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Shino can barely see, a lens of his sunglasses cracked, missing along with one of his eyes. Tears are in the other, blurring his vision, as he stares at Hinata’s slowly paling face, blood pouring out of a wound in her side and on her face. Kiba sits next to her, his own eye missing and bleeding, Akamaru whining by his side as they watch Hinata’s life fade away.
The nin they were after were smart to aim for the eyes. A tracking team that cannot see is not valuable, and Shino and Kiba were distracted by Hinata’s scream. There is a crack along her face, a cut like Iruka-sensei’s running across her features, her porcelain skin shattered and stained red where her nose is severed and her cheeks ooze. The corpses of the nin are mangled where they rest, feet away, their bodies a gory mess. Kiba and Shino did not hold back once they saw Hinata fall and their anger got the best of them.
Shino doesn’t regret maiming them or making them hurt. Hinata is dying before him, and their deaths will never make up for it.
“Your eyes,” Hinata rasps from where she lays on the ground, “Your beautiful eyes. Take mine. I give you the byakugan.”
Before either Shino or Kiba can protest, Hinata is moving her hand to her face, a soft cry of pain as she takes out her byakugan and passes them out to her team. “A small gift, to repay you for everything you’ve done for me,” she murmurs, “They are yours to keep.”
They cannot refuse her, not on her deathbed, and they take an eye each, hoping their basic medical ninjutsu is enough to keep their new gift safe. “Hinata,” Shino says, holding her hand, “I love you.” Kiba kisses her forehead, undoubtedly whispering into her hair his love, while Akamaru gives her a mournful lick. The smile on Hinata’s face is bloody and beautiful, all her smiles too rare and precious.
“I love you both,” she tells them, still smiling despite blood flowing from her lips, her hand going limp in Shino’s own and the remaining team 8 screaming in an empty field, crying even while their byakugan eye remains dry.
***
It takes days to make it back to the village, but when they arrive there are people waiting for them at Konoha’s gate, Shino having sent some kikaichu ahead to relay a message. The Konoha 11 are all there, along with the Hokage, Kurenai-sensei muffling a sob when she sees Hinata’s limp form in Kiba’s arms.
Hinata’s father steps forward, his presence ominous and looming over them all, as he looks at his daughter’s corpse. His bone-white byakugan flicker from her bloody face to her stained shirt, a hand coming up to run through her lilac hair one last time. It makes Shino furious that he couldn’t spare Hinata his affection when she was living, but has the audacity to appear upset over her death. She deserved more, she deserved love from her family, not just a gesture of affection after it is too late. “Her eyes,” Hiashi says after a moment, appearing infinitely older, “What happened to them?”
Akamaru whines at Kiba’s side, and Shino’s own kikaichu seem to be gnawing at him. He exchanges a glance with his teammate, and then their sensei, before finally landing on the Hokage. “There is much that needs to be discussed,” he murmurs, “In private, please.”
He can feel how the Konoha 11 grow stiff beside him. Tsunade nods her head, already heading back to the tower with Hiashi following closely behind. Naruto comes up to them, his eyes wide as he looks at Hinata’s battered form. “Did you get who did this to her? Are they dead?” he asks, gruff, an edge to his voice as he reaches out towards Hinata’s face, hand stopping mid-air.
“They’re dead,” Kiba says, barely a whisper as his eyes never leave Hinata’s face.
“Good,” Naruto huffs out, stuffing his hands into his pockets, stepping back.
Kurenai comes forward, laying a hand on Kiba’s shoulder. “Let me carry her,” she says, voice gentle as Kiba’s one uncovered haunted eye flickers to her. He opens his mouth to protest, but their sensei knows them, has raised them and seen them through every part of their journey as shinobi. “Please,” Kurenai says, voice edging towards a sob as tears run down her face, “Let me hold her one last time.”
He remembers how Kurenai adopted Hinata in every way but legally, and nausea rolls through Shino’s stomach when he watches his sensei cradle Hinata close like she is a child, pressing a kiss into her hair. He meets Neji’s eye, and is unsurprised to see how the other Hyuuga has silent tears running down his face, his expression closed off as his teammates stand firmly beside him.
Team 8 leaves to the Hokage tower, the Konoha 11 following like a funeral procession. When they eventually make it to the Hokage’s office, too much silence following them as they walked through the village, Shino turns to face his friends, ready to thank them for blocking them from prying eyes.
