AN:

Short note first on Hikaru's age. I messed up several chapters ago with my math, and said she'd turned 11 already, but then I went back and reworked things and she should've been 10, which then means she was 31 mentally instead of 32, so I had to go back and change her conversation with Kakashi and some other places where her age is mentioned. She turns 11 in this chapter.

Main note: Hey y'all. I'm sorry for not updating in so long. I do have a pretty good excuse though. I learned last month that I have depression. I've had it for at least three years, actually, but I thought "I'm just being lazy" and "Of course I suddenly hate school and stopped caring about doing homework even though I've loved it for the rest of my life; everyone hates school eventually" and "it's only natural that I've stopped being excited about seeing movies in the movie theatre, I'm growing up, after all." (Even though, though this will sound silly, when I felt the same apathy for Star Wars 7 I really should've been tipped off that something else was at play.)

In hindsight it's pretty obvious, but I had never felt the stereotypical "I can't do anything but lie in bed all day" and like I was saying, you can write off a lot of the symptoms as being about something else when you don't know what's going on. However, ever since about the last time I updated (in March) things have slowly been getting worse and I stopped having the motivation to write and almost stopped drawing altogether. (And again, simply thought "wow, you're so lazy you can't even do the things you want to do.) This last month or so was really bad though and I finally knew something was really wrong.

So that's what I'm dealing with. It's a large part why I've been so slow to update (even when I was updating once a month) beyond having to deal with work and school, and is the reason why I haven't written in so long. You'll have to bare with me because updates will probably continue to be slow. I'm sorry about that. I hope you keep on enjoying the story regardless.

00000

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.

Robert Frost

Desert Places

000

AR: 5 months

Inoichi told me that the hallucination was brought on by me being put into a similar situation of where I had received trauma, which I already knew, and that it should fade naturally on its own as I avoided those situations and gave myself time to destress, which I didn't. However the whole situation was a bucket of cold water to the face. I had issues that were debilitating to me not only on missions, but in day to day life. Danzo and his methods had given me those issues. If he had meant to create the perfect shinobi using those methods, he had failed miserably—at least with me.

However, if I believed what Inoichi told me, Danzo never could create the perfect shinobi—he could only create tools. In that case, I was a pretty warped tool, but perhaps I could still become a good shinobi. The hardest part was accepting the fact that in my case, that didn't mean training more, or going on more missions; it meant allowing myself time to rest and gain something of a life. Inoichi had also told me during one of our sessions that because of my mental state, my access to my spiritual chakra had been damaged. It meant I had been underperforming on missions-healing slower and running out of chakra faster, because I had allowed myself to become spiritually damaged. Taking that into account, it was doubly important that I heal mentally.

I tried to relax. I meditated. I asked Hiashi for my scroll in English again and re-translated the poems in it, discarding direct translation and trying to catch the true meaning while sticking as close to the meter, where there was one, as I could. That occupied my mornings for a couple weeks while Hinata was in school. When she came home I would join her in training for several hours. (I was supposed to spend the majority of my time relaxing, but I wasn't barred from training altogether. That would do more harm than good in the long run because my problems would only reverse if I focused only on mental training and none on physical.) I was still further behind than Hinata in my Gentle Fist training, tending to use overpowered attacked with little to no finesse. My sessions with Tadao had helped a lot with my form but not so much with my control, so Hiashi and Hinata were both coaching me on things I should have learned and practiced years ago.

In the evenings after dinner I would try to read, but more often than not I would find myself staring at the page, mind wandering, and my thoughts were rarely pleasant. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't wasting my time, but I felt like a failure anyway.

On one such occasion of absorption I was startled when Hinata yanked the book I was holding out of my hands. I look up at her slowly from where I was sitting on the couch in our living room.

"You look miserable." She said quietly, but firmly. "I can see that you aren't actually reading this. We're going out. I already asked Dad."

"Oh. Ok. Where?"

She held out her hand, which I accepted. "You'll see."

She led me along at a brisk pace through the house. I still couldn't think of it as "home." My heart felt too adrift to claim any one place right now. We left and made out way through the darkening streets until we ended up at the Yamanaka residence.

"Hinata." I said, as we approached. "I already talk to Inoichi-sama at one of the Yamanaka practices once a week. I don't think he'll be so happy to talk to me at home."

"We aren't here for him." She smiled. "Ino helped me a lot, and she didn't do it by talking with me." She thought for a moment, pausing just before she was going to knock on the door, "Well, we did talk a lot, but it wasn't just…um, what I'm trying to say is, we had a lot of fun, and it was a nice distraction a lot of the time. Even when I was miserable and didn't enjoy myself, it was still better than being miserable alone. It's hard to explain."

