What You Wish For [Complete]

From the Ashes

"Are you leaving, daddy?"

Kabuto looked down at his child, his dark eyes sad. "I have to," he said quietly. He knelt before his son and smiled softly. "One day, Maro, we'll be a family again," he promised.

Ansei was only three at the time as he watched his father's back recede from him. He looked down at his hands and held back tears. None of this made sense. Why couldn't he go with his parents? He didn't want to stay with the Hyuuga. They were mean! He shook his head and ran after his father.

"You called him Maro..."

Ansei stopped before opening the door, clenching his fist to his chest fearfully.

"Yes I did. That is the name Hinata and I gave our son," Kabuto snapped.

"His name is Ansei," the Hyuuga elder said sternly. "You will only address him as such."

"I will address my son however I see fit!" Kabuto retorted angrily. "You don't own him!"

"That is where you are wrong," the elder said. "That boy is our property now. You traded him to use for protection of your precious little orphanage."

"He is not your slave!" Kabuto growled, stepping dangerously towards the Hyuuga elder. Ansei took a step back, biting his lip. He didn't understand.

"He might as well be," the man returned calmly. "He belongs to the Hyuuga clan, Kabuto. He is not your son anymore. Yakushi Maro is dead, and you better accept that he will never be the boy you wanted him to be. He is ours to raise as a replacement for that crippled brat!"

"You forced Hanabi into this! You have no one to blame but yourself for this mess!" Kabuto growled. He gasped as the elder threw a powerful, opened palm strike on his stomach.

"Know your place, Yakushi Kabuto," he snapped. "Your son is no longer your son." Kabuto looked up from his doubled over position. Ansei turned away and started walking the way he had come. He clenched his fists as he walked. Maro was dead..? Then who was Ansei...? And who was he...?

*************************

Ansei opened his eyes to nothing. It wasn't darkness. It was simply nothing. He could see his body, but his body was resting on a ground that didn't exist. "Am I... dead?"

"Might as well be..." Ansei turned to see his silver-haired counterpart sitting with his knees hugged to his chest. "They're trying to keep us alive, but it won't work."

Ansei sighed. "That was a weird memory," he muttered. He had heard that when you died, your life flashed before your eyes, but he wasn't expecting a memory he had long since forgotten to be his dying vision.

"Not a very significant one for you," the boy whispered.

Ansei shook his head. He wondered why the boy was there. He had only been a part of Ansei's imagination. Why would he follow him to the afterlife? Unless this was some hallucination of his dying brain.

"Your whole life is a hallucination," the boy snapped angrily.

"That's a bit harsh," Ansei retorted, standing. "Why did we have that memory?" The boy didn't answer. Ansei realized that he couldn't, because Ansei himself didn't know. Ansei started walking, but no matter how long he went in any direction, he went nowhere. He was nowhere. Eventually he gave up and sat beside the silver haired boy. "We can't leave," he observed.

"Why did we have that memory?"

Ansei turned to the boy and blinked. Why did he care? If neither one of them could answer, then there was no point in talking about it.