Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

`Prologue — The Mask of the Hyūga

Setting: Morning in the Hyūga Compound

There was a stillness to the Hyūga estate in the morning, a cultivated quiet that clung to every polished surface and swept stone path like mist over a graveyard. Even the breeze, soft and chilled from the lingering grip of night, seemed to pass through the courtyard without daring to stir the sakura branches overhead. Everything here had its place. And everything remained in it.
Hinata sat perfectly upright at the low lacquered table on the engawa, her knees folded beneath her in the seiza position, hands resting gently in her lap. She did not shift. She did not fidget. The heat from the porcelain teacup between her palms was steady—just below burning. She liked it that way. The subtle pain kept her in the present, away from the suffocating nature of her thoughts.
Across the veranda, the koi pond reflected the peach-stained sky of dawn. The fish, gliding just beneath the surface, moved without urgency or direction—creatures born to follow paths drawn by others. Even they had more freedom than she did.
She took a slow sip of tea. Jasmine and white plum. Delicate. Refined. Just like she was expected to be.
She hated it.
Her mouth held no flavor anymore. Everything she consumed tasted like steam and obligation.
"A daughter of the main house must exude serenity in all things."
The voice of Elder Tomoe echoed in her memory—an old woman with eyes like polished glass and hands that trembled only when no one watched. That particular lesson had been delivered when Hinata was nine years old and had spilled her tea during a clan banquet. Her hand had been bruised for a week afterward.
That had been the first time she realized something important:
Grace is enforced. Serenity is fear made silent.
She lowered the cup carefully onto the lacquered tray, making sure it didn’t clink.
…
To her right, her father sat in rigid stillness, reading through a scroll in the dim light of the morning. His robes were as immaculate as always, cream white with the violet clan crest stitched flawlessly into the back. His posture was impeccable. His aura unreadable.
He had not looked at her since entering the room.
Hiashi Hyūga did not often raise his voice. He did not beat his daughters (at least not outside the sparring room) nor bark orders like the gruff shinobi commanders that filled other households. No—his form of cruelty was elegant. It was the absence of acknowledgment. The withdrawal of warmth. The way he looked at you as though seeing a reflection in tarnished glass, one might as well be non-existent.
She could not remember the last time he addressed her by name.
“Your tea is cooling,” he murmured, eyes never lifting from the scroll.
Hinata blinked. Her hand had frozen above the cup.
Too slow.
She picked it up again and drank, ignoring the burn along her tongue.
…
Hanabi arrived next, graceful as always. Her footfalls were light on the wood, just enough to signal her presence without drawing attention. She bowed with precision before taking her place beside their father, her posture so identical to his that it seemed carved from the same stone.
“Good morning, Father,” she said.
Hiashi gave a soft hum of acknowledgment. Hanabi turned her head just slightly and nodded toward Hinata. Polite. Controlled.
Hinata nodded back with equal precision, her smile practiced.
There was a time when Hanabi’s presence would have stung, when her sister’s growing prominence—her skill, her strength, her poise—would have reopened the wounds left behind by Hiashi’s rejection. But those wounds had long since scarred over.
What she felt now wasn’t jealousy. No, she had cared too much for her sister to ever be truly jealous of her.
It was detachment.
A gentle emptiness that hovered just beyond reach. She could admire Hanabi's form and footwork and success the same way one might admire a sword hung on a wall. Beautiful. Lethal. Entirely irrelevant to her own place in the world.
“You are no longer part of the succession.”
Hiashi’s voice. Four years ago. Cold and clean, like frost on a blade.
“You will bring dishonor if you remain. Hanabi will take your place. You are to serve in silence.”
And so she had.
…
A gentle clatter pulled Hinata’s attention back to the table. A servant had arrived to replenish the rice bowls. Hinata offered a bow of gratitude, which was ignored.
Of course.
She was no longer the heir. No longer the jewel of the main family. No longer the “princess of the Hyūga.” She was the shadow that sat beside it—dutiful, silent, and ultimately disposable. Waiting for the day to be sent off on some political marriage or maybe spend the rest of her days entertaining the elders every whim.