"I think I know what—" I began, and the door was flung open. Ino was standing there with a smirk on her face.

"Are you two going to stand on my doorstep all day?" She asked, "Usually when Hinata shows up at my house it's because she has movies, popcorn, and a set of pajamas here with her name on it."

Hinata grinned. Her smile was a big open thing that lit up her face and eyes; it held none of the bittersweet emotion she showed when she smiled at me, filled with too many lost years to be thoughtlessly happy.

"We're coming in!" She said. "I didn't tell Hikaru where we were going, so she was a bit confused and didn't want to bother your dad, so I was explaining a bit."

"How much explanation does a movie need? You didn't spoil the ending of Kira Ninja Princess did you?" She asked as she shooed us inside.

"No!" Hinata said.

"Good. Let's get this started."

Ino wasn't joking when she said there was a pair of pajamas just for Hinata at her house. They were blue. I got a pink set thrust into my face which I assumed were usually set aside for Sakura's use. The night wasn't cold, but we had a blanket spread over our laps along with a big bowl of popcorn to share between us. Ino's mom Amane even joined us, but she was asleep before the movie was halfway done.

I was sandwiched in between the two girls and felt isolated even so. I was too self-aware of the fact that I felt empty next to their enjoyment. However, with that isolation came a sense of déjà vu. I have felt this way before, although not so severely, and grown past it before, and I shall do so again. That thought relaxed me more than anything else. No matter how awkward and detached I felt, I knew that the more time I spent with people, even if I just observed at first, the more connected I would feel. It would be a long process—one that would take years even—but in this case I knew that time would work wonders. I sat back and tried to pay attention to the movie. It was pretty terrible, special effects being in the baby stages in this world, but that in itself made me smile a little from nostalgia. It reminded me of the 1988 adaption of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, with people dressed up in beaver costumes. Growing up I'd never noticed, but after the 2005 version came out I couldn't watch it without laughing.

After the movie we all went to Ino's room. She and Hinata kept up most of the conversation, and I was grateful they didn't push me to talk overmuch. I slept soundly for the first time in a while.

A week later I was waiting in line for some yakitori and a vendor's stall and someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was Kakashi. My cheeks turned red, remembering our awkward conversation, but when he spoke first all he said was "I've been meaning to give you this." before dropping a little blue book with a slightly ripped cover into my hands.

"What?" I looked down and back up at him.

"You shouldn't throw books away so quickly." He replied. "Sorry about the cover, it got some candy stuck to it." Then he patted me on the head, which I found a little condescending but also didn't care because it was human touch and I'd take just about any gesture of affection I could get at this point, and he left.

I opened it and read the first page before remembering buying it over a month ago. I idly flipped through the pages as I waited in line until I passed one that had some writing on it. I turned back to the page. "This one was my favorite" it said. Did the bookshop sell used books or…? I looked around, but of course Kakashi was nowhere to be seen.

000

My eleventh birthday came a month later. I couldn't believe it was already October; March-when I was taken out of ROOT-seemed like yesterday. Hinata invited Sakura and Ino, and then Ino invited Shikamaru and Choji. I reluctantly allowed Hinata to drag me out of my room when everyone arrived. If I had my druthers, I'd have stayed in my room until everyone left and then eaten a piece of cake with Hinata for company. Ah well. Wanting ain't getting.

This was my first time seeing Shikamaru and Choji in five years, so it was understandably a bit awkward saying hello. Then there was an awkward silence for a minute.

"You must have a few stories to tell," Shikamaru said, looking slightly disturbed as he eyed me. "Ino's and my dad are being tight-lipped about the whole thing."

"Shikamaru!" Ino said, aghast. "I told you not to bring it up!"

"Then everyone would be thinking about it, not talking about it, and searching for other things to say while still thinking about it. This way is less troublesome."

I had to admire his bluntness, even though I disliked the subject matter.

"There isn't much I can tell you." I told him. "Where I was and who with are secret for a reason."

"And what happened to you?" He asked.

Ino covered her face with her hands. "What happened to her," she said, voice slightly muffled "is that she was kidnapped, and this is also Hinata and Hikaru's birthday party, so could you please shut up about it?"

I glanced at Hinata before answering. She did look somewhat upset, but Shikamaru was partially right, best just to get this out of the way.