He is interrupted by Neji, whose voice is scratchy like old floorboards. “Was she in pain for long?”
He wants to tell him that she wasn’t, but her body had laid there while he, Kiba, and Akamaru had killed their targets, and he remembers the grimace on her face as she plucked her own eyes out. He wants to lie, but this is Hinata’s family, and Shino is not a liar. “It wasn’t a slow death, but it was honorable,” he says, turning around to follow his team into the Hokage’s office.
Inside, he meets the Hokage’s sympathetic gaze. “Her byakugan,” Hiashi repeats, stern, all traces of misery over his daughter’s fate gone.
Shino puts a hand on Kiba’s shoulder and squeezes, his other hand moving to push his hitai-ate up as Kiba does the same, their new byakugan on display. The Hokage and Hiashi gasp, but Kurenai barely reacts, her hand brushing through Hinata’s hair from where she has been laid on the floor. She probably isn’t surprised- Hinata was always giving, always ready to do anything for her team.
“She said it was a gift,” Kiba croaks, “It was the last thing she ever did.”
Hiashi runs a hand down his face, seeming to age significantly. “That was not her decision to make,” he says, and Kurenai’s head whips up to glare at him. Even in her death, she cannot gain her father’s acceptance.
The Hokage is staring at them, her eyebrows pinched together. “Hinata was a good shinobi. With her work ethic, she could have been one of the greats. If this was her last request, then Konoha will uphold it.”
Hiashi starts speaking, undoubtedly to protest, but Tsunade cuts him off with a raised hand, her expression fierce. “It was the girls dying wish. I know the Hyuuga are strict, but she has saved two of my best chuunin, one of them a clan heir, from years of learning how to compensate for their lack of vision on one side. We’re approaching a time of war, which I know you’re aware of. Hinata has ensured that these two will be able to fight in the coming battles. End of discussion.”
The Hyuuga’s jaw is stiff, but he glances at his daughter’s form and seems to soften, if only minutely. “Yes, Hokage-sama,” he bites out, before moving forward to take Hinata’s body from Kurenai, even as their sensei holds tight to her pseudo-daughters body. “Now if you’ll excuse me, my clan must make preparations for her funeral.”
Shino wants to stop him, to tell him that he has no right to take her away from them, from her real, true family, that she is theirs to mourn, but he restrains himself, clenching his fists in his pockets, his eyes following the Hyuuga leader as he leaves the room.
“I trust your mission was a success?” Tsunade asks, drawing Shino back to earth. He nods his head once, and the Hokage breathes a sigh of relief. “Then you may go. Give me a report in two days time.”
Team 8 leaves the room, their new byakugan covered up, and, in unspoken unity, they head to Kurenai’s house where they sit in what was Hinata’s room and cry.
***
Even when it isn’t activated, they find that the byakugan picks up too much. They look at someone and see the most minute twitch of their lips, the sweat that runs down their brow, the fidget of a muscle. Everything is in such detail it is at times unbearable to look at. Every emotion is theirs to see, every whisper about their team is readable, they can tell lies like no other. If someone dislikes them, they can tell in a second.
“She lived like this,” Kiba whispers one night, hand absently petting Akamaru’s fur as they lounged in Kurenai’s living room. “Even we could tell her father didn’t like her, but she saw it all. She saw everything.”
Shino sometimes wondered how Hinata was so adept at reading emotion when he struggled with it, his thoughts consumed with logic, but now he understands, and he wishes he didn’t. He wishes that Hinata was back with him and he didn’t have the burden of the byakugan, he wishes that she was alive and well and leaning her head on his shoulder like she used to.
He and Kiba see everything now, and while there are some things they can ignore, they cannot pretend that they do not see Hinata’s absence.
***
Kakashi gives them glances, at times. “He thinks you’re his fanboys,” Kurenai snorts one day, watching as Naruto is dragged away from Ichiraku by his sensei. “You all have your hitai-ate covering your eye.”
Hinata would have found it funny, if she was there with them. She would have given one of her quiet laughs, probably choke on a noodle a little, at the thought that her boys were fans of the Hatake when their team worships their sensei and her unbreakable strength.
Shino would have give a small quirk of his lips, and Kiba would have been shouting about how he looks up only to Kurenai and his family. As it is, they do not speak, silence falling between them as they all picture how Hinata would have been sitting with them, still laughing into her ramen as Kiba declares that their sensei is better than the famous copy-nin.
