Chapter Text
The feeling clung to her like molasses, slow and inescapable, weighing her down until the strain settled into a permanent curve in her shoulders. The barrenness, once unfamiliar, had long since softened into a shadow she carried everywhere.
Sunlight filtered through the large framed window by her bed, catching in drifting dust and casting a gentle glow, but it only skimmed the surface—never quite reaching the muted stillness moving through her body.
Still, her body kept time. It was time to wake up.
The indigo-haired woman, whose blue had dulled in its once silky shine, shifted as the worn sheets slipped from her bare shoulders.
She swung her feet over the edge of the bed. The cold floor should have startled her, should have jolted her into resistance against the day. Instead, it grounded her. Anchored her in the same dull truth that made her feel like a stranger in her own skin.
She swallowed it down and rose, drifting toward the mirror.
A shadow looked back.
Numb to the bone: dark circles carved beneath her eyes, hair long and unkempt, and that faint lavender sheen in her gaze now dulled into something haunted, something that had already given in.
Life doesn’t wait for you to be ready.
Bills to pay Hinata, father’s vigil on Tuesday, a week chalked full of appointments at the clinic, and my checkup…. checkup.
Her head slowly panned to the book sitting on her bedside table, the romance fantasy she had been reading as an escape for her morbid thoughts that lingered on the precipice every time she flipped a page - reminding her of what was to come when she closed her eyes.
Then her breath caught, a morning ritual at this point.
There, resting to the right, was a pale blue mitten.
She had only completed one of the pair before the breath was sucked out of her and the world tilted on its axis.
Small enough for a newborn’s hand.
The office was a flurry of motion. Flu season always brought chaos—mothers clutching their children in the waiting room, little faces scrunched tight in anticipation of the inevitable sting waiting behind the door.
Hinata swallowed the familiar ache and carried on.
She always kept Dum Dum lollipops within reach, along with soft reassurances for bravery. It had become second nature—comfort wrapped in routine.
Her blue hair was hastily twisted into a bun, strands already escaping from the rush of the morning.
Still, she smiled as her next patient stepped in: a small girl, six years old according to the chart, clutching her mother’s hand.
Wisps of blonde baby hair brushed her shoulders, and wide brown eyes darted nervously around the room—anywhere but the tray beside Hinata.
Hinata crouched down, her expression warm, practiced—perfect. She had learned how to stretch it all the way to her eyes. Grief had made her an actress of the highest caliber.
“Anna,” she said gently, voice soft as a lullaby. “Are you going to be a brave girl for me again this year?”
The little girl peeked out from behind her mother’s leg, only one eye visible.
Hinata raised a playful brow. “You remember there’s a very special treat at the end.”
Slowly, cautiously, Anna stepped forward. Her small hand slipped into Hinata’s, and she allowed herself to be guided to the examination table.
Her gaze wandered to the animal posters lining the walls—a year was enough for reinforced novelty for children —before drifting back with suspicion.
“Are you really going to poke me again?” Anna huffed, crossing her arms. “I thought that was a one-time thing.”
Hinata smiled, already working. “I heard you had a school play, Miss Anna. Was it fun? Were you the shining star you’re meant to be?”
That did it.
Anna puffed up instantly, pride overtaking fear. “I was! I played the big fluffy lion that went RAWRRR!” She demonstrated, arms flailing. “Stupid Jason wanted my part, but I was never giving it to him. Nuh-uh—”
While she spoke, Hinata gently took her arm, looping the tourniquet around it with practiced ease. Alcohol wiped across soft skin. The assistant handed her the syringe.
All the while, Hinata kept her eyes on Anna, nodding at the right moments, listening as if nothing else in the world mattered.
When she was sure the girl was fully distracted—eyes now fixed on the ceiling as she relived her kindergarten triumph—Hinata worked quickly. Needle in. Injection. Out. A quick swipe of gauze. Then, carefully, she placed a sparkly holographic bandage over the spot.
“All done, little dove,” she said brightly.
Anna blinked, looking down in confusion. Then her eyes widened. “Wow… do I get my lollipop now?”
Hinata laughed softly.
Across the room, Anna’s mother stared in quiet amazement before shaking her head with a smile. “I don’t know how you do it. She’s a handful, but you always get her to sit still.”
And then.
“You’ll be a great mother someday.”
The words landed like a blade. For just a second, the mask slipped. Something inside her fractured—another thin crack splintering through what was already broken. The rawness flickered across her face before she forced it back into place, seamless as ever.
The mother faltered, sensing it, doubt creeping into her expression.
Hinata only smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Lefferts. I’ll see you both again next year.”
She turned back to Anna, who had already hopped off the table. “Make sure to eat well and stay healthy, alright?”
The rest of the day blurred into repetition—patients, smiles, lollipops, praise—until the office finally emptied and dusk crept across the sky.
Instead of driving, Hinata chose to walk.
The crisp fall air brushed against her skin as she moved aimlessly, hoping motion might quiet the storm inside her.
It didn’t. Her grief was getting harder to contain. Work wasn’t an escape—it never had been. She felt everything too deeply for that. At twenty-nine, she had achieved everything she’d once chased… and lost everything that had mattered along the way.
There were too many regrets. And no way to go back. No way to reclaim the people who had slipped through her fingers while she was busy reaching forward.
Lost in thought, she stepped off the curb without looking.
The world shifted in an instant.
A flash of movement. A car. Too fast.