"Sorry, but let me just clear this up." I said. "No, I can't talk about anything I may or may not have gone through. My life was horrible for five years, and I'll never be able to open up about it to anyone not already in the know. However, I doubt I would tell you even if I could, because I wouldn't want to talk about a lot of it just to satisfy your curiosity. If we were friends I might, in order to open up for emotional support, again if I were allowed to, but frankly that would be for me, when I was ready, not just because you wanted to know and it was awkward avoiding talking about it. Alright?" That was probably a bit harsher than I had needed to be, but it was essentially the truth.

"Right…" Shikamaru said. "Sorry."

"No, it's okay." I smiled bitterly at him "You were right that something needed to be said about it."

"Okay!" Ino said, falsely cheerful, "let's talk about something else!"

"Would you like a chip?" Choji asked me. I smiled and accepted it as Shikamaru chuckled.

"Do you have a favorite flavor?" Hinata asked him, sounding like she was grasping at straws. Choji took up the offered conversation hook with gusto, and the conversation moved on, with only a little bumpiness.

000

Six months of meditation and therapy later, I was still an absolute mess by normal human standards, but by shinobi standards I was apparently good enough because they were letting me go to the Academy for the final year to get ready for and take the ninja exam and officially become a Konoha shinobi. Objectively speaking, I was still the spare heir of the Hyūga clan and needed to visibly be a ninja and add to the Hyuga clan strength. I was also already trained far beyond my peers, and in too deep-with knowledge of ROOT and ANBU-and the village wasn't going to let an asset like me slip through their fingers.

Hiashi-sama frankly explained all this to me when he showed me my school admission slip that he'd already filled out and signed. I was aware this was probably another tactic to get me to go along willingly-he had showed me the papers and explained rather than just turning them in and telling me I'd been enrolled, but it did work-sort of.

"I'll want to retire as soon as possible." I told him bluntly. I didn't know what else I'd do with my life, but I didn't think I'd ever be a great shinobi as Inoichi defined it. I did have a pile of poems I'd written, and I could still draw, so I had a couple options on the creative side of things if I went looking for other careers. However, even with gaining a couple hobbies, I didn't have a fire in me that burned brightly for something. They didn't intersect, the thing outside my interest in fighting wasn't going to be the thing that allowed me to be a great fighter.

A mental image of me screaming "FOR POETRY!" with fists blazing popped into head and made me smile. Yeah, not going to happen.

Plus, there was the Plot to consider, and how some of my information was irrelevant now. Orochimaru wasn't going to be obsessed with Sasuke as the last surviving Uchiha, and with a townful of sharingan users at hand some of the threats Konoha was going to face wouldn't be so difficult to deal with. It was definitely apathetic of me, but I'd go into a non-field role in a shot. I didn't feel Shikako's desperation of Dreaming of Sunshine's fame to get stronger to save the world, because the village was already in a better position to deal with things and besides, canon had turned out mostly fine even without my existence, so everything would probably turn out all right in the end no matter what I did.

Hmmm. I should probably bring up apathy the next time I talked with Inoichi-sama. And Plot. He might already know about everything, since Hiashi-sama had me translate my scroll and they did talk to each other, but I should talk about it anyway since there was probably something unhealthy with my lingering tendency to think of possible future events as part of a story and not, well, my future.

I realized Hiashi-sama had an eyebrow raised at me and I'd probably missed something.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I said that's an option. Hizashi doesn't go on missions anymore as head of the branch family, and you may end up in a position naturally anyway that would mean quitting field work at the least."

"Ah. Yes. Good."

Hiashi-sama sighed. "You may go. I'll turn these in tomorrow."

000

Hinata and I got to school bright and early the first day, and we still weren't the first ones there. Sakura, Sasuke, and surprisingly Shikamaru were already in their seats when we came in. Iruka-sensei was also already there.

"Two questions. Do I have to be visible to be counted present and can we never, ever turn the lights off in class?"

Iruka-sensei blinked at me, nonplussed. "Uh, yes Hikaru-chan. I expect you to participate in class and your classmates need to be able to see you for that. As for turning the lights out, I didn't have it planned for any of my lessons, why?"

"Reasons. Things I can't talk about."

"Uh, right." He looked concerned, but I'd preemptively shut down his ability to ask about it. I felt kinda sorry for him, but not enough to have not brought it up in the first place.

I turned around to see where Hinata had sat down and found her and everyone else staring at me.

"I have issues. We've been over this." Well, not with Sasuke, but he knew better than anyone in this room, other than Hinata, what I'd gone through. Sasuke hnned, Shikamaru rolled his eyes and muttered "troublesome" and Sakura lowered her eyes. I went to sit with Hinata and put my head down on the desk. She patted me on the back. "Thanks." I mumbled.

