"The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world"

-Hermann Hesse

卵

"Do you know where our byakugan comes from?"

My father's voice is a soft summer breeze, his question casted into the waiting dark with a sort of wistfulness.

I tilted my head from where it lay across his lap, moving to see how his pale eyes peered down at me gently, gleaming like a reflection of the sun. He was sitting on the dark wood of the walkway, feet dangling motionlessly from the edge. The soft fabric of his yukata smelled familiar, like the scent of my infanthood and nights curled up between two large warm bodies that provided an unfathomable sphere of comfort and warmth.

Even now, the sharp sting of mint mixed with a soothing undercurrent of tea leaves, washes over me like the drag of the ocean. The heady scent and the unlimited blanket of the sky and the sense of calm I felt deep, deep down nearly pulled me under.

It was a beautiful summer night, the cover of the dark providing some comfort from the blazing heat of the sun that scorched the day. A stray whisper of wind brushed through my favorite wind chimes, the one I had picked out and hung up a few feet away somewhere in the rafters above us one rainy day months ago.

Mother had told me the sound of the rain would only make it's delicate chimes sound sweeter. She had been right.

I shook my head as an answer, and my father continued on.

"Well, legend says it comes from a beautiful princess that came to our land a long, long time ago. Back when nobody had chakra."

Another fairytale? For such a serious man, he quite liked telling me stories. Not that I had any complaints.

Maybe it was something about the cover of the night that beckoned the words out. How we were reduced to just lumpy shapes in the dark, expressions hidden tenderly by ink. Figures instead of people

Maybe it was the fact that it was just me and him, a man and his daughter, enjoying the stars together while the rest of the world dozed. Free of obligations and masks and anything but serenity in the moment.

Maybe that was why he could let the fantasies slip out like gusts of air.

Father looks back up at the sprawl of the stars, dark shadows shifting across his face and sharpening the aristocratic contours of his face. Devastatingly handsome, for sure, in the same way that katana blades are. Sleek and deadly and able to slit your throat in seconds.

It made me wish that one day I would achieve that same sort of lethal edge.

Drifting away from the danger of my father, the assassin, my gaze follows his line of sight instead as he once again becomes my father, the storyteller.

"She had arrived from somewhere unfathomable. Perhaps a star."

The sky was dark above us, illuminated by a million twinkling lights. Constellations upon constellations spread out like a scroll unraveling along a table. It reminded me of the view of city lights from an airplane. I hadn't traveled a lot, but the view of the humming specks had always brightened up hours of sitting in place.

I tried to trace out familiar shapes above me, but there was no Little Dipper or Orion or Ursa Major. This was a completely different sky from the one I had once known.

The thought made a small, sore part of me inside twinge with sorrow, like poking a bruise.3

"The princess fell in love in the king of the land she arrived in. But fate was not meant to be, and he died before her. She would later give birth to two sons."

I closed my eyes. A memory tugged at the back of my mind.

Something was familiar about the tale, but it was too vague and condensed for me to pin one specific name to it. Did she love the king? Did the king love her? The way fate was mentioned seemed to make it so that the king died of unnatural causes. What were the causes?

Wasn't...the princess immortal?

Tou-san caught my slight frown and ran a hand through my hair comfortingly.

"It is just a story, Naoko. Don't think about it too hard."

I habitually relaxed my face, putting on the familiar facade of a tranquil child. It almost felt wrong to change my expression here, where all things were suppose to be lawless. It scared me how fast I was able to slip into that familiar sleeve of false calm.

I've only been in this body for a year at most, and already I have adapted to the watching eyes around me. This mask was as much of me as my new name now.

Naoko...the words wrapped themselves around my tongue like an unfamiliar ghost, but that was my name. Just like how these were my hands, pale and delicate but with a sort of intimidating strength that looked like they belonged to that of a skilled pianist.

Mother had told me my name meant 'obedient, honest child'.

