This is a work of derivative fiction. All characters and the world in which they live are the property of Masashi Kishimoto.

The Eight Phases of the Moon

- - new moon - -

He was born to autumn rain and winter wind, the first strains of a November hurricane. He was an only child, the son of a kimono maker and a name on the memorial stone. He was small and very stoic, didn't cry once, all night, not even when his namesake hurricane sent ghosts on the wind to rattle the window panes and howl to be let in.

Everyone said it was an inauspicious start, but Hayate didn't believe in fate. There were things that happened to people, and there were things that didn't happen, that was all.

- - waxing crescent - -

He learned the sword for the same reason he committed to becoming a ninja. Because he was told he couldn't do it.

As a child, he hadn't quite understood that shinobi could get ill through no fault of the job. Death, for a ninja, he felt, ought to be an act of heroism. Death by sword or by fire, in glory and with a fight. Slow, wasting deaths were for the ordinary. Sickness, weakness; they were civilian foibles. Shinobi would never just fade away. He was sure of it.

And then he grew up, and realised anything was possible.

Then Aunt Manami, who had been the best in her year with the kunai and could hit a moving object from forty paces, lost all of her beautiful long hair overnight, and stopped coming to visit for target practice. Then Akimichi Chouhei, who had once taken on a team of bandits twelve to one, swallowed all three of his pills in a row, one after the other washed down with a gulp of whiskey and a 'kanpai' to thin air. Then Toma, who lived next door and smiled a lot and could make his chakra dance from the tips of his fingers like marionettes, just one day stopped talking for good, except to himself. And at night, in his dreams, when he screamed.

And then Hayate grew up, and realised that sickness and weakness were everywhere, including inside his own chest.

He was ten years old, and the diagnosis was "incurable, I'm afraid, Mrs Gekkou."

All sorts of strange words were muttered in hushed tones, not quite out of earshot - malignant, progressive, inconclusive - leaving him with a blurred, confused idea of his own illness. For a while, he thought of it as something alive inside him, an evil spirit that grew as he got thinner.

"That's it then, Hayate," his mother said to him. "You're not going back to that school."

He had been at the Academy since he was six, and she hated what it had done to him. Hated how he saw competition in every little task. How he coveted the set of shuriken his sensei had given him. How he came home cocky and covered in scratches, swinging his kunai on his finger.

Most of all, she hated how like his father he was becoming.

In her mind, there was no debate. He could never be a ninja, not now. He would never be big enough, or strong enough, or fast enough. Some days, Hayate thought she was relieved. Pleased, even. Pleased he was a cripple, so he'd never be able to leave her. She'd have him spend the rest of his life at home, wrapped in cotton wool, working in the shop until he died or went blind stitching patterns onto kimono that nobody even wore anymore. Slowly going mad. Those were the days he felt fine, better than fine, and thought bitterly that she was just using his illness as a weapon against him, to stop him following in the footsteps of his father.

Other days, he coughed up blood.

- - quarter moon - -

Still, he went back, because she could never say no him, just like she couldn't say no to his father.

'To be healthy in mind and body' was the third requirement for entry to the Academy, and Hayate had to beg his teacher to let him back in. He tried as hard as he could to keep his breathing steady and a smile on his face, and as long as he could ignore the ever-present tightness in his chest and that itch in the back of his throat, he'd be able to pull it off.

"Don't be so literal, sensei!" he said, when she quoted that rule at him, shaking her head. "I'm whole, aren't I?"

She gave him a troubled look, and sent him to the Hokage.

"I can do it," Hayate told him. "I know I can do it."

The Sandaime had a face of dichotomy. It seemed at once to be the friendliest and most serious face Hayate had ever seen. Two deep lines sliced his brow into a permanent frown, and yet the crinkled skin at the corners of his eyes gave the impression of one who was always just on the brink of breaking into a smile.

Because there was no reply, Hayate continued, "I mean it, Hokage-sama! I really-" and then the old man chuckled, and reached out to put his heavy warm hand on the top of Hayate's head, just for a moment. "I believe you, Hayate-kun."

It was the first time since his diagnosis that anyone had shown any measure of faith in him (as though sickness made him a liar, too), and though he knew his mother only wanted the best for him, her idea of the best was what kept him safe, not happy.

So he went back. He'd missed almost a year of school, had spent the Third Shinobi War in a hospital bed, watching the injured pour in and leave again just as fast, patched up like rag dolls. He learnt of the Nine-Tails' attack from a gruff, bearded medic who'd been drafted in from the border town to help with the influx of casualties, and who wandered into Hayate's room every now and then in his bloodied overalls with snippets of news from the front line.

