Summary: Shindou Hikaru. A look at an alternate possibility wherein Hikaru was born a little differently, and the life she would lead.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, also this is is my first Hikago fic, go me.

Note: This will probably be a oneshot.

...

Shindou Hikaru lives until his hands slowly wrinkle, his arthritis worsening, his body old as all things become once they are born. He dies in his sleep, never seeing another sunrise come through the blinds he swore he had closed the night before, never cursing viciously at the light that bothered him, never setting another moku down on the goban.

He's eight years old holding the hand of a taller man, dressed in white, long black hair swaying behind him and he's happy.

''Tousan, where are we going?'' He asks, his child voice high and thin. In a few years it will deepen, even out...but not yet.

''You'll see when we get there Hikaru.'' His father tells him, his eyes grey.

This is memory.

They're in France, in an apartment in Paris, just inside the city limits, skimming against the outskirts and bleeding outwards.

Jean is quiet with dark hair and dark skin stretched over high cheekbones and light eyes, a left over presence from his French grandfather, his mother's Haitian heritage stark in everything else, even in the way he pronounces his words, the lilt to his speech. He sounds like he's singing, and when he does sing, little bits and pieces as he puts the meat to fry or the water to boil it's always old, always tinged with stories from deep woods.

He's one of the reasons the little old ladies down in the second story look askance at him, even though, they're heading into the new millennium. The paper tells him the worlds going to end in another ten years and he smiles, polite and gentle.

He's been hearing the same thing from the man two blocks from the corner store he buys his milk. The cashier is always on edge when he comes, in no matter how slowly he moves, or where he puts his hands. He's thick and tall, built like a tree, solid with no give. They'd have to chop him down to make him bend. He doesn't know who they are but he thinks they've got their eyes on him.

Michel is not.

He's blond and blue eyed which makes it okay for him to be loud and rude and boisterous, his grin splinting over the gap in his teeth, a tiny thing that remained unnoticed until pointed out. Blonde like a pair of bleached bangs on a boy yet to be born, or already born or never and always born.

Michel who was almost thrown out of a dining establishment for licking some cream off of Jean's cheek.

Michel who plays chess like a madman, a heretic against the staunch tradition which binds Jean to his moves.

Like a sodomite. Like a whore down in the district. Like a man who blew smoke rings into Jeans face because he was tired, because no matter what they did, their neighbors who beat their wives would always be more qualified to care about each other than they were.

Michel with his skin like milk.

Michel who had never played Go in his life, and Jean who had never played it right beside him.

Shindou Hikaru who opens her eyes in a tiny island county named Japan, to a mother who loves her and a father who's too scared to hold her for the first moments of her life, because every doctor had told them that their baby was a boy and every doctor had been wrong.

Hikaru who had been named long before her birth, who's certificate had been assigned a name from the list her parents had put together while the doctors informed Shindou-san that his son was a daughter.

Hikaru who's name was thankfully gender neutral.

…

She's two years old and her mother dresses her up in bows and frills and doll like clothes that she hates. She's new to the world and pulling at straps, tugging at lace edges, trying to get out as fast as she can.

She strips naked in the park and runs away from her parents laughing loud as she can. Her mother finds her and presses her close telling her not to that again, ever, and did you hear me Hikaru? I said never again and I meant it.

Hikaru looks up at her with solemn green eyes and nods.

She's lying. It's not the first time, it's just the first time she can remember.

She spends years like this at war with a mother who loves but does not understand that no, she doesn't want to wear a dress. A mother who sighs and at the tender age of five allows her only child to pick her clothes from the boys section and takes her to get her hair hair cut. Shoulder length locks, black and thick fall to the floor.

Hikaru grins up at her mother who's eyes are glassy.

….

Hikaru learns with ease and the things she learns, the things she grows into are these. If she does well enough in school, her parents will leave her alone about what she wears and what she does.

The better she does, the less concern there is about the state of her clothes, the clothes she wears, her demand to have a boys uniform instead of a girls, her love of soccer and sports and any game she can get dirty while playing.

When she's smart, she's eccentric and when she's average she's troubled, or gender confused, or in need of a psychiatrist.

