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In Konohagakure’s long line of powerful Hokage, several have remained unmarried, and four have had wives and children and otherwise happy— albeit sometimes short-lived — family lives. In Konohagakure’s long line of powerful Hokage, none have ever been divorced —
Until Uzumaki Naruto.
Number one unpredictable ninja, Hinata thinks bitterly.
***
“— two goals —“ Naruto had said, on their first date, with two fingers up in front of her face for emphasis. Hinata had been in a daze, startled that this was really happening, that the war was over and the sky was blue and she was sitting in a ramen shop with the boy of her dreams. “Become Hokage, and bring that bastard back. One down, one to go.”
His grin was brilliant, disarming, dangerous. She should have taken that for what it was: a red flag. “And now I’m on a date with the prettiest girl in Konoha!” he declared, and the statement turned Hinata bright scarlet. “I’m on fire!”
***
Hinata was a good kunoichi. Not great, like Sakura, or resilient, like Ino, or fearsome, like Tenten, but good. Capable. Worth her salt. But a world at peace doesn’t just need good kunoichi. It needs doctors and teachers and shopkeepers and, yes, housewives. So Hinata allowed herself to fill that box, to shrink herself back down from the kunoichi she’d become — one who’d weathered a Great War by the side of some of the world’s greatest shinobi, who stood up and protected her future husband from a maniacal, villainous force — into a kunoichi heretofore retired. On sabbatical. Off-duty. A world at peace still needs good kunoichi, but the Hokage needs a place to come home to, needs someone to raise his children. And Hinata is many things, but she is not disloyal. Some days, it’s a curse more than it is a blessing. Because if Naruto thinks this is enough for her, he’s wrong.
It’s not even close.
***
The very first time Sasuke left the village after the war, Hinata barely paid attention. She knew he was leaving, orbitally, in the sense that news travels fast among shinobi, especially when she is ostensibly dating Sasuke’s best friend. But they had never been close, nor had they ever really had a good reason to interact with one another, so she was unbothered by his departure.
By the fourth time, Hinata pays attention. Naruto takes it heavier, feels it like a personal slight, whenever Sasuke leaves, usually after only a night or two in the village. Sometimes less. Naruto’s shoulders slope, his smiles become forced, and his attention always dances slightly too far away. The little clues eventually become impossible to ignore. Her role, she figures, is to put a lid on his sadness, to balance his despair with her devotion. She keeps a vase of fresh flowers on the table in the hallway and learns to make perfect miso. And she gets pregnant. And she gets pregnant.
***
And nothing good ever really lasts, anyway.
***
She sees it happening in flashes, in stages. It’s rare that she’s around to observe the peculiar way they are around each other, but when she’s bringing Naruto his lunch at the Hokage tower one morning, she sees it. Nothing so obvious, but Hinata’s always had keen eyes and honed senses when it comes to Naruto. And so she sees it: Naruto’s gaze always lingering on Sasuke a millisecond too long. Naruto’s hand in the small of Sasuke’s back, Sasuke’s thumb absently running along the back of Naruto’s neck. The lack of restraint is startling.
She wonders if they think she’s blind, or if they think they’re being subtle, or if they think there’s nothing wrong with it. Or if, simply, they do not care.
***
Hinata loved him once, she remembers.
On some level, in his own way, he must have loved her, too. Things are complicated, wrought, when duty and politics mingle as the backdrop of a marriage. Naruto is bound by duty to his village. It’s a duty he carries with him, deep and immovable. Nothing but a signature on a yellowing paper binds him to his marriage. Not even, Hinata considers, his own children.
So it surprises her that Naruto at least has the decency to present her with the divorce papers himself. She’d had a brief flash of worry that, as with most matters concerning paperwork, he’d shepherd it off onto Shikamaru. She’s not sure if he’s here out of respect or duty. She’s not entirely certain which is worse.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her, and settles the weight of the papers in her outstretched hands. “Sorry that it’s come to this.”