All they have now is Teuchi and Ayame giving them pitiful glances, offering a free bowl of ramen to each of them that they refuse, suddenly not hungry.
***
He and Kiba having the byakugan is a secret, one that Tsunade says will give their team an edge in battle. Besides, they never need to remove their hitai-ate, not like Kakashi does, because the byakugan can see through things. Their secret is safe, and Shino is silently happy with the situation. Hinata’s last gift is for his team only, and he will admit he is (was, he has to remind himself constantly, was) possessive of Hinata enough to want to keep this part of her to himself, without people like Naruto trying to sneak looks at it.
His father, however, figures it out. “It’s strange,” Shibi muses from the table, a few short weeks after Hinata has been laid in the ground and her name etched onto the memorial stone, “But my kikaichu still pick up on Hinata’s presence.”
Shino freezes from where he is pouring himself a cup of tea and turns to face his father. He loves his father, almost as much as he loved Hinata, so he pulls up his hitai-ate and lets his father see his new bone-white eye.
“A gift,” he says, his voice quivering ever so slightly.
It’s strange, he thinks, that his father wraps him in a hug when he sees. The Aburame have never been very physically affectionate, and they often do not see the point to unnecessary words, but he finds himself desperately clinging to his father. “Oh, my son,” he hears whispered into his ear, his father’s breath tickling the nape of his neck, “What a gift that is. She was a wonderful girl.”
He wants to say that she still is a wonderful girl, that she exists in his mind every day, that he cannot go an hour without seeing Hinata on the edge of his vision, that everything he does he does for her and so she exists, but he holds his tongue.
“I miss her,” he says, quiet in the comfort of his father’s arms.
“I know,” his father answers, “I still miss your mother every day. It never really goes away.”
***
Kiba comes to him a few days later, out of breath from running to the Aburame compound, Akamaru a shadow by his side.
“My mother,” he pants, “she- she said that she could tell, that I still have Hinata’s scent- Shino-”
“I know,” he says, rubbing Kiba’s back as he heaves onto the ground.
“Will it ever go away?”
The scent will, all presence of Hinata in her own eyes will eventually leave, but he knows that isn’t what’s being asked.
“No,” Shino tells him, absolutely certain, remembering what his father told him.
“I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I want to forget, but at the same time I would rather die than ever lose any memory of Hinata. Do you think she knew we loved her? That we really loved her?”
Shino thinks of how he can read every facial expression when he looks with his byakugan eye, how he can see how someone feels the instant it registers on their face, how if he activates the byakugan, he can see their very heartbeat.
“I think,” he begins, voice heavy, “There is no way she could have missed it.”
“Do you think she ever loved us back?”
He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about how she would swing their joined hands back and forth whenever they went to retrieve kunai, or how she would curl up close to them at night when they slept during missions, or how, after years together, she would press kisses to their foreheads as a greeting and farewell.
He doesn’t want to think about it because he doesn’t know, so he stays silent, and knows Kiba is thinking the same things.
***
Pein attacks the village, and Naruto is on the ground, held by chakra rods. He can see it in his vision, his byakugan giving him a crystal clear view of what is happening.
He, Kiba, and Akamaru are running down to save Naruto before they even realize it. He thinks it is because he saw what was happening- nothing gets past his byakugan vision- but deep down, he knows it is Hinata’s influence. She would have wanted Naruto safe, so safe he shall be.
Shino sends his hordes out, using his time to remove the chakra rods, while Kiba and Akamaru face off against Pein. It is a losing battle, but one they must fight. “Naruto, you must get up. You must fight. Hinata would not want it to end like this.” When Naruto continues to stare at him, eyes flickering between him and Kiba on the battlefield, Shino pulls out his final card, desperate as he sees Kiba forcefully lifted into the air. “People like him killed Hinata. Bad people. Hinata is dead, Naruto, she’s dead and villains like Pein are the ones who did it.”
Naruto saw the mangled body Kiba dragged into Konoha. It might not have been Pein, or even the Akatsuki, who killed her, but it was a villain nonetheless, and he feels disgusting using her memory like this, but Hinata would want Naruto to live.
“Pein will do to the village what others did to Hinata,” Shino says, and when nothing happens, he pulls up his hitai-ate, letting Naruto see the byakugan in one final attempt to get the blonde nin fighting, grabbing his face and forcing him to look at it.
“Hinata,” Naruto breathes out, focused on his byakugan, “Hinata.”