She prefers to be smart, and it's easy when the other option is troubled. When the other option is dresses and sandals that pinch her feet instead of the running shoes she preferred.

She's eight years old and she's eccentric.

…

She's ten years old and she wants to bleach her bang. She doesn't even know why, she just..wants. What she doesn't want is this.

Her mother shooting her pleased looks about the state of her hair and how she really should buy some proper clothing instead of the sweatpants she wears all the time. She fingers a lock of hair, that's grown longer, her bangs falling into her eyes.

She goes the hairdresser anyway and has them cut it shorter, ink black hair twisting into multiple cowlicks as the length decreased once more.

Her hair is unmanageable when it gets shorter. Her hair is..eccentric. She runs her fingers through it and doesn't correct the barber when he calls her Shindou-kun, in the way an very old man would call what he assumed to be a very young boy after a pleasant haircut.

…

Heihachi looks at his granddaughter and grins. He'll never say it out loud, but he likes the little spitfire his son spawned.

''Do you want to learn how to play Go?'' He asks her as she flops down in front of him. She shrugs but agrees.

''Sure.''

She'll do big things. He knows she will. If only to defend her right to live her life the way she wants to live it. She will.

He shows her the game and lets her finger the moku, her hands awkward on the polished stones. This is how they spend their weekends. Long, lazy games, where Hikaru doesn't think ahead or plan, just lays one stone down after the other and absorbs the rules slowly at the pace of a snail.

He doesn't push her to do more, although he knows she can. She has agreed to play. That is enough to warm an old man's heart.

…

She's ten years old and riffling through her grandfathers attic, angry and bored and alone in his house. She's ten and she finds a goban covered in stains.

She's ten and she's scrubbing at them furiously.

''I though she'd grow out of it.'' She can hear in the back of her mind, ''Do you think there's something wrong with her?''

''It's Hikaru, she's her own person. We can't decide who she's going to be for her.'' Her father defends, his voice unsure and she knows her parents love her, she knows they're supportive, but she also knows they don't understand.

She's not Hikaru girl who wants to be a boy or is a boy, or Hikaru tomboy. She's Hikaru. Just, Hikaru, not girl or boy, just her.

Her hands clench the bottom of her sleeve as she scrubs harder and bites back the frustration.

Can you hear my voice, a voice calls out and she doesn't notice, You can hear my voice can't you? You can. You can.

The voice repeats and her head snaps up, '' Ojisan?'' She asks.

Thank you god. I will now return to the land of the living.

The voice speaks. It's not her grandfather.

She's ten years old and she has a ghost named Sai haunting her every move.

…

''So.'' She starts, ''We're stuck together I guess.''

Sai bows and replies, ''Yes, I'm afraid so. I apologize for the intrusion.''

Hikaru breathes out as slowly as she can before she speaks, her thoughts jumbling together and pulling apart, ''My name, is Hikaru.''

They have to start somewhere. The beginning is as good a place as any.

…

She pulls out her laptop, a present for making first in her class and signs in, ''I don't play Go, not as well as you do,'' She tells him, ''But I know a way that you can play. As yourself I mean. Not as anyone else. You, Fujiwara no Sai. Your name. Your Go.''

She's on a slippery slope already, she has no idea what her parents would think of her playing a game older than their existence. Probably one more thing that would make her eccentric. Mentally she shrugs her shoulders.

Sai flutters around her in glee, ''Thank you Hikaru-kun, thank you thank you, thank you.''

She laughs at that, her fingers gliding over the keyboard, looking through reviews and sites she could log into. As far as ghost go, he's not bad.

''I'm a girl.'' She corrects and it pleases her to see Sai stutter to a halt, looking her over once more. She knows exactly what he sees. She has been made painfully aware of herself.

She's a boy. She's ten and her breasts haven't come in yet, nor have her hips and her voice has always been on the lower register even for a child, pleasantly between male and female. Her hair is black and messy, her eyes green and slanted.

She's tall for her age and sex.

She's wearing a pair of grey sweatpants and large yellow t-shirt with a number five on the back, both of garments are soft and thin, and both were bought in the boys section of a department store.

