowed. "I will do my best."
"You're very brave," he said, startling her again with the sudden compliment.
She shook her head in denial, but she replied, "No, I am your daughter." Her smile was fleeting. "A true Hyuuga."
"You are," he said, pride evident in his eyes.
She stood up. "I'll leave you to your silence. I have to go back to Konoha. Thank you for accompanying me."
He bowed at her, a low one that she acknowledged as his apology for inadvertently placing her in this situation through her birth.
When she was at the door, she turned around to give him one last look.
He was smiling.
"When it becomes too much, come to me. I will listen."
"Thank you, Father."
However, her steps faltered as she was about to leave the room. She hesitated for a moment, then, "Father, would you allow me the use of mother's garden? I'd like to give it a try."
She was shocked that she'd said it. He, meanwhile, sat still, but the tension was palpable at the mention of her mother. They haven't talked about her in years, not since Hiashi had told her about her mother's and her baby brother's death.
He remained silent, waiting for her to continue.
She continued. "Mother liked to grow flowers. I think I might be good at it, too."
Hiashi smiled in understanding. She would use the garden as a way to cope.
"You're good at anything you put your mind to, Hinata."
She laughed at that. She felt her father's rare compliment briefly warm her heart.
"Of course," Hiashi said. "Do what you want. I'll have them give you the keys to the glasshouse."
"Thank you, Father."
With one last bow, she left.
Thank you, Hinata, he thought as Hiashi watched his daughter leave, his heart heavy. I so much wanted to save you, too.
***
She'd just ended her debriefing with Tsunade and had been puzzled by the long glance that Hokage had given her after she'd finished her report on the mission.
She hoped she'd done everything they'd asked her to do. More than anything, she didn't want the Hokage and Shikaku to think she was incompetent and unable to do the job.
"Hinata, thank you," Tsunade finally said.
Hinata bowed and left.
It sounded like the Hokage was pleased. She was doing fine, then.
Neji was there when she got home.
He waited for her at the gates and didn't say anything but folded her into a tight hug. Surprised, Hinata let herself be embraced. Must be one of those things he was learning from his team and Gai-sensei because he never used to this when they'd been younger.
Neji gave her the same glance that the Hokage had given her and it made Hinata frown to see so many people doubting her capabilities.
"I'm fine, Neji!" she said.
Neji shook his head. "That's what worries me. You shouldn't be."
"I'm different, then," Hinata said, hoping for some levity.
But Neji didn't share in the joke. "Hinata, please let me know if anything bothers you."
Hinata stifled another protest but instead let Neji continue to hug her.
No, she would not give in. All she needed was time to get used to everything. Once she hit a rhythm, like all else in her life, she would be fine.
***
Her first few missions had spoiled her for her fourth one, when she'd had to spill blood for the first time.
That night, she stalked her prey, learning his habits—and it was always a he. He'd been one of the warlords who'd been stealthily gathering arms and stealing scrolls filled with hidden jutsus from not only Konoha but from other villages as well.
Secrecy had been of utmost. He knew too much classified information about Konoha. Shikaku had explained that the next step to selling arms would be selling information. He needed to be disposed of.
At first, she tried to do things stealthily, but despite her careful planning, he'd seen her face, her eyes. Instead of fighting, though, he ran. He was smart enough to know that she was a byakugan user and one touch from her would mean the end for him.
Hinata had managed to corner him and tried to snap the man's neck with her bare hands, but he'd been stronger than she'd thought. Even with her byakugan hitting his chakra points to disable his movements, he fought hard, his will to survive propelling his resistance. Pure animal instincts to live. The cords of his neck were strong and she struggled to break the fragile bones of his vertebrae. Instead, she drew out her kunai and slit his throat.
But she miscalculated. Her incision was a few inches above his jugular, causing her to spill more blood than she'd planned. The gush of blood caused her to breathe out harshly in surprise and she did her best to wipe it off her hands.
The warmth of the blood shocked her, and she didn't like to think how almost... pleasant it felt on her fingers, the way the warmth of his blood heated her cool hands.
When she ran far enough from his house, she found the closest and safest river to cleanse herself, plunging her hands into the icy cold water, trying to erase the sensation of thick, warm, liquid spilling into her palms.