From the beginning, I had been an unexpected pregnancy. I could tell it in how sometimes she looked longingly out the window and fiddled with one of the kunai always hidden up her sleeve, as if restless. I could tell it in the way baby books were always scattered around for her to pick up and reference, having only had the months to read instead of years in advance. I could tell it in the way my father would come home some nights, tired from a long mission, and look subtly surprised, as if he wasn't used to the sight of her waiting there for him to return. It was the little things that cued me into the wider picture(-and my eyes never missed a thing, even if they were sighs I didn't want to know, like the nights I would be chased out of my mother's room and wake up to parents that were a little too-happy).

She had wanted her first child, a girl too at that, to be easy to handle. Someone that wouldn't give her trouble, that would listen to the people around them and realize the delicate paths they had to trend. To understand the strict traditions of their clan, to follow their role in life dutifully, to be someone worthy.

Weakness was not tolerated here. Especially because of who my family was.

I liked to think that I had been living up to my name. There were a lot of things, after all, that I didn't know about this world yet. I trailed after the people that raised me like a duckling, taking heed of their words. I saw the way people acted in response to certain things or actions, and I watched the tenseness in their shoulders and the suspicion in their eyes attentively, realizing what I could and couldn't do in this new world. This new life. This new complex system.

(And I watched distant relatives train in the large area in the middle of the complex, younger ones mostly, from the corner of my eye when I lose interest in the text in my hands. I watch how their feet shift as if in a dance and how their arms are loose but steady and the way they hold weapons, ingraining it all into the limitless container of this mind that never seemed to stop absorbing and learning and wanting.)

"One of her sons had eyes red as the dawn. The other, eyes pale as the moon."

I fluttered open my eyes, letting sight back into my world. I marveled at how my existence went from that blind enclosure to this boundless globe of stars.

The moon hung like a shiny orb in the sky tonight. An ornament hundreds of thousands of miles away, lovely but cold and distant.

I couldn't help but pity the rabbit living on the moon. The night is beautiful, yes, but also very lonely at times too. There is no warmth in the dark, despite the fact that the stars burning hotter than I could ever imagine, far, far away.

Here on earth, though, life bloomed even in the dark. I could hear the melodious chirping of weary crickets in the grass, the sweet tinkling of my wind chimes every time a breeze brushed it's cooling hand through the halls of the compound, a solitary croak from a frog near the koi pond-all these sounds of the living colliding together to form the harmony of the night.

In that moment, I didn't think I had ever felt lonely. Or that I ever would.

But then the faint sense of loss stings like soap over a healing scab, reminding me even now of those I've loved and lost. While the soap works to clean and the skin might knit over with time, there would always be a silvery scar across my heart.

"The story splits here. Some believe that the two fought for rule of the land, and their mother died in the midst of their bickering. Some believe that their mother had been corrupt, and the two kind brothers felled her for the sake of their people."

The story tied off loosely. I felt the need to cut the extra string.

I couldn't remember what the true tale had been, but I would rather have one definite version of the ending, wrong it might be, than two vaguely right ones.

"Wha…do you…'ieve, Chichi-ue?"

The words drag themselves harshly from my unused throat, slurred almost to the point of incomprehensibility from my habits of silence. But here, in this placid bubble of stopped time and sleepy haze, the scruff of my words was sanded away by the dim whisper it was carried on.

My father simply smiled down at me, hands moving to smooth down the hair around my ear. I let my eyes slide shut lazily, giving into the rhythmatic minstrulations.

The fabric of his yukata shifts ever so slightly, the sound of sliding cloth telling me that he was once again facing the heavens, watching something I couldn't see.

"I like to think that despite whatever conflict they had with their mother or each other, they both loved their family and their people very deeply."

Lulled by the deep timbre of my father's sentimental voice and the drag of his fingers through my hair, I finally gave into the pleasant drag of sleep.

卵

In the morning, Natsuki Hyuuga shakes her head at the sight of her husband and daughter asleep on the patio again.

Despite being a well-respected shinobi, Hizashi was still taken to childish acts at times. She supposes she could blame the influence of their daughter, as there was just something about her wide eyes and tininess and the way she liked to curl into their side that made all the love that burst in Natsuki's chest. A feeling that begs her to coddle and coo at her hatchling when she looks at the child that she has made, and she knows that Hizashi experiences much of the same.

Natsuki just sighs.

She makes sure to tuck the sagging blanket a little higher up on their shoulders.