Hinata nods in response. Naruto looks heavy and wretched and hollow with grief. It doesn’t make her feel any better. Seeing him standing on the threshold of the house she desperately fought to make a home aches in a bleak, distant way.
None of them can go back, is the thing. Rather than ease into adult life, they’d all just barrelled into it, head-first. How very à propos that they’d all followed Naruto’s MO in that sense.
Hinata’s lost track of time, she realizes, and now it’s all so utterly and completely far behind her she hardly knows what to do next.
***
The house is quiet when Hinata finally sits down to read the divorce contract. The kids, tucked away in their beds, don’t think twice now about Naruto spending the night at his office. And it was not fair of her to expect him to cast aside his work completely for the sake of their family, but it has never been fair of him to settle so comfortably in the role of the absentee father.
Somebody has stuck neon arrow post-it notes next to the places she has to sign. As if she is a moron. Or maybe just to expedite the process. The stack of papers are crammed with words. The font size is small. Lots of fine-print, then. Clauses that give her a headache when she reads them.
Clause #1: The contract of marriage between the Petitioner and the Respondent is hereby terminated.
Clause #5: The Petitioner shall retain the right to train their offspring, or assign them to an appropriate mentor, teacher, or schooling institution, as they see fit.
Clause #6: The Respondent shall retain the right to instruct their offspring in respective bloodlines, or assign them to an appropriate mentor or teacher, should they become activated in the offspring.
Clause #21: The Respondent may not, under any circumstances, disclose personal details and opinions on what transpired in the duration of the marriage contract, with the intent of slandering the acting Hokage.
Clause #53: The Respondent will continue to serve Konohagakure and its Hokage faithfully and dutifully.
It’s clinical, precise. Not aimed to hurt, but to exist without room for doubt. She doesn’t know whose benefit it’s for. The subsection entitled Offspring sends a vicious chill down her spine, and she wonders if this is just Shikamaru’s detached legal jargon or if it’s how Naruto thinks of his children. Offspring. He had been a hurricane of twisted emotion, the first time she told him she was pregnant. Excitement and guilt and worry and so much love it nearly tore her heart in two. None of them felt ready for kids, nobody knew how to raise children in this world, only so recently scaled back from utter destruction.
She feels the instinct to protect her kids, to nurture, shelter them from the ugliness that’s been allowed to burrow itself inside their home. Feels it like a kunai ripping through her a hundred miles an hour. Her bones rattle with it. And she mourns. Mourns for the innocence of theirs that will be torn away so ungraciously if she lets Naruto leave. If she lets him stay.
There had been a time, an afternoon, before Naruto became Hokage, when they’d all had a picnic on top of the Yondaime’s head. Hinata helped Boruto locate large rocks to pin down their blanket in defense against the sweeping gusts of Konoha wind, and Himawari was riding on Naruto’s shoulders, her tiny heels kicking into his chest while she giggled furiously. The kids had fallen asleep after they ate lunch and Hinata and Naruto had to carry their family back down from the monument, all the way home.
Their family. When did they go from being a family to being this cold, hollow thing?
***
Hiashi, understandably, doesn’t take the news too well.
Hyuuga endure. They don’t back away from their duties and they certainly don’t trifle with love.
“This isn’t my decision,” she says, because despite her hangups, her loneliness and exhaustion and desperate desire for escape, it’s true.
Hiashi scowls. Hinata considers her father for a moment, with his greying hair, curving spine, deep-set wrinkles. His Hyuuga pride that, in spite of everything, hasn’t really waned all that much since she was a girl.
“It’s childish,” he says, practically shouting. “You will not sign those papers.”
Her father hasn’t yelled at her like that since she was a little girl, petrified of his booming voice, commanding as it scolded her. He rarely yelled, thinking it beneath him to show such an unrestrained display of emotion before his children. He didn’t think it a fit disciplinary measure, and Hinata dreaded being on the receiving end of the anger and grief he could no longer conceal with his usual cold disinterest.