It took a long time to get herself fully clean, to get the lingering metallic tang, the scent of blood, off her body, her clothes, her hair. She feared she would never get the smell of spilled blood out of her mind.
But the sixth and seventh missions had been the same. The cut across the jugular spilled too much blood, no matter how much she'd calculated and been precise in her incisions. The flow never stopped. It always gushed forth and cleanup was worse because it made her re-live the experience again.
It didn't seem to matter that they were old or young, thin or fat.
They all bled.
From then on Hinata decided that she would do everything with her hands as much as possible. Besides the smell, she didn't like the way blood got into small crevices in her uniform where she'd forgotten to check. She hated the way that it dried, and stayed, and would remind her weeks later of what she'd done.
Killing with her bare hands was cleaner. Working with weapons created a mess. She didn't like the sound, the quiet snick of a sharp blade against human skin, the way the flesh opened up underneath the cut. Nor the way blood rushed out of veins. She hated seeing the bodies still pulsating with life even as liquid spilled out.
No, she preferred the tidy, efficient way she could finish her job with just her chakra running through her hands.
***
Warlords. Sex traffickers. Murderers. Heads of drug cartels. Traitors.
Over the years, as she became more proficient in her job, her thinking evolved. With each kill, the target changed. But nothing changed the fact they still had to be eliminated. She'd steeled herself to think that these men were killers who hurt innocent people, took lives.
Unbidden, though, a thought always stole into her mind. Something she still struggled to control.
A whisper, an accusation.
You're a killer, too. What makes you different from these men?
I'm not. It's different, what I do.
But deep in her heart, she couldn't deny the truth.
I've killed. I kill.
And if I don't do it, someone else has to. If not me, then who?
A vision of Hanabi doing the same thing made her tense and she felt the overwhelming urge to throw up. She held it down, miraculously forced it back, but the images remained clear in her mind. There she was, her beautiful sister snapping a man's neck, stabbing a man in the heart with a chakra needle, running in the darkness pursued by killers, washing blood off her hands.
No, she would not let her sister experience this, meet this fate.
Her sister was going to remain pure.
Hinata would do this job and only her. She believed in Shikaku, in the Hokage whenever they came to see her and assigned her a mission.
Always, she agreed with their reasoning. Her job was to take care of things.
Anything and anyone that threatened the stability and defenses of Konoha. Sticky issues that couldn't be solved quickly through politics. When the time for talk was clearly over and action needed to be taken. Things in the shadow world that needed to exist, but had to be controlled.
Regular shinobi weren't allowed to handle these things. It would ruin too much of what the village had built over the centuries, an ideal Konoha with the purity of its strength, the honor for its noble shinobi.
Assassinations. Targeted killings. State-sanctioned killings.
Those were meant for her. Yes, there was always a way to justify the need for her skills, her existence.
What she did was not cold-blooded murder.
It was a kind of justice, swift in its retribution, done in the darkness, hidden from the light.
But Hinata hadn't minded being in the shadows, of doing whatever was necessary to protect the tranquility, the idyllic Konoha life. Her only condition was to secure her sister's future, for Hanabi to remain ignorant of the cost of this peace.
***
By the time she'd gone on her fifteenth mission of these, days after her nineteenth birthday, the shock had worn off. She was a professional and carried with her the resignation and disengagement of her experience.
Hinata grew to ignore everything else. Their struggles, the recriminations, the accusing eyes, the protests, and sometimes, the cries for mercy. There was a place in the back of her mind where she could go and hide from the reality of what she was doing.
She thought of her grandfather's favorite words: They're trash that needs to be taken out.
She took a deep breath and started seeking within her, to that part of her psyche that always helped her in times like these. It helped to calm her and to think clearly of what she needed to do.
For Hinata, separating her life and her mission was essential. Otherwise, she would think much too deeply than necessary of what she was doing.
Thinking about them as trash, as nonhuman things was a way for her to get the job done. By stripping away their humanity, she could easily kill, let them bleed out, silently die without acknowledging the expressions of fear on their faces.
She wouldn't think of them as people.
Because she couldn't.