卵

Naoko Hyuuga is born in the fall of the hottest year in Konoha, a few days after her suspected due date, strangely quiet. For the first few minutes of her life, she had given all those waiting with baited breath in the operation room a scare, thinking that she had been stillborn. It was only until they leaned in close and saw the rising of her chest in short intakes of breath that they realized she was indeed still alive.

After a quick check by the medic on hand, Naoko was cleared of worry and given back to a dazed and tearful Natsuki Hyuuga who quickly wrapped her up in her arms.

Outside of her unusual quiet, the doctor stated, she would most likely be a healthy baby.

No one mentioned the additional concerns whispered to the solemn set of parents. Concerns about vocal cord development, cognition, comprehension. Risk of a mute child, risk of mental deficits, all centered around the fact that their newborn baby just hadn't reacted to the frightening experience of birth.

There was nothing to be done, though, but wait and pray.

A week later, greeted by the many curious branch members that came around to congratulate them and see the new addition to the clan, Natsuki and Hizashi Hyuuga took their daughter home with weights in their chests.

While in the hospital, Naoko had barely moved, abnormal even for an infant. Her fingers never reached out to grab at the many things around her, her feet never kicked in interest of their new mobility, her eyes never blinked open even once.

She would just lay in her bed, perfectly still until someone picked her up, in which then she would at least shift her face towards the warmth.

Even when feeding, Natsuki had to coax her daughter to suckle. Once, they even had to dribble milk down her throat so that she would eat that day.

If it weren't for the fact that she was an infant, the overseeing doctor might've even diagnosed her with depression. The strange fluctuations in her mind at times seemed to suggest so, signs of present activity, but that unusual to any other child he had ever treated.

Finally it was recommended that they try going home, that perhaps Naoko would be more comfortable there than in the white rooms of the hospital.

In other words, there was nothing else they could do for her.

Although she tried not to, Natsuki fretted endlessly.

After the first week of this sluggish behavior, the elders had began giving their precious baby girl disapproving glances, before switching those same eyes upon her and Hizashi. They both knew the thoughts running across those minds, the implication that their child was anything less than normal-hell, even rumors had started circulating about Hiashi, simply due to Hizashi's position as family of the main branch(as this could mean that there was defect in their genes-which simply wasn't acceptable).

The worst part was, there was nothing they could do to deny these claims. As far as Natsuki knew, her child truly was obsolete.

Hizashi said nothing, but he took missions more frequently, and shied away from even looking at Naoko.

Natsuki felt like her heart was sinking to her feet.

She knew what it meant if Naoko would not function. She could not fault Hizashi, for she knew he feared the result even more than she.

So, it was with a sort of earth-shattering relief that Naoko opened her eyes nearly a month after her birth.

Natsuki had been nursing her by the dim light of the candle one night, humming an old lullaby tinged with melancholy and thinking, when she looked down and suddenly found the white-lavender of her daughter's eyes staring at her, wide and luminous as if she'd always been able to see. Shifting left and right as if trying to take in every detail, closing and opening again to refocus.

Sputtering in bafflement, amazement, surprise, relief, a million different emotions that she couldn't put into words, Natsuki scrambled out of her chair, barely having the sense to wrap her child tighter in the cloth of her kimono so she wouldn't fall, before screaming for her husband in an almost-horrified shriek. The man nearly teleported into the room, byakugan activated and kunai on it's way to being unsheathed, before he realized that it was just his own spawn being shoved underneath his nose.

Tired and cross and slightly apprehensive, Hizashi had been ready to just leave and return to the comforts of his still-warm bed before he realized that there were another pair of eyes on him.

And that was the story of how Hizashi Hyuuga almost, almost cried for the first time in his life, looking into the gleaming pearl of his first born, knowing now that she was neither disabled in a lack of vision or otherwise.

From that point, Naoko's learning shot up exponentially, as if trying to make up for the few weeks in which she did nothing. Very quickly, the whispers dispelled at the sight of the active child, causing even Hiashi to relax in relief.

In a matter of months, she turned her position from the clan budding disgrace into the clan's blooming prodigy.

Natsuki almost wanted to puke at the faces that suddenly turned to her with warmth and interest instead of disgust, even as she framed another picture of the landscape that Naoko had drawn up on her bedroom wall.