She knows what it means, when his stern gaze bears down at her. This is another failure on her part. Hyuuga Hinata couldn’t even make a good wife to the Hokage.
Hanabi is sympathetic, at least. She wordlessly hands Hinata a cup of tea once Hiashi dismisses her.
“You’re going to sign them anyway, aren’t you?” Hanabi guesses. Hinata focuses her gaze on the tea, the few scattered leaves that settle at the bottom of the cup. “Do you know what you’ll do after?”
“He’s being generous. I keep the house.”
Hanabi hums. “And the kids?”
“Split custody.”
“Will you go back to work?”
Hinata doesn’t answer. She hadn’t thought that far. Work, Hanabi says, as if Hinata will just wake up and start accepting missions from her ex-husband. Perhaps she’ll ask Shino if they need assistance at the Academy.
It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, she figures, to feel useful again.
***
Kiba’s the only one of their group who never married. He stayed sharp, insisting to be put on mission after S-rank mission, and Hinata admires that — that he never forced his restless spirit back into a box, like so many of them did after the war.
“Kids aren’t in the cards for me,” he admits, cracking a pistachio in between his teeth and spitting out the shell.
They’re sitting on the riverbank. It’s dusk, and most people have gone home for the night. But the kids are with their respective friends, so Hinata’s in no rush to go home and cook dinner.
Hinata takes a deep breath. “It’s a big decision.”
After war, people frenzy. They feel immediately, instinctively, that the only possible way forward is to bring children into the world. Or that it’s the opposite.
Kiba grins. He’s got that glint in his eye like he’s about to say something cheeky and — “You seemed just fine rushing into it with our beloved Hokage-sama.”
Hinata doesn’t answer at first, accustomed to Kiba’s brazenness, his utter disregard for the social conventions that dictate what topics he should and shouldn’t discuss with his former teammate. “Maybe that’s why he’s filing for divorce.”
Kiba almost chokes on his pistachio. The reaction makes her smirk, despite herself.
“I’m sorry, about you and Naruto,” Kiba tells her, after a beat of silence that would be awkward if they weren’t, well, themselves.
Hinata smiles, trite, overcome by a loneliness that built itself inside her for twelve years yet. You’d think it’d be her friend, by now. There’s nothing she can say that wouldn’t be a gross admission of her triumphs and failures.
“My family...” she starts, and Kiba’s looking at her the way he did on their first mission as chunin — terrified, worried, hopeful, and Hinata thinks about bloodlines and curses. She doesn’t finish the sentence, and instead lets him drape a strong arm over her shoulders. Lets herself lean, ever so slightly, into the touch.
“It happens,” he says into her hair. She finds herself believing him.
***
When Naruto moves in with Sasuke, the whole village pretends not to notice. The Hokage barely spent any time at home, anyway. With all his ambitious plans as Nanadaime, it made sense for him to camp in his office. But now —
She recognizes people’s expressions as they look at her when she walks around town, knows it bone-deep from when she was a stuttering, petrified genin. It’s pity. That poor Hyuuga girl. She’s almost forty and she’s still the poor Hyuuga girl.
Now, Naruto makes an effort to come home every night, to be present, and Hinata hates him for it. Hates him right down to the acid in her stomach. Hates that his own son couldn’t make him come home, but that Uchiha did. Always will. Maybe it says something that Naruto’s made Sasuke come back, too.
Everyone’s too busy to talk, or they’re too loyal to the Hokage to ever gossip about him in earnest, or they claim that this was inevitable and that nobody should be surprised that he left to follow Sasuke, once again. Whispers about poles and laws of attraction. Suns and moons. Indra and Ashura. She’s sick of it.
***
Boruto starts sleeping over at Naruto and Sasuke’s apartment, and Hinata tries to not let it get to her. Sasuke had agreed to train him before the papers were filed, and now Boruto has his father noticing him every once in a while, so Hinata can make enough peace with the decision. When Himawari starts asking if she can go too, Hinata concedes, even as everything inside her screams not to. Naruto took everything from her without either of them realizing it. He took her youth. He took her independence. And now, he’s taking her kids.