But not all shadows are meek.
Some are blades waiting in the dark.
And beneath the pale violet kimono, beneath the softened voice and bowed head, beneath the burn of her clan’s seal hidden behind her bangs—
Hinata Hyūga was sharpening.
________________________________________
Setting: ROOT subterranean training facility, hours before dawn

The last boy hadn’t even screamed before he stopped breathing.
His windpipe had collapsed with a dull crunch beneath the edge of her forearm, his eyes wide, mouth working in silent confusion as his legs spasmed beneath him. Blood frothed between his lips. He’d been no older than she was—sixteen, maybe seventeen. She hadn’t caught his name.
ROOT didn’t assign names to those deemed replaceable.
His body now lay crumpled against the training wall, just another indistinct shadow in the dimly lit chamber. Two others already littered the floor, each dispatched in similar fashion. One with a palm-thrust to the heart, the other with a ruptured spine courtesy of a feint-to-kill elbow. All executed cleanly. Efficiently. Without excess.
Hinata stood in the center of the chamber, breath steady, chest rising and falling with perfect rhythm. Her Byakugan remained inactive. She didn’t need it for this.
Not anymore.
Blood dotted the mat beneath her bare feet. None of it hers.
The silence after combat was always the heaviest. Not because it was still, but because in that stillness came reflection—the brief, unwelcome echo of what she had just done. What she had become. Who she had killed. Sometimes, if she let her mind slip, she could still hear the moment when their breathing turned to gurgling. The moment when she knew they would never rise again.
But tonight, she wasn’t slipping.
She stood tall, shoulders relaxed, her hands slightly stained and trembling—though only just.
Danzo’s voice cut through the chamber like frost:
“You hesitate less now.”
From the shadowed alcove above, his presence loomed—half-shrouded in iron torchlight, his single eye glinting with quiet satisfaction. Three ROOT handlers flanked him. Still. Silent. Awaiting command.
Hinata turned slowly to face her master and dropped to one knee. Head bowed. Palms resting flat against her thighs in the formal ROOT report posture. Her voice was calm. Even.
“Three targets. Eliminated. No chakra used. Minimal energy expended. Estimated recovery time: two hours.”
A long pause. Then:
“Noted.”
She waited for more—for criticism, praise, reassignment—but Danzo remained quiet. She dared a glance upward, and found his gaze fixed on the bodies behind her. He wasn’t watching her. Not yet.
He was watching what she had done.
And then, after several long seconds, he looked down at her—really looked—and nodded faintly.
“You are becoming exactly what I need you to be.”
The warmth those words stirred in her chest was immediate. Sharp. Addictive. It filled a space that had long ago hollowed out from her father's cold stares and the clan’s quiet disdain. It was twisted, she knew, this desire to please a man who treated her as a tool—but it was all she had. All she was.
She lived in that duality: shame and purpose. Weakness and power. Rejection and devotion.
And Danzo knew exactly how to feed that contradiction. Nevertheless, she sought his praise. Ever since that day, she vowed to devote everything to him and more.
…
Later, she sat in the washing chamber, her legs folded beneath her on the cold tile floor, sponge in hand. The blood came off easily with hot water. ROOT had long since taught her how to scrub everything away.
But she kept seeing the boy’s face. Not in horror. Not in complete guilt. Rather… in detail.
The slight wideness of his eyes. The flutter in his throat as the windpipe gave way. The heat that had splashed across her chest when his body dropped.
She wasn’t disturbed… much.
She was studying.
Cataloguing the way death looked in the eyes of the dying.
Her hands moved automatically, dragging the sponge across her arms, across the faint bruises from the earlier sparring matches. She did not wince. ROOT bruises were reminders. Lessons.
She touched the edge of the seal on her forehead, just beneath the wet strands of her bangs. It throbbed faintly, like a heartbeat she couldn’t control.
Not because it had been activated.
But from the fear that it would be. Because she feared the Hyūga still held that power.
Danzo had told her otherwise.
“The seal is theirs in name only. I’ve rewritten its fangs. As long as you serve me, no one can hurt you again.”