Naoko herself simply blinked at those around her and went back to coloring surprisingly detailed renditions of a sparrow perched on the wall of their estate.

卵

Some things are hard to explain, I think, looking at the blood-filled pages of my bedtime storybook.

Like living in a world of killers.

"And so, the great Konoha shinobi defeated all of his foes! The end."

That night, my dreams were filled with massacres and a displaced sense of glory.

卵

"Naoko, sweetie, come over here and meet your uncle!"

I dropped the brush I had been using to write simple words in shaky kanji, making sure the ink stained tip wouldn't roll out to the floor and make a mess before getting up. Stumbling in through the doorway, I followed my mother's call.

Learning how to read and write was a slow process. The language was a little easier to pick up, but there were still words that I didn't understand, usually more complex phrases and terms.

The feeling of lines blossoming from under the smooth tip of my brush, however, was a pleasant experience.

Locking onto the familiar pale green of her kimono, I toddled over to slump tiredly over my mother's legs. Her hand gently raked through my hair lovingly.

Peeking out from the protection of my arms, I observed the man sitting before us.

My uncle, if he had ever visited, had only done so when I was still in my stage of despair during the first few weeks of life. I don't remember ever meeting him.

It's been months since then, but it had already ingrained into me who the head of my clan was.

I had high expectations for the man that commanded over the rest of us. And I was curious to see the one whom my father(my sweet, strong father) called his brother.

At first glance, he looked like any ordinary hyuuga. White eyes, dark hair, traditional clothing. His face was strikingly similar to my father's in its shape and features, though. They even shared the same hairstyle.

But unlike my Tou-san, there was no softness in his gaze. The lines around his mouth were set with a sterness that struck me with an implication of severity that demanded obedience. There was a lack of mildness, the silence and tenderness like a still lake in the forest that my father commanded.

Instead, he was like a shard of ice in the snow, lying in wait to smear the red of those passing by over the untouched white.

Just as their similarities were obvious, their differences were even more so.

The atmosphere made itself clear to me.

I slipped out of my mother's hold to settle down on the pillow next to her, forcing myself into a nearly perfect seiza, the strain already starting to burn in my legs despite the softness of the pillow.

I hated it.

But I knew I would hate the words that would come if I didn't even more.

"Hello, Un...cle."

While no longer crackling like dried paint, my voice was quiet to ease the strain on my lungs. I really fucked up that part of my development, it would take a while to get my vocal cords to the elasticity of a regular child.

But still, some part of me relished in this self-desecration. The dark feelings that forced me into this veil of silence, veil of mourning for what I could no longer have, bubbles beneath the surface of my skin.

It was so tiring to talk. To have to watch every word that came out, to make sure it had the correct amount of joy and brightness and energy, energy that I just didn't have.

He ignored me, sweeping a critical eye over the blotches of ink on my hand that I tried to hide in the folds of my kimono. I knew that my effort was futile when he glanced over them.

"I suppose Hizashi is out on a mission?"

His voice was a deep baritone, not unlike the rumble of my father. I could not help but compare their every movement, picking out the things that defined them as not only twins, but as their own beings.

I could not feel any connection of family to this man, who simply served as a juxtapose of my father rather than his compliment.

Kaa-san nodded. "He headed out on one just this morning."

"A (word I didn't know), then."

"I can take a message for him if needed."

Hizashi closed his eyes. "No need."

His gaze once again fell upon me, and I looked into his face curiously.

"Has Naoko started her training yet?"

Mother stilled, before resting a hand on my head, almost protectively.

"No...not yet. We were waiting for her to grow a little older first.."

Hiashi looked out through the opening the unclosed sliding doors provided, letting a slight sense of reluctancy fall upon us, as if he would rather not say the things he was about to say.

"War is (word I didn't know), Natsuki. The sooner she is prepared, the better for not only the village, but for herself as well."

My mother tensed, before letting the pressure in her body unwind like a spool of thread. Her tone was flat, giving no indication of any other lingering emotion.

"Yes, Hyuuga-sama."

After he leaves, she turns to me with what could only be fear in her face and clutches me close to her chest. It felt smothering.