It would destroy her.
And yet sometimes, they always managed to worm their way into her thoughts, whenever she was unguarded and not so vigilant.
It happened when her curiosity would sometimes get the best of her. When her eyes would glimpse the pictures on the wall, the wedding rings on the left finger, the photos in their wallets, those impossibly incongruous things in their pockets.
Once, she'd found a note scribbled with a grocery list of things to buy, signed with love and a female name enclosed in a drawing of a heart.
Things that marked them as people with families and lives being led.
She shook her head to shake off her thoughts.
They are garbage, she repeated to herself.
Focus.
She was still on the job.
Bedroom, the target still sleeping on the bed.
Her eyes adjusted quickly in the darkness. Nobody had noticed her stealthy entry into the house.
With a twitch of her fingers, Hinata quickly stripped off her henge, allowing her true features to surface as her disguise melted away. She made her way to where the man was sleeping. Byakugan activated, she hit the area right on the base of the man's neck to blind him and to make sure he wouldn't be able to keep a record of how he'd died. Nothing that the medical examiner could ever trace to her or to the Hyuugas.
Then with her eyes deeply probing, she found that spot on his brain that would make it look that he died from his sleep from an aneurysm, a typical reason for why men his age could die without an explanation.
He thrashed around for a little bit on the bed as the pain exploded in his head. There were soft grunts until it became silent.
She watched as his breathing slowly stopped. When she was sure he was dead, she padded silently back to the window. As she was about to leave, the door suddenly slid open and a young girl walked in.
"Papa!"
It startled her enough that Hinata leaped ungracefully away from the window sill, landing with a soft grunt on the ground outside. It was quiet enough to hide her presence, but still, the slight sound alerted the guards.
They caught sight of her and Hinata ran.
***
When she got home, Hinata saw that the lights to her father's office were still on despite the lateness of the hour.
She entered without knocking.
Hiashi looked up from his desk.
Bluntly, she stated, "I bungled this last mission. I killed my target, but as I was leaving the scene, some guards followed me." She pointed to her bandaged arm. "They threw kunais at me as we were all running. It's a light injury, no poison or anything. But I drew them to a river where I killed all of them. Five bodies, total. I used a sealing technique to erase all their chakra, anything that would identify them, then I buried them. I don't think I've been tracked. I waited to make sure nobody followed me here."
Hiashi accepted it all, knowing this was not the worst part of the story.
"I've already debriefed the Hokage. She knows."
Her father nodded.
Then Hinata hesitated briefly, but she opened her mouth and slowly admitted, "I might've been seen by the man's daughter."
Hiashi stilled. "You left her alive."
She swallowed and blinked. "I did. But the others, I cleaned up as best as I could. If the mess somehow gets traced back to me, I will disappear."
They both knew what she wouldn't say aloud.
Suicide. A quick death by poison.
Hiashi's keen eyes took in the determined set of her jaw.
"I won't dishonor the clan."
"I don't think it will come to that, Hinata. You're usually very thorough in these missions."
Hinata shook her head. "Everyone makes mistakes. I'm not perfect. If there are repercussions in the future, I take all the blame and the responsibility. I will make it right."
Hiashi leaned back and met her solemn gaze. They had no choice. "I wish it didn't have to be that way, but you must."
"Yes. I've never forgotten that at the most fundamental level, I should not even exist."
They exchanged similar ironic smiles, recognizing how deep Shingen Hyuuga's influence determined their lives.
The words expendable and sacrifice hung silently, tautly, over them.
But Hiashi was determined to reassure her. "Hinata, that's only if there are repercussions."
"Yes," she said, but her tone clearly indicated she didn't believe his words.
"Still, I believe in you. Everything will be alright."
Hinata was quiet. In her heart, she doubted it.
But to make her father happy, she summoned a smile and imbued it with a warmth she didn't feel. "I hope so, Father."
She could act, after all.
Hinata let herself out and closed her eyes briefly when the door to his office was completely shut.
She let out a slow breath.
She'd withheld from him the most important part of her mistake.
Ah, but that girl. So young.
With a face that looked just as innocent as Hanabi's.
The guilt had almost crushed her on her way home.