He said it weeks after the sealing—when she was eleven, shivering and half-mad with shame, loss, the scar still smoking on her brow. He said it without comfort. Without affection.
But he said it with certainty.
And that certainty had become her anchor.
…
As she rose to redress—her movements slow, deliberate—she allowed herself one brief moment of indulgence. She closed her eyes and whispered, barely audible over the hiss of the steam:
“Thank you… Lord Danzo.”
Not because he loved her. He didn’t, yet he cared enough.
Not because he would protect her out of kindness. He wouldn’t, yet he still chose to help a failure like her.
He had given her a place—a reason to endure, to grow, to learn. He had taken what her father, her clan had discarded and forged it into something that could cut, weave and kill.
A blade does not need the love of others.
A blade only needs to fulfill the purpose and will of its wielder.
And tonight, she had fulfilled that aim once again.
________________________________________
Setting: Konoha outskirts, mid-morning

The air above the northern edge of Konoha shimmered faintly with heat. Not yet oppressive, but warm enough to draw a faint line of sweat down Hinata’s spine as she walked the familiar path to the training field. She adjusted her travel pack with deliberate care, allowing the cloth to rest naturally against her back. Any awkward movement—any excess tension in her posture—might betray something.
She always had much to hide whether from her clan during meal times such as the one earlier in the morning, or from her team.
She moved with light, almost hesitant steps, her sandals brushing dry gravel and scattered leaves. Every detail of her appearance had been fine-tuned before she left the Hyūga compound: hair tucked just-so, bangs draped low enough to cover her seal but not seem suspicious, sleeves pressed smooth, pack weighted evenly. Her voice, when used, would be soft. Her eyes would flicker downward when spoken to. She would laugh—sometimes, if prompted—but it would be a breathy, nervous sound. Nothing confident. Nothing assertive.
This was her costume. And like any performance, it demanded perfection.
ROOT had taught her many things: how to kill without chakra, how to unmake a man with a single palm, how to strip a corpse of identifiers in under sixty seconds.
But Danzo had taught her something deeper.
He had taught her how to wear innocence like armor.
…
She arrived at the clearing moments later. The others were already gathered.
Shino stood like a silent statue near the edge of the woods, arms crossed, visor glinting in the sun. Kiba was mid-stretch, twisting at the waist, shirt bunched up to expose lean muscle built from feral, high-speed combat. Akamaru was sprawled at his feet, tail swishing lazily, half-dozing.
Kurenai-sensei leaned against a large cedar, arms folded, watching them with that same unreadable expression she always wore—part calm, part wariness, part something else Hinata never dared to name.
Hinata stopped just beyond the trees and inhaled slowly.
Drop the shoulders. Lower the chin. Let your breath quiver on the exhale.
Step into her. The girl they expect. The girl who cannot hurt anyone.
Then she stepped forward.
“G-good morning…” she said, dipping her head, voice as soft as folded silk.
Kiba looked up at once. “Hinata! We thought you overslept or something.”
His grin was broad, good-natured. She smiled back—timidly. Not shy enough to be strange. Just enough to match what he thought of her.
“I—I’m sorry,” she said, brushing a nonexistent wrinkle from her sleeve. “I was slow gathering my things…”
Shino gave a polite nod. Kurenai’s eyes opened halfway. She offered Hinata a neutral look—acknowledging, but brief. Nothing about her face suggested suspicion, but Hinata had long since learned not to be comforted by that.
Kurenai a Jonin, an elite who specialized in genjutsu. She saw things others didn’t. She’d noticed the subtle shifts in cadence, in posture, in aura. If anyone was close to piercing her mask, it would be her.
And still… even she hadn’t looked too closely yet.
Hinata made sure of that. Even an elite Jonin like Kurenai could be fooled with her guard down. That meant ensuring no suspicion ever arose.
…
Kiba flopped down beside Akamaru and yawned. “Escort job again, huh? I was hoping we’d get something a little less boring this week.”
“C-rank missions provide necessary field conditioning,” Shino murmured.
“They also provide total boredom,” Kiba countered. He reached down to scratch Akamaru’s ear. The dog yawned and licked his hand once.