She knew when she married him that a complexity lay behind the brazen, loud exterior, but she never thought he’d take so poorly to fatherhood. She never expected to lose sleep over wondering whether her children felt loved, the way she never did. The way Naruto never did.
There were times she nearly begged him to just notice Boruto. Times she wanted to draw out the correlation between his acting out and the minutes spent receiving his father’s undivided attention and shove it in his face so he could really see what he was doing to their family every time he chose to work later than he had to.
Now, Hinata just hopes, for Boruto’s sake, for Himawari’s sake, that Naruto knows what he’s doing.
***
Ino has a flower arrangement for her. Holly, even though it’s the middle of April.
“For hope,” she explains, as Hinata sets in on the table in the front hallway. “Now, we’re getting you drunk.”
They wind up at a bar two down from the one that housed her bachelorette party, and Hinata pretends not to notice. Ino mercilessly orders a tray of sake shots for them, and she must know that her tolerance is double Hinata’s own. She also must not care.
Hinata wonders what people will think when they see the Hokage’s recently-estranged wife sloshed at a cheap bar. She thinks maybe she’s migrated into the category of damaged goods, and that’s why nobody hits on her too viciously.
“Is this my life now?” Hinata asks. Ino swats at her.
“It’ll be okay,” Ino answers. “You’re strong.”
She doesn’t know when that became a replacement for being loved.
***
Maybe that’s why Hinata finds herself on Kiba’s doorstep, afterwards. He looks shocked to see her standing there at that hour, but she doesn’t feel the need to explain that the kids are with their father as she tugs him down by the neck to crush their lips together.
***
When Hinata goes out to buy groceries the next morning, ignoring the pounding in her head and the distinct feeling she’s set something into motion she won’t want to stop, she spots Sakura in the distance.
Sakura knows the whole situation. Of course she does. She’s right in the middle of it with them, deep down in the messy trenches they’ve made of their personal lives, equally affected by whatever decisions Team 7 makes as though they were her own.
Sakura is standing in front of a bin of apples, turning them over in her hand. She knows this feeling, possibly better than anyone. This has always been her reality.
Sakura is also at least diplomatic about navigating her ties to Naruto and Sasuke and her friendship with Hinata. They go way back. Not quite to the Academy years, but they were — are — friends.
“I’m sorry about everything,” she says, and it sounds like she’s a dignitary, speaking on their behalf. “I know it’s probably a confusing, tough situation, but you can call on me if you need anything.”
Hinata likely won’t. Sakura’s life is too entangled with Sasuke and Naruto that it would be awkward to ask for anything from her besides grocery store pleasantries.
Hinata loves Sakura, respects her as a kunoichi and a woman and cherishes their friendship. But she’ll never understand the complexities, inner workings of her team, still as much Team 7 as they were the day they were assembled at the Academy. Naruto could never put it into words, the few times Hinata asked about it. She suspects Sakura probably can’t, either, nor Sasuke, nor even Kakashi. They’re all tethered together tight. Sarada and the stack of divorce papers on Hinata’s dresser are proof of that.
***
Hinata doesn’t know — if Naruto hadn’t been in the picture, and Kiba or Shino asked her to carry their child for the sake of a bloodline — if she’d have done it. It seems at once an act too intimate and far too clinical for her to envision for herself, even hypothetically.
***
She still buys enough for three, just in case.
***
The very last person she expects to see on her doorstep that evening is Uchiha Sasuke.
He looks dignified, standing a head and a half taller than her, draped in expensive-looking fabric with his hair expertly set, as always. Hinata thinks, self-righteous insolent aristocratic homewrecking bastard.
She would kill for her children. She would level a village overnight. She would go, kicking and screaming, and burning at the stake for them. Dying would be easy, compared to facing this.