Children didn't survive long on the battlefield, I knew. While the tensions have not escalated to a great need for cannon fodder yet, I was aware that soon, the boys training in the courtyard would be gone for war.

I couldn't bring myself to feel anything else but numb.

卵

I blew out the candles of my birthday cake with the hum of my mother in the background. The two tiny flames that denoted my age vanished to leave only the darkness around us.

Despite the presents being pressed into my hands, nothing resides in me but a familiar emptiness.

I pull out chains upon chains of weaponry from the wrapping paper.

卵

A low noise drifted to my ears.

My charcoal paused in the middle of forming a tree.

It continued on, wobbling in the air like the echo of an instrument I couldn't point out. The noise was deep and rich, yet hollow and mellow.

I wanted to hear more.

Setting down my project, I slid open the sliding screen door, peeking down the hallways to see if anyone was there.

Kaa-san sat on the edge of the walkway, a thin wooden instrument held up horizontally to her lips. The song danced from trembling high pitches to throbbing lower ones, all slowly played in a way that seemed to catch the world on its axis.

It made me feel as if no sense of hurry existed. As if the galaxies could have stilled, and all that would be left was ourselves, tiny and insignificant, yet so passionate. The music seemed to describe every profound longing and stirring sadness I had ever experianced.

I closed my eyes and tried to push back the tears that threatened to form. All my newly forgotten sorrow was amplified, yet subdued at the same time. I felt like a daisy in the eye of the storm, aware that this moment would not last forever, yet relishing in its presence as something much, much greater than myself.

I don't know how long I kneeled there, leaning towards that haunting noise and drowning in myself, but eventually, the melody trailed off, thin like pulled toffee, before snapping to meet its end.

The silence filled me with unfurling disappointment.

"...Naoko? Why don't you come out?"

Slowly, I peeled open my eyes, feeling like I've just woken up from a millennium long sleep. I take a moment to remember where I am before getting up. And nearly collapsing as my nerves have to remember their function again.

The walk to my mother seemed to drag on, but I sat down beside her, eyeing the sturdy flute in her hands. It was tan in color, striped with periodic bands of dark brown in groups of two.

I realized, suddenly, that it wasn't made of wood.

Kaa-san seemed to notice my confusion, as she held out her instrument for me to see easier.

"What...is th't?"

"It's a bamboo flute. I used to play it (words I didn't understand) but stopped because of ninja duties. Now that I have more time, I thought I would (words I didn't understand) up."

I nodded, and brushed my hand over the smooth surface of the flute. It was cool to the touch.

"Can...you play...'nother one?"

She smiled.

"Of course, dear."

卵

Steady…

I shift into a familiar position, feet sliding back to something more stable, raising my arms.

Breathe…

Do not be nervous. The Gentle Fist did not require pure brute strength. Just mobility, accuracy, and swiftness.

It is an art, a manipulation of the body into something sleek and beautiful and venomous.

It is a tool, made to keep you alive against those that would want you dead.

I traced back to my memories, making sure that my stance was in perfect imitation with the bodies in my mental courtyard.

Slowly, I follow their movements, as if backpedaling tracks in the snow, careful to step exactly in the imprint the foot previously left.

Strike up, bend your hand to hit the imaginary points along the hand.

From the moment I let myself believe that I was really where I was, in a fictional world, a world that shouldn't exist but did with copious amounts of bloodshed, I was reluctant. Very, very reluctant.

I did not want to be a kunoichi. I did not want to kill or face exhilarating death again or have any part in the changing of fate, regardless of what damn story I ended up landing in.

I was tired. Oh so tired.

Deflect, let your hand push to the side of a non-existent enemy. Slide it smoothly, let momentum carry your weight. That is how you achieve speed and the grace needed to formulate smooth attacks.

I hadn't asked for this. This chance at starting over. All I wanted to do was just drift forever in that endless blank of space, missing and longing and crushing the fear and loss that had started to invade my mind the moment I regained 'consciousness'.

And that's what I did for the first few weeks, until the soft pleading of a voice I couldn't recognize drifted to me through the film, night after night, begging in that hopeless affection.

