Trade

"Do not go back in the wood."

Hinata's bright eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Her jaw worked as she faced her father, her brother, her sister, and the hovering ghost that was her mother's portrait, ever watching from the shadows of their home on the mantelpiece.

"But… Father-" she began, choking on her respect and obedience as he glared her down. "Not again. Not ever, do you understand?"

Soaked to the bone, shivering in the cloak that had gathered most of the storm and now cried it out onto their wood floor Hinata bowed her head. "N-never?"

"Perhaps in spring?" Neji began uncertainly, his gaze flickering from Hiashi's furious form to Hinata's quickly shrinking one. "Perhaps when the sun shines longer? And there is less-"

"Never." Hiashi snapped, cutting him off before turning around. "I said never."

Hinata felt as he disappeared, like the smoke of a fire finally allowed to escape through the chimney's throat, all his choking harshness taken with him to leave nothing but the sting of pain in the chest.

Neji's hand on her shoulder was warm, Hanabi's grip on her fingers tight enough to hurt.

"He loves you. He worries. Please understand."

Even as her brother whispered wisdom Hinata closed her eyes, and let her tears stream down her face as she pictured the shadows and pillars of the forest beyond the fields.

"Do you think she will be all right?"

"There's never been much right about her, though has there? Not since the mother's passing."

The whispers followed, as they often did before though perhaps more loudly now. Hinata kept her eyes on the snow strewn path from well to market, counting the familiar stones as she passed.

"I thought the mother herself was an oddity, no?"

"That's putting it kindly."

The breeze, when it came dug its teeth into her skin. Goosebumps rose in response and she paused, watching as her forearm puckered at the feeling. It ached, to be so cold and yet her flesh had done the same thing in response to the touch of a wet tongue sliding sensuous and hot along her throat.

Pain and pleasure, as she studied her pale arm she shuddered at the memory, both often felt the same.

"She cannot continue like this." Neji's urgent whisper was muffled by the hiss of the rain on the shingles of their roof, the pitter patter rhythm of the weather dancing to a tune they could not hear. "She does not sleep, she is hardly eating."

"It is a tantrum. I will not be cowed by a little girl."

"She is not a little girl anymore. She is more and more like Mot-"

"Do not say it." Father's snap had all the warning of thunder before the lightning strike. "Do not continue this thought."

"Please…" Neji paused heavily, so that Hinata closed her eyes to listen more fully, ignoring the dancing flames in the grate that warmed their home and sent the shadows reeling. "...Father, I beg you would consider what I have to say."

Hinata's eyes opened then, pressing her forehead nearly to the wood of the closed shutters to see the two shapes of her Father and brother standing still and unmoving in the half dark of the rain.

There were only two other times HInata had heard Neji call Hiashi Father. Once, when he had accepted his adoption, and the other when his heart had finally followed the logical choice of his head, and admitted that Hiashi loved him, not as a nephew but a son.

It had happened the same day her Mother died.

"Your wisdom extends to many things, my son. But in this, I fear you have no idea the depth of the danger." Hiashi turned to the house, hooded face hidden as he ended the conversation. "You must trust me now."

Hinata had just enough time to curl onto her side in the furs and knitted wool beside her sister to avoid her Father's intent stare at his entry. That did not save her from the memory of mother's hand upon her brow or the eerie whisper of her voice in her ear saying.

"He fears, and for that… he is wrong."

Winter should have begun to ebb. It should have lessened it's grip and let some of the sun through the gray clouds hinting of more snowfall.

Winter did not care to be agreeable.

"When will the flowers bloom again?" Hanabi sighed, sprawled on the rug before the fire, fingers twisting the fronds of dry grass she was weaving for a fishing basket. "I am so sick of all this darkness and smoke and cold."

Hinata glanced back towards the door, made of the timber of an ancient oak. It had been made twice as thick as all the doors in the village and her mother had always praised its construction. It should have been too heavy to open and close, but the Hyuuga Clan were a clever breed and the hinges had been specially designed to withstand the weight and the passage of time.

With it's thickness it barred most of the freezing winter out, and kept the coolness of the shadows in the oppressive heat of summer.

For Hinata, it was the equivalent of a prison door, always locked.