Then… She was weightless. The sky folded inward, the air punched from her lungs in a violent rush, and time stretched thin and fragile. And somehow… She smiled.
Truly smiled.
She didn’t feel herself hit the ground.
But the peace didn’t last.
At the edge of her fading vision, she saw it… A small blue mitten.
Tears welled instantly, blurring everything as cold crept into her limbs.
I wanted you more than anything in this universe.
I can only hope I’ll see you again.
I would do anyth…
Darkness swallowed the rest.
Murmurs hovered around her, soft and indistinct—like a television turned low at the edge of sleep.
They circled her, growing clearer as consciousness pulled her upward. Then— Sensation.
The sheets beneath her were the first thing she noticed. Far too soft. Far too fine to belong to any hospital bed she had ever known.
The second was the fabric against her skin—cool, smooth, unmistakably satin. A nightgown.
The third came as her eyes adjusted.
A figure stood before her, blurred at first in black and white, then slowly sharpening into form.
A maid?
Tears clung to the woman’s lashes, spilling freely as she dropped to her knees beside the bed.
Hinata didn’t move. Didn’t speak. She wasn’t sure whether to scream. Kidnapping? Some bizarre, ritualistic delusion? Or was this what a coma felt like—stitched together fragments of nonsense her mind had conjured to fill the void?
“Lady Uchiha,” the woman sobbed, voice trembling. “We thought you’d never wake up.”
Hinata’s breath caught. Uchiha.
The name echoed strangely in her mind, familiar in a way that made her chest tighten.
“…Uchiha?” she whispered.
The maid froze. Confusion flickered—then horror.
She scrambled up, hands shaking. “Surely you know me! I’ve been with you since you were little. You brought me with you when you left the Hyuga estate… a year ago, for your wedding—”
Hinata stared. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Slight frame. A stranger’s devotion.
Nothing came.
“I—it’s Keiko, my lady. Keiko…” Her voice broke. “You… you don’t remember?”
A chill settled deep in Hinata’s bones.
“They found you outside,” Keiko continued, quieter now. “In the rain… there was blood—your temple—you must have fallen…”
Hinata barely heard her. Because something else had begun to surface. Not the room. Not the name. A feeling. Sharp. Hollow. Familiar. Her hand moved, slow, uncertain, down to her abdomen.
Flat. Empty. And yet…
Her breath hitched violently.
For a moment, the world fractured. Not this room, not the gold, not the towering ceilings, but sterile white.
The scent of antiseptic. The weight of silence where there should have been sound. A blue mitten. Too small. Never worn.
Her fingers curled against the satin, clutching at nothing.
The grief didn’t come gently. It surged. A tidal force that didn’t belong to this body alone—layered, doubled, indistinguishable.
Her loss. This woman’s loss. Intertwined until she couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
Hinata sucked in a shaky breath, but it caught halfway, splintering into something fragile.
Of course. That was the part the story never lingered on.
It had been a passing detail. A justification, barely explored. A reason readers skimmed over to get back to the suffering that mattered more.
The “cold stepmother.” The “distant woman.” The one who never reached out.
Hinata’s lips parted slightly. Because now… Now she understood. How couldn’t she? She was still being weighed down by grief, even though months had flown by. Time doesn’t wait for anyone, even as people move on. What settles instead is resentment. Why my baby? Why me? And then once people expect you to move on, to halt the grief, shrug your shoulders and get a move on - what settles is indifference, even absence - the human spirit sucked dry, rolled up in a ball as the dissociation wraps it up in a clean bow.
This woman… This villain had the same space carved so deeply inside her that everything else fell into it and disappeared.
But the villain, on the other side of her coin, held another obstacle.
She remembered the little boy - dark hair, grey eyes, the strange birthmark under his left eye.
The way he stood at only four years old in doorways.
Waiting for her, hoping to have a mother he himself had lost. And how, in the story, she never turned around. Not once.
A quiet realization settled in her chest, heavy and unrelenting.
You cannot pour from something that has already been emptied.
Her fingers trembled against her stomach before slowly, deliberately, she forced her hand away.
Because if she could, she’d let the grief swallow her whole. She wanted it desperately to. To take away the ache and cease the struggle.
But there was a little boy. While she didn’t particularly care for her survival, her work as a pediatrician and the longing for her unborn baby was winning out over the abyss.
How could she abandon this boy?
How would she look at him and not be reminded of her loss?
Grief that made you look away… until looking away became the only thing you knew how to do.
Hinata inhaled, unsteady but intentional.
The ache didn’t lessen. It wouldn’t. But it sharpened. Clarified.
Because somewhere in this estate was a child who had also been left alone, with an apathetic mother and a busy father.
Not because she hated him. But because the other version of her had nothing left to give.
Her eyes flickered toward Keiko, who still stood frozen, watching her like she might break again at any moment.
Hinata said nothing. Not yet.
Instead, she turned her gaze forward—past the room, past the walls, as if she could already see the path laid out for her.
A story built on quiet neglect. On wounds that echoed.
On a child who learned to stop needing.
Her chest tightened. Because she knew exactly how that ended.
Slowly, her fingers curled into the sheets, not in despair this time, but in something steadier.
If grief was all she had… Then she would have to learn how to hold it without letting it hollow her out completely - something she had been telling herself for months.
Because this time, when that child stood in the doorway. She would not look away.
Even if it hurt.
Especially if it hurt.