As a result, Hayate had a fractured idea of the state his village was in; back at school, he felt he'd been in a sort of limbo. Many of his classmates had graduated while he was gone. Grown up quickly in the enforced maturity of war, sent out to the real world to fight and to die. Anko and Iruka had both become Genin, and Hayate couldn't even throw a shuriken in a straight line.

He was put back a year, and enjoyed, for a while, an elevated status among his classmates. Some of them thought he'd been fighting in the war, but soon realised he had no stories to tell and no scars to show them.

He was supposed to sit and rest during breaks, when the other students went outside - his mother had insisted on it - but he discarded that arrangement immediately. He had to keep up with his class, in every respect. He was as clever as the best of them, and aced his written tests; days spent at home, his body wracked with coughs, ensured he almost always came top of the class; he would lie in bed with his books open in piles around him, reciting jutsu patterns with his eyes closed until he found he was repeating them in his sleep.

He knew the theory inside out. It was putting that theory into practice that worried him. Controlling his chakra. Sustaining attacks. And so when he couldn't keep up, he pushed himself harder; five more laps, ten more press-ups, twenty bull's-eyes before he could take a break. It wasn't uncommon for a teacher to glance out of the classroom window and see Hayate stomping doggedly round and round Training Ground One, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He chose the tallest tree to climb, the widest curve of the river to jump, the strongest boy in the class to spar with. Every taijutsu lesson, he marched across the room to where Iwao stood, at ten already casting an imposing shadow over his classmates.

"Fight me," Hayate demanded, his finger pressed to Iwao's chest.

Hayate, who was smaller than most of the girls, who coughed like he smoked forty a day and had shadows beneath his eyes to rival the Sandaime.

Iwao grinned, and had him pinned to the floor in fifteen seconds. It was ten seconds longer than anyone had expected, so they let him carry on. And by the time the bell rang, and the entire class had come to a halt to watch the fight, maybe the slight rattle in Hayate's chest whenever he took a breath wasn't that noticeable after all.

"You're pretty fast," Iwao said.

Just to keep up with them. That was Hayate's aim. But he was fast, and it was a surprise, to none more than himself. He never once thought he'd be able to surpass anyone.

- - waxing gibbous - -

His mother hung his graduation photo on the wall above the fireplace, next to the photo of Father in his formal robes, though she couldn't summon a smile.

It was a testament to his strength of will that a year after leaving the Academy, he was entered for the Chuunin exam. He and Kotetsu and Izumo, flung together in a team under Yuuhi-sensei, a tough Jounin who the boys liked because he fought with a sword, and because he was Kurenai's father, who was that sort of scary pretty older girl they thought they'd never be able to talk to.

The written exam had gone well, so well in fact that they stayed out, in the rain, shouting their elation to the rooftops and kicking their sandaled feet through puddles. Unwisely, as it turned out, because two days before he was due to fight, Hayate was bedridden with pneumonia. "To be expected," the doctor said, though he never explained why.

His mother concluded, naturally, that he shouldn't compete.

Hayate concluded, naturally, that he had nothing to lose.

"He won't make it past twenty," the doctor said, in the corridor. Quietly, but not so quietly that Hayate couldn't overhear. If that really was the case, he thought, then he had only seven years left of his life in which to achieve something.

His mother came to watch him fight, despite her protestations. When he was pronounced the winner of his final match he looked up at the stands and saw her sitting with Kotetsu's parents, in a kimono printed all over with blue sea bream. She hung his second graduation photo on the wall next to the first, next to the photo of Father, and the expression on her face was almost a smile.

The same day that Hayate made Chuunin, pride and a shocked sort of happiness bringing uncharacteristic spots of pink into his sallow cheeks, he went to the study in his stiff new flak jacket, with his spit-shined forehead protector tied in a new bandana style over his hair, and took Father's katana from the wall. It had hung for thirteen years over his desk, gathering dust in a room that smelled of old maps and history, a musty, secret smell.

It was heavier than he'd expected, and he held it clumsily, reverently. His hand fitted perfectly around the carved mahogany handle, and when he drew the blade from its leather sheath it came out with a sharp noise, like an exhalation, and a promising silver glint. It hadn't dulled at all.

- - full moon - -

He had to work at it, like everything else in his life. He discovered no latent talent, no hidden reserves of power. It hurt him, that first training session with Yuuhi-sensei. Just lifting the sword above his head set his muscles screaming.