It was a good thing, a few minutes later, that I just had my head in my arms and wasn't actually asleep when a voice screamed "Hikaru-chan!" and a body tackled me, because I might have killed Naruto if he'd startled me awake like that. I'd still gone to punch him as it was, however without chakra involved, and only barely managed to stop myself.

"Ow." I complained, for my eardrums, and because landing on the floor in a heap had hurt a little. Naruto was crying on top of me, which was awkward on a couple levels but mostly because he was making my shoulder wet and I couldn't breathe very well. Not to mention there was a boy lying on top of me, but neither of us were dealing with hormones yet and despite being about the same size he was waaaay too young so I was not going to think about it since it wasn't relevant to the situation anyway.

"You're b-back" Naruto blubbered. "I thought you were gone forever."

"Get off of her Naruto!" Sakura yelled and heaved him to his feet. I got up and spotted Iruka-sensei about to get out of his chair, but then he settled back, so perhaps he'd only been concerned about me getting hurt and was content to see how we handled the situation.

"I was just so so h-happy to see her." Naruto was still crying.

Sakura's gaze softened a bit as she looked at him. "I know." She brushed at his shoulders in a motherly fashion. "You still shouldn't have tackled her to the ground. Ino already talked to you about unwanted physical contact, didn't she?" Well, that was certainly different from canon too. I wonder what had prompted all this. Maybe he'd been too touchy clingy trying to comfort Hinata, like he'd been just now with me, and Ino had come to her rescue? And since Sakura was also friends with Hinata, she'd been roped into dealing with Naruto too. Whatever had happened, Ino and Sakura's relationship with Naruto was different, that was certain.

Come to mention it, they didn't seem to be squealing over Sasuke either. Maybe since he wasn't a brooding cloud of doom, and didn't have the "tragic appeal."

"Yeah-ah, I forgot. It was okay, anyway, right?" He looked at me.

"It turned out alright, so yeah. Don't yell so loud though."

"Okay." He sniffed, and for a minute it looked like he was going to calm down, but then he burst into tears all over again. "Can I hug you again?"

"Sure." He looked like he really needed it.

By the time he'd gotten himself under control class was starting. Kiba dragged Naruto off to sit by him because "You need some space to breathe, man, and she looks like she does too." It was the most refreshing first reaction to me I'd had. He'd barely even stared when he'd come upon the scene. Neither had Shino, who'd ended up sitting next to me, actually.

"As most of you have already noticed, we have a new student this year." Iruka-sensei started. I waved as everyone turned in their seats to look at me. Iruka introduced me and my situation briefly for those who didn't know, but thankfully didn't make me give an introductory speech or anything of the sort. We started into the lesson quickly, all things considered. Bless him. I would have to bring him an apple or Japanese pear or something tomorrow.

If I'd been hearing about disarming traps for the first time, the lesson might have been interesting. As it was I could already tell this was going to be a loooong year for me. I laid my head back in my arms and tried to go to sleep.

Naruto ate lunch with us as well as Ino and Sakura. I had to ask Hinata. "Did Hiashi-sama stop being strict about you eating lunch with him?"

"There's no way I'd let Hinata eat lunch by herself!" Naruto interjected.

"He never brought it up again." Hinata said, "So either he hasn't heard about it again, or it isn't an issue any more."

"It's pretty fun." Sakura said. "Sometimes some of the other boys will sit with us too; either Shikamaru and Choji, because of Ino; or Kiba and Shino and Sasuke, because of Naruto. And Mika and Akari and Maname will usually sit with us too," she said, looking over at a group of girls, including one with dark green hair that tickled my memory "I think they're all giving us space today though."

"You're friends with Sasuke?" I asked Naruto, surprised.

"We're rivals." Naruto scowled.

"Pretty friendly rivals, then." Ino laughed, then sobered up. "The whole class kinda pulled together after you were kidnapped. We could all see each other hurting, on different levels, and Hinata and Naruto were definitely hit the hardest, and with how it worked out, the boys all became friends faster than they would've otherwise, I think.

"Oh." I said quietly. It was kind of weird that I'd changed so much by existing and then not being there.

"I'm glad you're back." Naruto looked like he was getting teary eyed again.

"Thanks." I said, even quieter than before. Really, what was I doing here? I didn't want or need to be here.

"We all are. Hikaru." Ino said firmly. I looked into her eyes. "We're all glad you're here. Right now, right here, with us."

I didn't blame them for looking a little alarmed when I started to cry. In the ensuing group hug, and after I confessed my thoughts and the discussion that followed, I couldn't help but think they were such good kids, and I was so grateful for them. Maybe this is why I'm here. To help protect the next generation, but more than that, to help protect those who have made themselves my friends.