“I am convinced,” Neji had told her, half a lifetime ago, “that a lifetime with Naruto would bring you nothing but loneliness.”
At the time, she hadn’t given his words much thought or weight, since they were spoken before he died and long before the possibility of spending a lifetime with Naruto was a serious consideration. When the fantasy floated airy and technicolor around her mind, when she could shake his concern as Neji just being overprotective.
But this is what he meant, probably. Loneliness, not because Naruto isn’t still the same boy who fought tooth and nail for people’s acceptance, who made people feel like they mattered, who could fill any room with light and laughter, who talked so many people down from so many ledges. Not because he doesn’t care, isn’t in some way, his way, doing what he thinks is right and true. But loneliness, because that crater he’d sought to fill all those years existed in a place within him that she’d never be able to reach, and the only person whose hand he could accept to pull him out of it was standing in Hinata’s foyer.
“Sasuke,” she greets.
She makes no move to invite him in, nor does he try to step forward. There’s a moment where neither of them say anything — just stare at one another, assessing.
“I don’t deserve him,” he says, finally. It’s surprisingly candid of him, almost childish. Self-aware, too, in a way that makes Hinata think of his years spent on drawn-out missions by himself.
“No,” she answers evenly, “you don’t.”
Hinata knows what Sasuke means to Naruto, and she can logically reason that he’s done a lot in the path of redemption. But he’s right, and she’s not about to convince him otherwise. She doubts he really needs her to, besides.
“But I do want to say thank you.”
The nerve of him. The sheer fucking arrogance. You’re here to thank me for stealing my husband, for exposing our family like this, for putting my children in this position, for —
She realizes, maybe too late, that he’s not here for her permission. Her husband was never hers to begin with; his claim long predates her own. Sasuke, who knows this too, is at least kind enough not to say it.
“You don’t have to.”
“You know, he loves you —” Sasuke says, wavering. He probably wants to tack on a too to the end of the sentence, but thinks better of it.
When he takes a step back, the light bounces off his collarbone. She notices the pendant around his neck too late. A ring, dangling from a simple chain. She wonders if Sasuke’s read the divorce contract, if he knows about Clause #21.
The Nanadaime Hokage, in his time married to Hyuuga Hinata, spent countless nights breaking his oath of fidelity in order to —
For a moment, she considers telling him You take care of him , just because she won’t let him have the last word. So she says it, and is surprised when his lips quirk up slightly.
“You know I will,” he answers.
***
Kiba was right, she thinks. Peace time does make everyone suckers.
***
After dinner, Hinata trudges upstairs. The fifth stair from the top creaks the way it always does, even despite the lightness of her step. The light in the hallway has been burnt for the past month, and in the darkness, Hinata allows herself to reminisce, somewhat fondly, on Naruto’s hopelessness in the face of household chores. The most powerful shinobi in the modern world couldn’t fix a leaky sink to save his life, used shadow clones rake leaves. She rummages around the top shelf of her dresser until she finds her mother’s old fountain pen. She runs it in random scratches on a piece of scrap paper, testing the ink. It’s fine.
There are twelve places she has to sign, and she prints Hyuuga Hinata in every one.
***
He’s packing dog treats into a rucksack when she opens the door to his apartment. Akamaru barks cheerfully when he notices her, and Kiba looks up at her slowly.
“You always did pack light,” she observes.
He grins at her, but it’s careful. “It’s only a month in Iwa. Don’t need much.”
She hums in response and watches him pack. He probably leaves at first light.
“Come with me,” he says, his voice barely a whisper.
The kids have school and I have to pack their lunch and remind Boruto about his homework and take Himawari to the optometrist and I haven’t been in the field in almost a decade and this goes against protocol and —
“Okay,” she answers. For the first time in her entire life, she feels true weightlessness, the freedom of breaking destiny, of making a decision for the pure sake of it.
And when Kiba offers her his hand, she takes it.