He felt like he was ten years old again, barely able to breathe. His head spinning away from his body. On the way home, the katana slung across his back felt like a dead weight, and two blocks from his house he fainted, slowly, gracefully, hitting his head on the kerb. He was carried home by a neighbour who shook his head sympathetically and said to his mother, "All this fighting isn't good for your boy."

He had the same pitying look in his eyes that Hayate saw every time he met someone new. It was like whenever he'd had a coughing fit in class and every face in the room turned to look at him. Their eyes had said, "poor kid. Poor Hayate. We all knew you couldn't do it." But he was tired - fucking tired - of being 'Poor Hayate'. It seemed the more sympathy he received, the angrier he grew. Or maybe it was just that the worse he was at something, the more determined he became to succeed.

"Fuck." He was on his knees, Yuuhi-sensei standing over him. He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground. "This is bullshit."

"Are you okay?" That soft edge of concern in his teacher's voice. "Hayate-kun?"

Hayate ground his teeth.

"Maybe you should take a rest."

"Stop it."

"If this is too much for you-"

"Stop it!" He dug his blade into the soft ground and tried to push off it and stand up. "Fuck."

"Good. Get angry. Shout."

"Fuck!" And he tipped his head back and sent a great wordless roar into the sky, and it was Mother and Father and evil spirits and pity from strangers and knowing he could do it and not being able to show it, all the anger there ever was bursting out of him, and he pushed himself to his feet and tore the sword from the ground and whirled it like a dervish, forcing Yuuhi-sensei back into a corner and coming to a halt with the edge of his blade at his teacher's neck.

Yuuhi-sensei smiled.

"Bullshit, still?"

If his provocation technique made Hayate angry, at least it worked. Within the space of two months he had his first mission as team-leader, a B-rank that went better than he could ever have imagined, so that when he handed his report to the Chuunin behind the desk, he did it with a broad grin that he was pleased to see unnerved her.

The report was three pages long, painstakingly copied in his best handwriting from the first and second drafts, which had been discarded for scribbles and ink stains and a just-not-quite-right description of their final fight. She eyed it quickly, and then picked it up and read it again. Then she looked from the paper to the lean, shabby-looking teenager standing in front of her.

"Well done," she said, and she wasn't mocking him or trying to make him feel better, as far as he could tell. In fact, the only emotion he could detect was a slight air of surprise, and that was when he knew he'd outshone himself.

He coughed once, twice, into his balled fist, and nodded.

He felt like a hero.

- - waning gibbous - -

Hayate learned the sword for the same reason he lived. Because he was told he couldn't do it.

"He won't make it past twenty," the doctor had said. But then he did. Then suddenly he was waking up to a grey autumn morning and knowing he had defied science and reason and logic simply by being alive. It was wonderful.

He was alive, and Iwao was dead. Iwao, who was the strongest boy in their year, whose name meant 'stone man', who had knocked Hayate down ten times in a row and not even broken a sweat.

He had done some things he knew he could do, and some he thought he never would. He had been on an A-rank mission. Sung karaoke. Lost his virginity. Kissed a man. Killed a man. He had talked to Kurenai, because he wasn't intimidated by scary pretty older girls any more, not since Yuugao, who was scary sometimes, and beautiful all the time.

She was the only one he'd told about the doctor's prediction, because she had a certain steady way of looking at him that meant he couldn't keep a secret from her without feeling guilty. She met him in their usual place, at the very top of the Hokage Monument, from where they could see the whole of Konoha stretched out below them. As always, she left her mask at home, and came with her long hair swinging at the small of her back and a smile on her face.

"Happy birthday," she said, and didn't mention the significance of his age at all.

He wasn't supposed to know who she was. The mask she wore was there to hide more than just her face, after all, and for the first few times they'd met she'd kept that side of herself concealed from him completely. She'd just been Yuugao. But the same day he told her about the prediction, as though it was a day for baring hearts and souls, she took out her mask from her bag and showed it to him, silently. They both knew she'd get in trouble for it, if the Hokage found out, but it didn't seem to matter at all.

Two days after his birthday, he began to learn the Dance of the Crescent Moon. Before they started training, Yuuhi-sensei cleared his throat portentously, and recited a short speech he'd no doubt reeled off to his other students, in the past, which ended thus: "The Dance of the Crescent Moon is a dance with two outcomes. The enemy's death, or yours."

To someone else, it might have been a powerful statement. They might have been scared; they might even have changed their mind.

To Hayate, it was nothing. It was life. And he had been ready for his death since he was thirteen years old and lying in a hospital bed, listening to the limits of his own life being set out for him by a man in a white coat.

