Title: Shards of Kaleidoscopes

Summary: Snippets from Mirage of Kaleidoscopes storyline.

Author's Note: I feel so bad for not updating the main story and that is due to my hectic university schedule and midterms, which begins tomorrow! Anyways after my midterms which will take like two weeks to finish, I will without a doubt update Mirage of Kaleidoscope and I will make sure to make it an extra-long chapter to make up for my absence.

Disclaimer: Author does not own Naruto.

.

.

Hyuuga Hotaru

.

.

Hotaru cannot remember his mother's face clearly anymore. But he remembers that she was beautiful and that he loved her.

He loved his mother the most – his beautiful, delicate, cold mother who never held him, smiled at him or spoke to him willingly. But she had protected him from his so-called father's wrath every single time, without fail and the bruises on her face only made her more beautiful in his eyes.

"He isn't my son; no son of mine should like anything like that man!"

There are rumours that he was the child of his mother's lover, dead and buried, never to return. But his mother does not pay it any mind and tells him to be strong against any accusations.

"You are a Hyuuga and Hyuugas are strong,."

She was so strong, so very, very strong. He admired her for her strength and her coldness.

Hotaru knows that she didn't want him, had never wanted him and it hurt him so much to think about that. But he was thankful nonetheless that she had still protected him for all those years.

The one time his mother cried was over a ring she had lost – a ring from a dead lover never to return. Something she cherished enough to show her own weakness. His father never knew because he did not care for her, or for his own son. Hotaru's father had his mistresses and his mother had no one.

She was so beautiful when she cried and it made his heart wrench in pain. He had skipped his lessons and plowed through the gardens for the ring.

He found it hiding beneath the rocks near the large pond in the compound and he remembers his bruised hands and bloody nails and the sheer joy that overwhelmed his heart when he held that ring in his small hands.

He remembers rushing back and running down the halls and finding his beautiful, elegant- cold, cold – mother sitting there with her pale grey eyes. She had opened her mouth to scold him but he remembers laughing, joyfully, brightly, as he held out the ring to her.

It was the first and last time his mother ever smiled at him. Hotaru remembers how bright and warm her smile was, how she had finally, finally looked at him with some sort of affection? Love? He didn't know but it had been enough for her hold him in her arms and she called him her precious little boy.

"Thank you Hotaru, my little firefly… thank you for bringing him back to me."

And the next morning, his mother was dead.

Drowned, the servants whispered, in the pond… she had slit her own wrists.

Hotaru remembers his father's solemn face as he stormed out of the compound. He remembers how peaceful his mother had looked and the smile on her face and he remembers the hot tears running down his face – she's gone. Gone. GONE.

She was cremated and her ashes scattered in the winds and his father sheds a few tears for show and then leaves. Hotaru remembers kneeling before the plaque with his mother's name and clutching the two rings she had held in her cold hands and he cries and cries and doesn't stop.

But then, he meets her.

Uchiha Nanashi with dark – cold – eyes like his mother, and beautiful and strong and it's as if his mother has come back from the grave in a different form.

And he falls in love with a little girl with cold eyes who smiles at him so warmly and comforts him when he needs it.

"Hotaru, you know, fireflies carry our wishes to the dead," Nana-san tells him at night when the stars are all glowing in the sky.

And she looks at him with those eyes and smiles, "I think your mother gave you that name for a reason."

"Fireflies," he whispers and his hands swallow a small, bright light before opening once more and releasing back into the air.

What did you wish for mother?

He loves this girl, he knows he loves her and he is willing to die for her.

And when he does, he has never been happier.

I protected you this time, didn't I?

Then he sees her tears and her red pinwheel eyes and he regrets.

And them his life flashes before him and he sees himself with Nanashi – smiling, laughing, holding hands, getting married, their beautiful children and growing old together.

… He smiles…