"When did Father and Brother say they would return?" She asked, ignoring her sister's own question for the sake of her thoughts. Hanabi had been chattering non stop since the morrow and she was tired. Unperturbed her sister shrugged. "Tomorrow? Day after tomorrow, perhaps? The doe have been skittish, Neji said. They have to hunt further into the wood every time they go."

"Skittish." Hinata let herself shudder as though from a chill, her skin feeling too tight to hold her comfortably. "Why should they be skittish?"

Hanabi hummed a reply that was without sense.

As Hinata gazed more forcefully at the door, and the lock which she could if she wanted undo her sister said something else, perhaps more knowledgeable.

"Wolves, probably."

Turning slowly back to the girl Hinata breathed in, and out, determined to keep her pace slow. Hanabi studied her face, golden and shadowed at once by the fire and slowly bared her teeth in a smile.

She heard him like one hears the silence of the snow, hushing the world. The embers of the fire glowed hot, red eyes piled together in the darkness of the grate and at her side her sister's soft breath continued even and slow.

Mother glowed a luminous moon white against the chimney wall, her elegant face feral in a way Hinata could not comprehend and somehow felt familiar all the same.

Softly, as she let herself wake her mother's voice whispered in her head, "Go."

Crawling from the bed ached. The sting of the freezing stones at her bare feet, the slap of the cold air on all the soft places of her body beneath the thick cotton shift. She felt the warmth of her hands, the heat beneath her arms, breasts and between her thighs. The thick molten feeling of something sweet in her mouth.

The lock on the door would rattle too loudly for the stillness of the house. Her gaze shifted sideways to the shuttered window above the table where they all broke bread and chattered of normal things in the warmth of the morning sun.

Silently, she climbed upon its surface and parted the shutters to peer out into the dark.

He was neither animal nor spirit. Smoke, and ruin, shadow and flesh his shape danced like hair spilled into still water, liquid in its elegance.

From the black the pair of eyes glinted crimson red and unblinking, studying her with a patience that had the same tension as the gasp before a fall.

"Do not go back in the wood."

Hinata shivered.

There was something sweet about the wrongness of letting the cold bite into her skin. Something tantalizing as sugar in the mouth, overly sweet and almost painful as she let her feet stumble forward through the hard packed white of snow.

"You did not return."

His voice was like a lick to her earlobe, and she closed her eyes to feel the inevitable tug it caused at her navel.

"I could not. My father...he-"

"Tell me to go." Of course he did not care for excuses. Did not care for reasons. For him there was or was not. Choices were made of yes or no. Do or die.

She breathed in, tasting him over the metal tang of cold on her tongue like ashes.

"Sasuke, I don't want you to go."

The rumble of a growl was so low she nearly felt it, half expecting the electric shock of lightning on her head.

"I could devour you." Said silkily the threat came with his languid tempered approach. The shifting chaos of his darkness taking shape as her eyes adjusted to the night, gifting her the terror of seeing his bared teeth glinting in the moonlight.

There was no escaping, this she knew. He towered a head taller than her. The edges of his body nebulous and untamed. Only his eyes seemed unshakeable, voracious in his attention.

"Would you?" She breathed, and the question had begun with a kind of fright and a plea for mercy. It came out rather different. It came out begging.

His approach paused.

When he had found her, broken and lost the fear had drowned her voice in her sobs. The grip of his teeth at her shoulder dragging her away had earned him her cries. Through the dark nights as she healed, her fear had assaulted his nose with its ugly sweet rot scent. He had grown so used to it, by the time she was strong enough to stand he could hardly smell it at all.

And when she left, with gray eyes wide and disbelieving she had promised her return, had promised to repay him in gratitude. Humans, however are liars.

He had known this all along. Why he had chosen to forget, he could not fathom. Or rather, perhaps he did not want to. He could not face the reason he had given her his name.

"Will you?" She shivered in the cold, unaware of the blue tinge to her lips, the palness of her cheeks.

The shadow with the crimson eyes looked on, thinking of the taste of her skin and the song of her sigh.

"Hinata?"

They turned together towards the window where Hanabi's voice came forth and before either could stop it the door opened with the rattling clang of the metal lock undone.

By the time Hinata turned to find him he was gone.

"What were you doing out in the middle of the night?" Father's harshness was only tempered by the gentleness of his hands wrapping her aching frostbitten feet, drawing another pelt across her chest on an already layered number of blankets.