If it wasn't the job that killed him, if it wasn't his new technique gone fatally wrong, a knife between the ribs or a poisoned senbon in each eye, it would be his own renegade body turning on itself.

He had made it past twenty, and now he was living on borrowed time. He saw no point in being scared, or changing his mind. He had to make the most of however many weeks or months or - if he dared even think it - years he had left.

- - last quarter - -

And every year past twenty, he became less and less resigned to his own death. Somewhere inside him burned the flame of a small hope that he would be okay.

The doctor had been wrong, after all.

He was promoted to Tokubetsu Jounin, finally, when he was twenty-two. As Hokage-sama passed over the scroll, he smiled what Hayate imagined was a fatherly smile and said, "It's an achievement, your Crescent Moon. Know that." His hand was warm and firm on Hayate's. "In a sticky situation, I'd be glad to have you by my side."

He thought long and hard about what he was going to do with his life. Kotetsu and Izumo had both been accepted into the Barrier Team; Iruka had found his calling as an Academy teacher. Anko was in high demand for A-rank missions. Hayate, for the moment, was working as an examiner, and taking every mission that came his way, regardless of rank. He thought, maybe, one day, he might like to join ANBU.

He remembered distinctly the curious feeling that came over him the first time he saw an ANBU team. It was a flutter in the pit of his stomach. Excitement, and yet, at the same time, a sort of horror. He was walking home from school, in a particularly good mood, because Jo-sensei had praised his katon in front of the class. He was swinging his bag from hand to hand, and then he looked up and saw them. Four of them. Perched like strange crows on the roof of a nearby house.

He remembered noting the disturbing friction between the childlike paintings on their faces and the lethal swords strapped across their backs. He knew they were talking, but their masks obscured their conversation, and all that was left was the birdlike way they cocked their heads at each other as they spoke.

Years later, rummaging around in the back of the oak cupboard in the study, he found his father's mask. It was a smooth oval cat's face, like many he had seen before, with small pointed ears and a stern mouth and two red lines that stretched from the forehead to between the eyes, and from the lower lip to the chin. He hesitated for a moment, then put the mask on. It was china, cold against the contours of his face. He strapped his sword across his back and posed awkwardly in front of the mirror, half troubled and half enthralled by the unrecognisable figure that stared back at him.

He and Yuugao met at the Monument, the evening of his promotion. "Congratulations," she said. "I knew you'd do it." They clinked glasses and drank, later swigging straight from the bottle, though neither of them really enjoyed the taste of the sake nor the powerless feeling it gave them.

He traced the tattoo on her shoulder, and said quietly, "I think I might like to join, if I can. I don't want to be an examiner forever."

Her body tensed beneath his hand. "You never make it easy on yourself, do you?"

"Easy?" Hayate scoffed. "Where's the fun in that?"

She shrugged, not wanting to pity him, he was always so fucking tired of pity, though secretly she thought he had it hard enough as it was, without ANBU.

"It's an oxymoron, anyway," he continued.

"What is?"

"An easy life. There's no such thing."

"For you, maybe."

"I'd hate it." He was frowning. "I'd rather die."

"Stop it." A whisper. "You know that's not true."

He was silent for a long time. Lying on his back with his eyes half-closed, thinking. Yuugao propped herself up on her elbows to watch him.

Then, very abruptly, he sat up. "No, you're right." He turned to her, and smiled. "I've got plans."

- - waning crescent - -

He was born to autumn rain and winter wind. He dies in a very different sort of hurricane.

The general consensus among his colleagues is that it's what he would have wanted. To die that way. In glory, and with a fight. Rather that than a slow, wasting death in a hospital bed. Such a civilian death would never have suited Hayate, they all agree.

Yuugao knows differently.

She knows he didn't want to die at all.

He had plans.

In the end, she thought, he was the crescent moon. All any of them saw of him was just the smallest glint of what he would have become.

A/N: I invented lots of tiny characters here just to flesh out the story, and obviously Hayate had parents but we have no idea what they were like, so that's all made up too. But some are minor characters from the Naruto world that I breathed a bit more life into e.g. Yuuhi-sensei is based on Kurenai's father, who appears in one chapter of the manga but not in the anime. I chose him basically just because he fought with a sword, and I needed a sword-fighter to train Hayate.

It's strange, but after watching the episodes with Hayate in, I couldn't get the character out of my head at all, and it's only now about two years later that I've got any sort of closure! Imagining a backstory for such a minor character was a really fun exercise, I guess because I had a lot of blank space for my imagination to run wild :)

Feedback? Please and thank you :3