His eyes turn to orange slits and he starts to growl. Shino covers his eye back up and runs to where Kiba and Akamaru lay, and pulls them off the battlefield. He will not let another teammate die. Not today.
Never again.
***
Kurenai holds them close before they go off to war.
“Please come back,” she tells them, holding onto their hands as they prepare to leave. “I had to bury my husband, I had to bury one of my children, please let my other two be safe. Please stay safe, I couldn’t handle it if anything happened to either of you.”
It has been a few short months since Hinata died, but her room in Kurenai’s house remains untouched, everything as she left it before that fateful mission. Kurenai, pregnant with her own blood child, cleared out an entire other room in the house to make a nursery for her child on the way, still unable to remove anything from the place Hinata once occupied.
Shino does not lie, so he does not promise Kurenai that they will return alive. The world might be ending as they know it.
But he and Kiba promise to fight their hardest, and their sensei accepts it, just like she accepted them as genin and accepted Hinata’s gift to her teammates.
Kurenai has always known them best.
***
In the Infinite Tsukuyomi, Shino is with his team. They are searching for a new species of bug, Kiba and Akamaru trying their best to remain silent, Kurenai pointing out different species for her new child, Hinata by his side, holding his hand and giving them all one of her rare, large smiles. His father is somewhere nearby, unseen but not unnoticed by Shino’s kikaichu.
Shino kisses Hinata’s lips, a quick press of their lips together, and Hinata does not pull away. “I love you, Hinata,” his throat feels clogged, but he tells her how he feels, because there is no time like the present. He wouldn’t want his confession to be on her deathbed, after all.
Hinata gives him that same beautiful smile, resting her head on his shoulder. “I love you, too, Shino-kun.”
When he wakes from the dream, there are tears running from both his eyes, and he thinks that Hinata must be crying with him. He finds Kiba the same way, and he’s certain their dreams were very similar.
***
Neji approaches them when the troops are moving out. “Can you remove your hitai-ate,” he asks, voice tinged with slight desperation, “Please- I- I thought I saw something, during the battle, when I had my byakugan activated.”
Shino and Kiba oblige, because who are they to tell Hinata’s beloved cousin he cannot see her eyes? Neji gives a gasp when he sees them. “Hinata-sama,” he says reverently, “She trusted you with the byakugan?”
They both give sharp nods, and Neji seems to be on the verge of tears. “Thank you,” he croaks out, “Thank you so much for letting me see.”
He’s still never forgiven him for the chunin exam incident, so Shino says nothing in return, just keeps moving forward.
***
“What is her name?” Kiba asks when they meet Kurenai’s daughter for the first time, gifts in hand.
“Tsuki,” Kurenai answers, chewing on her lip.
In the moon, a reflection of Hinata’s ‘in the sun’. “It’s beautiful, sensei,” Shino tells her, “Hinata would be honored.”
Kurenai places the baby in Shino’s arms, and little Tsuki moves her hands to pull at his hitai-ate. Shino gives a tiny smile, and pushes it out of the way.
The child stares transfixed at the byakugan, and for a moment it feels like Hinata is there after all. “I promise,” Shino whispers to the child, his new sibling, “That I will never let anyone hurt you.”
Shino does not makes lies.
***
It takes him months, but he finally works up the courage to look in the mirror and have the byakugan stare back at him.
He thinks he’s always going to see Hinata in his reflection, but he doesn’t mind, not when the other option is seeing her nowhere.
He later finds Kiba at the memorial stone. He takes his hand, familiar in his own, and finds Hinata’s name.
“I think we would have been great together,” Kiba says, never looking away, “I think the three of us, we would have been forever. I think she loved us. She sees everything.”
Shino is happy he doesn’t say that she saw how Naruto didn’t love her, but the implication hangs between them.
“In the end, we always had team 8. It was always us,” Kiba continues. No matter where life took them, team 8 was going to go together. Hinata’s heart may have strayed, but Shino agrees with Kiba- she would have found her way to them. Team 8 always had each other.
He’s not certain about it, but it’s a nice thought so he chooses to believe in it. He can indulge in the idea that Hinata was always meant to end up with them, but he is realistic and he does not lie, so he reminds himself that he didn’t need her to be in love with him. Walking by her side was enough.
“I miss her,” he says, squeezing Kiba’s hand.
“Yeah,” his teammate replies, laying his head on Shino’s shoulder and making his chest ache with the familiarity of it all, “I do, too.”