Neji stood silent by the door, arms crossed and face pinched as he watched Hinata's half closed eyes looking somewhere far away beyond them.

"Dreaming." She breathed, sighing as she let her chin fall and hide her face beneath the sheets. "Just dreaming."

Hanabi watched as her Father and Brother looked back and forth between them, an unspoken agreement reached at the same time.

"I will go." Neji whispered, reaching for the bow and arrow that leaned tall against their table where Hinata had only the night before climbed to be free.

"No." Hiashi began, moving to stop him only to freeze at the seriousness on Neji's face.

"Some things can only be learned by doing, you have told me this yourself. I wish to understand your choices." He looked down at Hinata's sleeping shape, her slow rise and falling breaths and sighed hard. "I want to know."

"Fine." Hiashi watched as Neji stepped back out into the cold they had just returned from, already burdened with a different more dangerous kind of prey. Only when the door closed did he let his shoulders sag.

"Please, Wife. Take care of him also."

She woke to the sound of Hanabi's crying.

It was like the rippling brook of a den she had spent weeks in, and so familiar it nearly made her smile until her eyes opened.

Curled at the foot of their shared bed, Hanabi breathed in hard pants into her arms. With the shutters closed and locked, there was no way to tell if it was day or night, to guess the comings and goings of time while she slept.

All she knew for certain was that tragedy had visited, if only for a moment.

"Hanabi." Hinata breathed, surprised to find the shooting ache of pain from her fingers and feet. Inspecting them revealed the pink and red edged damage of a burn caused by snow. Sighing blearily she struggled to sit up despite the pain.

"Oh, Hanabi… how could I be so foolish?"

"Shut up." Hanabi did not deign to raise her head, digging her fingers into her hair as if to rip it from her scalp, roots and all. "It's your fault."

Frozen, her sister breathed in and out, as before. Determined not to let the cracking of the ice around her heart show.

"He's gone, you know. He's gone and it's your fault."

Thinking of the trembling red eyed shadow Hinata closed her eyes. "I… I know- I-"

"It's been days." Hanabi sobbed again, face buried in her tear stained fingers. "Brother… oh brother.."

Gray eyes opening wide Hinata reached forward to pull her sister's hands away, desperate suddenly to see her face. "Neji? What do you mean it's been days?"

"You will remain." Father's voice was that of an ebbing stream growing ever weary. "You will not dare to venture out."

Unspoken was the glance he placed upon his oldest, studying her unmoving face from the nest of covers in the corner. "I will be gone for many days. If I do not return in a fortnight…" He paused.

Hanabi's face lowered to her hands in her lap where she knelt by the fire's light.

"Father." Hinata whispered, voice hoarse from all the screams she had restrained through the day. "Father, I beg you would let me- "

"Silence." Hiashi did not so much as look at her as he slid his hunting knife into the sheath at his hip, the hiss of steel on leather deafening despite the crackle of the wood being chewed on by flame. "I go to find his body, if nothing else. It is my job, and certainly not for you to be offering yourself."

Licking her lips, his daughter lowered her head to hide her face in the tangle of her disheveled hair. She listened as his heavy tread led him to the equally heavy door where he paused with his gloved hand upon the metal lock.

"Whatever madness has taken root in you since you survived the darkness of the wood, I pray you would let it go now. It has cost us enough, has it not?"

Still bowed, Hinata listened to the opening and closing of the door before crumbling into the covers to muffle the shrieking rage of her broken heart.

On day seven, the number of completion, Hinata rose before the sun. Her sister slept on, worn from her night vigil hoping for their father's return and the miraculous rescue of their brother sent out on an impossible hunt.

Wolves were unspoken creatures in their household. They were carved to decorate the mantel of their fireplace with bared teeth, their ominous silhouette howled at the moon from the arm rests of their rocking chairs and it was said that long ago when the earth was new the Hyuuga Clan had been where the wolves first bloomed.

"You can see it in their eyes." Other clans whispered to each other. "They turned gray from looking longingly at the moon."

For although they were not wolves themselves, some of their brethren had given way to the call of the wood.

"She came back different." The village crooned, when the eldest Hyuuga returned rumpled and worn but alive after weeks of being lost in the dark places of the forest that surrounded them. "She came back wild."

"Perhaps they have called her." Father had whispered to her brother long past the last of the dusk light faded from the sky, when Hinata should have been asleep and not listening in the dark.