''Do all females dress like this now?'' Sai asks, his head cocked to the side.

Hikaru shakes her head, ''Most people think I'm a boy.''

Sai frowns and snaps open the fan, ''How rude of them.'' The living being in the room, laughs as she sets up an account at NetGo.

S-A-I

For the first time since the Heinan Era Fujiwara no Sai lived and breathed.

The ghost floating behind the little girl smiled, ''Thank you.'' He repeated.

Hikaru smiled back, ''Nah, it's not like I did anything big. Just, we'll play in the afternoons, I need time to study and go to school.''

''I'll get to play go every day?'' Sai wondered.

''That's what I'm hoping for.''

''Oh, how wonderful.'' Sai effused, his eyes starry.

…

''Ne, ne, Hikaru?'' Sai called out, ''You said you played Go Hikaru. Play with me.''

Hikaru looked up from her her Shonen Jump and raised an eyebrow, ''You'll see me play on the weekend, I always play my grandfather then.''

Sai flailed, ''But, but Karu, I want to play you.''

''Let me finish this.'' Hikaru negotiated. Honestly half of the time Sai had the patience of a four year old.

Sai pouted but agreed.

…

Sai spent half of his afternoon Go time terrorizing the net Go community and the other half playing the game with Hikaru, forcing the girl think about her moves and playing back games he found interesting.

Hikaru spent this time spreading kifu on her floor for the spirit to loom over and sneaking back to her manga, purring in silent glee as the newest pages of Naruto came to life before her eyes.

…

''Sai.'' Hikaru spoke, ''I think we broke net Go.''

Sai looked over his shoulder at the requests for a game with the mysterious Sai. Fanning himself he grinned.

''Ne, Karu what do you think?''

''I think you've just leveled up.'' Hikaru retorted back, ''Stronger players for Sai, go us, we're awesome, who awesome, team Sai.''

Hikaru concluded her little chant with a victory dance, done while sitting down, her hands rising in the air mimicking a cheerleader who had sadly misplaced her pompoms and legs.

Sai joined the victory dance, waving his fan back and forth, hair hair flopping around in its tie.

…

Hikaru is eleven years old and she's spent her time half convinced that she's finally lost her mind, that this is what her parents were afraid of and that she's made herself an imaginary friend.

This stops after she casually shows a Go magazine to her grandfather and hears him complain and praise, at length mind you about a player named Sai.

She breathes easier after that.

She's eleven years old and she's still smart not troubled. Her only friend outside of soccer games, is a spirit who's body was long since taken by a river somewhere in Japan. Names change. She's doesn't want to know it anyway, that place that took her best friend but other than that...life is good.

She's eleven and her hair still short. She's eleven and she lives, sleeps, breathes and eats Go alongside a man she knows as Sai.

''Karu Karu.'' Sai starts as Hikaru shoves a piece of fruit in her mouth, ''Yeah.'' She mumbles back, picking up her bag and running through the front door, ''You should play Go with other people too.''

Hikaru rolls her eyes and swallows her food, ''I don't think you noticed this..but I suck at Go. Like, so bad it hurts.''

Sai frowns, ''You're good.'' He insists and Hikaru rubs a hand over her face. She doesn't like to start fights over little things, it undermines her authority in larger matters. No one can tell her she doesn't know strategy. Her childhood was one very long, very arduous battle.

She can smell a tantrum a mile coming and she'll give him this if only to shut him up, ''Sure, we'll go play after school, they've got Salons for that and everything.''

Sai squeals like the four year old he is and waves his fan back and forth, ''Go Karu, its team Karu, we're awesome, who's awesome. That's right, team Karu.''

Hikaru smiles at the happy chant and walks into her school head held hight. That's right. She thinks. Team Karu. We're awesome.

With a bounce in her step she mouthes. Who's awesome. Team Karu.

If anyone asks, she's lip synching to the latest song. No one asks, and that's okay because she's got a thousand year old relic at her back dancing in her honor.

…

She's eleven years old and she tears into Touya Akira apart like a very bear into s mountain lion. She looks at his Go and plays like she's fighting Sai, like she's struggling upriver and trying to not to drown.