Hinata knelt beside them, hands folded in her lap. She smiled just enough to show she was listening. She didn’t speak.
Kurenai stepped forward then and unrolled a scroll.
“You’ll be guarding a merchant caravan traveling the western Fire Country border,” she said. “No known threats, but the terrain is open, and there have been rumors of missing travelers near the fork past the Kawa trail.”
She handed out mission specs.
Hinata accepted hers last. As she grasped the scroll, she felt a slight tingle of chakra.
Her pulse didn’t quicken. Her breath didn’t catch. She simply unrolled it, scanning the first few lines, then paused when her fingers brushed against something folded between the inner crease.
A slip of paper. Unmarked. Sealed with crimson wax
ROOT.
Secondary directive: One embedded target. Former Leaf-aligned operative. Suspected defector. Embedded in the third cart. Eliminate discreetly. No witnesses. No deviation. Maintain cover.
The letter was unsigned, but it didn’t need to be.
She moved to close the scroll, crushing the wax seal on the note as she did so. The paper immediately crumbled away to dust, leaving nothing for anyone to notice.
Not even Kurenai.
…
A gust of wind rustled the treetops behind them, carrying with it a sound that turned her breath to glass.
Laughter.
High, bright, unguarded. Not near, but not far. On the other side of the clearing—another squad’s field.
Hinata froze for half a heartbeat, her body stilling before she could stop it. She didn’t need to look. She knew that voice. Knew the rhythm of it. The warmth.
Naruto…
It filtered through the canopy like sunlight.
She turned her head slightly, letting her eyes trace the edges of movement beyond the trees. Just out of reach, past a veil of green and gold, she caught the flicker of orange. The messy hair. The idiot smile.
He was talking to someone—maybe Sakura, maybe Kakashi—but his voice was the only one she heard.
Naruto Uzumaki.
Her first memory of him was not the academy. It was the day she saw him standing up to three older boys after they shoved a crying child into a river. He’d gotten punched. Bloodied. But he hadn’t run.
He’d smiled.
And in that moment, she'd seen something in him she'd never seen in herself: unshakeable resolve. Not from power. From heart.
A heart untouched by shadows.
She turned away before she lingered too long.
Hinata wondered if he could ever understand this world. Her world.
He was light. A sun that burned too clean to survive the dark soil she was buried in.
And yet…
He’s the only part of me that still remembers what light looks like.
He’s the piece I keep buried in my chest like a shrine I’m not allowed to pray at.
Would he recoil if he saw what she did at night? Would he look at her the way her father had, abandon her like the clan, look with painful pity as Hanabi had done?
No. Naruto wouldn’t do any of those things.
He would try to save her most like. Try to bring that glorious light to her direction, no matter how unworthy she was.
That thought—soft and beautiful—was also dangerous.
Because she wasn’t someone who needed saving. Not anymore.
She had already been saved. And now she served the man who had done so. The one that had protected her and seen her when no one else did; not even Naruto.
And now, she was someone who would gladly kneel in blood to hear him say, “You’ve done well.”
She lived for that. For the words Danzo spoke brought her joy and stability.
…
“Hinata?”
She blinked. Kiba was looking at her.
“You alright?”
She gave a quick smile and nodded. “Y-yes. Just… thinking.”
He laughed. “You think way too much. It’s just bandits and wagons. Try to enjoy the breeze or something.”
Shino raised an eyebrow. “Vigilance is a virtue.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Kiba ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s get this trek over with. I’m starving and we still got some ground to catch.”
As the group began moving, Hinata adjusted her pace to stay behind them by a few paces. Not too far. Just enough to be overlooked. Enough to vanish from memory, if needed.
Her hand brushed her scroll again. The kill order. Third cart. No witnesses.
Danzo-sama is watching. He always watches.
And I will not fail. I can’t. Not him.
As they passed the village gate, the sun high and golden above them, Hinata let her fingers rest briefly over the place where her seal lay hidden beneath her bangs.
It was still cool. No pain.
She was still his.
And she would make sure no one took her place away again.