"The wolf clan?" Neji breathed, his fear so thick it was almost a taste on the tongue.

"The Uchiha." Hiashi continued, his hush as though he feared being overheard by the creatures he spoke of. "She looks always to the wood. I see her, walking further in every day, despite the coming frost and winter rains."

"And if they come for her?" Neji had shifted then, and even with eyes closed Hinata could feel the touch of his gaze. "What then?"

"We hunt them down." Hiashi had been firm. "They may not have my daughters. I have not raised them in vain."

In the quiet of the twilight between night and coming day Hinata faced the lock on the door with her cloak on her shoulders and gloves in her hands. It would rattle loud, that metal bit.

Sniffing softly for that lingering hint of ash on the wind she sighed, closed her eyes and wrenched it open wide.

"Hinata?" Hanabi whispered, groggy with sleep that was fading fast as her eyes took in Hinata's painful smile. "Sister? Sister- wait!"

Slamming the door closed Hinata stepped back, looking at the lock on the outside and the banging of the wood where her sister's panic rained upon it with her fists.

"Sister, please! Sister don't! Don't leave! Don't go with them!"

"I will get Father and Brother back." Knot in her throat Hinata blinked through her tears and stepped away. "I will save them, I promise."

From behind her the rattling heat of a monster's breath lingered at the nape of her neck. The scent of him, all ashes and wildness made her close her eyes.

"You promise, do you?"

Holding still Hinata tuned out her sister's cries, listening instead to the pace of his breath, feeling the fleeting flutter of fingers beneath her cloak, gripping her hip in a cold hand.

"Whatever you want in exchange." She sighed it, lips parting to taste him on the wind. "You can have it."

Somewhere far away, her sister's voice cried out her name.

"You think there is something you have that I want?"

Unperturbed Hinata let her lashes flutter as she turned her head to look at him. Less wolfish spirit, the dark red eyes studied her from a young man's face. The slow slide of his tongue along his upper lip dripping with the craving in his eyes.

Grip soft, she slid her fingers over his own, pushing the flat chill of his palm from her hip to the softness of her belly between the buttons of her gown against the warmth of her skin.

"I.. I am not a want."

He shuddered, burying his nose against the baby soft hair at the nape of her neck and closed his eyes to drink her scent in. The need forced his hand to claw desperate against the softness of her flesh so that she gasped.

Groaned softly into the curve of her ear he surrendered the war.

"No, you are not."

They stumbled back home as the sky turned a red too like blood to ignore. The lock came undone in their hands and when they collapsed at the threshold all Hanabi could do was weep out their names with her sobs.

At the edges of the path, where the pines hugged the growing shadows and the snow caressed the roots of the trees the two wolves watched in silence.

It had taken much to lead the two lost souls from the depths of the forest to the village edge. There had been the threat of shadow, the bared teeth of the monster, and in the end the sobbed pleading of a sister and daughter.

"How did you get back? How are you alive?" Hanabi's tears stained their cold cheeks with the heat of her relief and they sighed, glancing back together to the wolves at their back.

"You sister found us." Hiashi breathed the half truth he would always say, for the rest of his life. "And gave her life to save us both."

There used to be wolves in the mountains and the woods. Packs of them roamed, red eyed and shadow formed. They hunted, and haunted the villages edges and at times would lead you from the endless maze of the forest back to the well travelled roads.

They disappeared, from one generation to another. All but one, and then two. One, black as midnight, the other white as the full moon.

"Will you regret it?" He breathed the question into the valley of her breasts, watching enraptured as she arched beneath his touch.

"No." Determinedly she answered, eyes closed as she felt the heat of his tongue caressing the softness beneath her belly button.

"I would hunt you down." He warned, thinking of the hollowness that would eat him alive if she were to ever go. The same hollowness that had driven him nearly mad before he stumbled across her in the woods. "I would find you."

"...yes..." She arched again, fingers digging into the warmth of the earth below, feeling him stretching long and powerful as the night sky above her.

"You are mine." The bite of his teeth at her shoulder made her whine, the tears springing to her eyes as the pain and pleasure blurred into one thick line. "I am yours."

Three words, unlike and like the ones humans say to each other at the end of fairy tales old and grand.

Do not go back in the wood, Father had said, and he had been right.

Now, she would never get out.

*throws story and runs*

-inky