She plays him and leaves him him sitting at by a goban, mouth tight in shock, shrugging her shoulders and considering herself average for besting a boy her own age, by two moku at that. Damn.

…

Touya's hands tremble as he looks down at the game, at the monster who introduced himself as Shindou Hikaru before carelessly trampling over his him with an elegance unseen in the way he sprawled his legs but held his stones with care.

Swallowing he replays the game, over and over and over again. His hands still shake as he makes his way home and he wonders.

Who are you?

He spends the day searching for a boy named Shindou Hikaru, and finds nothing. He spends the night deciding to stake out his fathers establishment in the hopes of meeting him again.

Shindou Hikaru. His mind sounds out.

Who are you?

The Touya's have always been prone to obsession.

…

Touya finds Shindou two weeks later, stepping once more into the Salon, sliding the entrance fee to the front desk.

He watches him like a hawk before calling out, ''Shindou-san.''

Hikaru's head turns languidly towards the source of noise before he smiles, slow and easy, ''Hey Touya.''

''Would you like to play again?'' Touya asks, a voice inside him silently desperate for another game, another chance to examine this boy, his own age, no older. Another chance to win, to try.

''Sure.'' Shindou shrugs and once again flops down in front of the goban, informal as anything, ''You can play black if you want.'' He offers.

Touya accepts the gesture and agrees to it. Halfway through their game he asks, ''Are you a professional?''

Akira's not sure what he's expecting. In his mind it goes something like this. Hikaru was half Korean or half Chinese and this was the first time he had stepped foot in Japan despite his father's ancestry.

The other little explanation he had concocted was a very long severe illness or coma which had not allowed the player in front of him to ascend within the ranks as would be appropriate.

What he doesn't expect is the laughter that comes directly afterwards a long and serious pause on his end where he wondered if he had offended Shindou by bringing up that which had clearly prevented him from playing Go professionally.

''Pro- pro, what?'' Shindou stuttered out, wiping at his eyes, ''Oh man. You've got to be kidding. I suck at this game.''

Touya froze, much like a cat which had been dipped in water, ''You...suck?'' He asked, his blood running cold.

Hikaru's hysterics had calmed down enough for the younger one to pull himself together, ''Yeah, I'm not good at this game. I always lose when I usually play.''

Touya nodded as though he had not been told that the world was in fact a square and his entire life was a lie.

''Who do you usually play?'' He asks, wondering about the possibility of a small but secluded cult of Go playing prodigies who, for the search of the Hand of God were informed that they were horrible at the game they devoted their lives playing in an effort to humble them.

Hikaru played his next move and answered, ''Well, I used to play my grandpa but I win against him now and he throws moku at me when I do. Most of the time I play net Go, but only with one other player. I don't know who he is, but it's...it's what we do.''

''Ah..Net Go?'' Touya prompted.

Hikaru hummed, ''Mostly we email each other moves back and forth. I've never played against anyone else but out of the two people, well three although I'm not counting you cause your my age, so then two I only win against one of them which make me like, really bad, It's like getting fifty percent on a test.''

Akira struggles not to...scream maybe, break down crying or start pelting Shindou with moku.

''I'm a professional.'' He squeaks out.

Hikaru's eyes widen and he runs his fingers through messy hair, ''Really?'' He asks, ''That's pretty cool. I mean you're really young and everything.''

Touya nods dumbly and tries to look back at the game only to find that his mind had melted into cheese in the period of the time he had asked Shindou if he was a professional.

Of all the answers that was the one he was not expecting.

Their second game lasts a shorter amount of time then their first, Touya's nerves frazzled beyond reason.

''Will you come back and play again?'' He asks at the end.

Shindou looks at him and grins, ''Why not, Sai keep bugging me to play other people. This should shut him up.''

''Sai?'' Akira mouthes as Shindou once again leaves the Salon, Akira's life in ruins.

Touya is eleven years old and he has just discovered that the world is in fact a square.

In the background Sai waves his fan in glee and laughs, ''You're good Hikaru, I told you, you were.''