It made everything hurt more. I had just wanted it to stop.

I'm already suffering enough. What do you want? Please stop crying out in that voice that makes me want to cry.

Just leave me alone.

Like a bird, I cracked through the brittle darkness of the shell around me for the first time, determined to find the source of the weeping words. From the moment I first saw the world around me, in it's infinite possibilities, the suffocating all-encompassing void of my egg made itself know to me.

And I became addicted to the warmth of the light.

Acceptance does not come without sacrifice. In order to face living in this life, I had to dissolve the memories of my previous one in acid.

Every single memory that I had treasured. Every fading face, every lingering sensation, every reminder of laughter. Things that had all kept me tethered to that previous place. I let them all burn like photographs in a fire.

The destruction of a world by the only one that would ever know of its existence.

Love and hate and all the things that had made me long for what I couldn't have shed from my back like water from feathers.

I wanted to live this new life, something that felt pathetic in my worthless hands, in relative peace. Feelings felt too complex now, like they would overwhelm me if I ever tried experiencing anything other than desolation again. I spun for myself fantasies of obscure mountains, far away from any and all human interaction.

A monk-like life that I could spend forever reveling in that ache of familiar loneliness. Simply...existing. Until I wouldn't have to anymore.

Very quickly though, I was slapped into reality with the realization that my dream would not reach fruition. Not because of personal hurdles, but because of ones entirely out of my control.

Namely, the clan I was born into.

Prideful Hyuuga.

We were not the Uchiha, living in their own sector of the city in what was basically their own town. We were not the Nara, allowed to sit at home base and think up strategies. We were most definitely not some small clan that I could just creep my way out of.

We were the Hyuuga. Close-range combatants. Powerful operatives. Dedicated to our village. To our grave.

In basic terms, we belonged to Konoha.

Our bloodline was valuable beyond belief as it was, enough so that seals are branded onto us like wandering cattle. Our power served as a reminder to other villages, political pawns exploited for their loyalty. Our unique taijutsu style devastating on the field.

It was not permitted for us chose a path other than that of the shinobi.

Each and every single capable man and woman was bound to serve the village.

Those that did not(or rather, could not) were cast aside like scum.

We would utilize our eyes for the sake of the village, sacrificing our lives in a blaze of fire to feed the roots of the tree with our ashes. None of us would ever achieve any fulfillment beyond protecting and benefitting Konoha.

And that, was our fate.

It was so silly to me, at the time, how a single drop of blood could determine the course of your entire life. Just because something different(I wouldn't call it special. Special suggests being wanted, being admired, being greater than the rest, and I wasn't any of those things) ran through my body like a disease, I would be stripped of my own rights and needs and wishes.

Not even a child can be spared from the dirt of the road everyone has forced them onto.

Sometimes, I wonder how it would feel if I just strung myself up and bled myself out. Then maybe, my useless husk of a body, devoid of the blood needed for bloodlines would finally be free.

I started to resent that word, and every other phrase that implied genetic benefits. Kekkei genkai. Dojutsu. Simple formations of speech that bound me to the ground like chains.

I started to resent the clan symbol stitched on the inside of every kimono I owned, hidden as if only to remind me of who I was. Like it wasn't enough looking in the mirror every night and seeing the blaring reminder in my face of where I belonged.

I started to resent every pair of pale, lifeless eyes(my eyes) that gazed at me with expectations and contempt and judgement, reducing me to an animal being weighed for it's value before getting sent to the slaughterhouse.

But here I was. Watching and training and sitting quietly in the same seiza I was taught from a child.

Not letting the pain that burned in my brain reflect in the careful blankness of the orbs set in my face.

A sneer tore apart the placid expression on my face like a fist crumpling through one of the many rice paper screens that made up the compound, destroying the delicate compositions with vivacious glee.

Hate seared into me like the smouldering red of an iron.

If they wanted me to be a ninja and follow their stupid path like a good little murderer, then I would.

卵

Strap yourselves in. I hope you guys are ready for a long and bumpy ride.

God, I can't believe I rewrote this like 5 times. Thanks to Cyndaquil123 for beta-ing.

Also, a note for those that don't know, Chichi-ue means father. It is typically used when referring to one's own father.