Work Text:
This is how it goes: she is 16 and screaming as the caged-bird seal burns her forehead. She remembers the way she felt as if she was on fire, she remembers the heavy ceremonial robe she wore, she remembers the unapologetic gaze of her father. She is heading to war and has been deemed expendable, her eyes too valuable to leave alone should she die on the battlefield.
There is no Naruto to save her from her clan, only Hanabi’s sorrowful cries later that night as Hinata packed her possessions to move out of the main house. There is no talk of destiny, only Neji pressing a cold compress to her forehead. There is no time for sorrow, only her team’s long-simmered fury when they inevitably find out.
There is Neji jumping in front of her, who jumped in front of Naruto, and the way he seemed to explode like a phoenix, his death his rebirth.
She is 16 and screaming as her cousin dies, leaving her alone in a life no one else could understand.
This is how it goes: she is 17 and a survivor. She has spent months learning how to readjust, how to live in a world without Neji, how to live in a world where she is branded. She is as good in the branch house as she was terrible in the main, she is quiet and unimposing, she is allowed to be less than a prodigy in the confines of the branch.
She wears bandages around her forehead, and her friends give her sympathetic looks, but she waves them off. Neji had it longer, Neji had it worse, Neji who has been gone for weeks now but never truly leaves Hinata’s thoughts. She thinks she understands his anger, how he raged against her during the chuunin exams. She thinks that if she got the seal as young as he did, she would have gone mad with fury. She thinks that she has been blind all along, and that those with privilege can never truly see. Hinata did not see how frequently main house members would abuse the seal, but now she feels it.
She is not sure if they get joy out of her humiliation: her, the fallen heiress, the war hero who couldn’t save herself, one of the greatest trackers in Konoha who could not find an escape route.
She asks her father if she can move back in with Kurenai. She asks him as she would ask a clan head, and when he says no, she begs him like she would a father. When he refuses again, she wonders what more he wishes to take from her. She is branded, she will always belong to Hyuuga, yet he will not let her stray from her cage.
She is 17 and remembering her mother, who she thought was happy until they pulled her caged-bird corpse from the river.
This is how it goes: she is 18 and has given up dreaming. The future Hokage cannot have a puppet of a wife, so she gives up Naruto. She has grown even more quiet, but her words are firm. The rest of Konoha cannot harm her for her words, so she does not fear them any longer, not unless she is in the Hyuuga compound and trying to avoid a headache that seems to rip her skull apart.
Shino offers her escape, offers her his hand in marriage with nothing but kind words and open acceptance. He offers as a friend, as a teammate, as someone who has vowed to get revenge on her father for what he has done to her. But he is the future of the Aburame, so Hinata must reject him. She cannot be the disgraced heiress of one clan and the matriarch of another, cannot serve Shino and his people as they deserve when she must go to the Hyuuga’s every beck and call. She cannot, will not, risk any byakugan eyed children, and Shino will undoubtedly need children. He understands, and Hinata loves him for even offering, and she holds his hand while he holds her steady.
Naruto offers her pity. He tells her the same empty promise he told her cousin, that he will change the Hyuuga when he is Hokage. It makes her laugh, and she laughs and laughs until she cries, until she sobs, until she is a heaving mess in a bar with the rest of the rookie nine. She cries for Neji, she cries for her freedom, she cries for Naruto’s naivety. She tells him that the Hyuuga will never change, that they would rather die than give up their ways, that her father did not flinch as he sealed her and that he has not ever shown remorse. She tells him that she has nightmares of byakugan children, that her dream of a family is dead because she would never put them through the reality of what she is living. She tells him that it is okay that he never answered her confession, because ever since she was 16 she has been unable to be anything other than Hyuuga, much less Uzumaki. With tears running down her face, a mind-numbing buzz in her head, and trembling hands, she tells him to try to change the Hyuuga, to do what others have not.
She is 18 and believes the promise of someone who promises the stars to the moon, and because Neji is not there to tell her otherwise, she blindly clings onto hope.
This is how it goes: she is 19 and her little sister is unrecognizable. There are too many walls between them, too many degrees of separation between main house and branch. Hanabi still teases, still adds charms to her kunai, is still full of laughter, but she is Hinata’s keeper.
Some nights she wants to shake the girl, wants to beg her to change their clan. She wants to explain her every thought so her sister can know that things are not the same, they never will be, they cannot go back to being sisters the way they were before. She wants to tell her sister that she would choose the seal a thousand times over if it meant that she did not have to watch the girl she raised receive it. She wants to tell her that some differences between them are insurmountable, and she wants to be her big sister but she is certain she will resent her the day she becomes clan leader.
Some days she wants to shake the Hokage. She wants to beg for a mission that will take years to finish, or perhaps one she will never return from. She wants to ask him why he didn’t do something to stop her sealing- he was her friend’s sensei, he knew her, he helped train her, and yet she cannot erase the faint burn from her forehead. She wants to tell him she has no respect for him, no respect for any Hokage because they could have changed her clan but they didn’t. She wants to call him a coward, wants to spit in his face, wants to ask him why he didn’t protect her, why no one protected her, why she was left to the Hyuuga sharks the minute her mother died. The day she makes jonin, she does not celebrate. She asks the Hokage for a mission and when she returns, another.
Her sister asks why she is gone so often, asks why she does not take breaks. Hinata feels the wall between them, and does not try to explain that if she is on missions, the Hyuuga cannot use her. If she is to be used, let it be the village, where she at least has a choice.
She is 19 and her bonds to family begin to die, joining her dreams of one in the future.
This is how it goes: she is 20 and still seen as useless. Her father tells her that she must be wed soon, that this is how she can provide to the clan. She wants to yell, wants to have a drunk walk home and scream. Is her rank not enough? Is fighting in a war not enough? Is her mission record not enough? Was sacrificing her freedom to the clan not enough, now she must sacrifice it to a man? She wants to rage against her father, but she is branch, so she stays silent.
Kurenai curses her father when she tells her. Shino does not offer her his hand in marriage, not after he heard her fears of byakugan children, but he does threaten to hurt any man that forces himself upon her.
Kiba asks her on a date. He tells her that she can live at the Inuzuka compound, that she has always been like family to his clan. He tells her that his sister is going to take over the clan after his mother, so he does not need heirs, that they can adopt if they want children. He tells her that his clan may be looked down on, but he is still part of a large, well-known clan, that he is a war-hero and famed jonin, friend of multiple clan heads and the future Hokage. He tells her that he loves her, that he always has, that she took his breath away when they were genin and she takes his breath away now. He tells her that they do not need to be in love, that he will not force himself upon her, and if she only wants him as a way out of her clans walls, then he is still hers to have.
She blushes through their date, and their second, and their third. Hinata kisses him on their fourth, when the sparks she thought were dead in her are kindled back to life. He asks for her hand in marriage after the fifth date, and asks her father for permission after the sixth. She begins to remember what freedom tastes like on the seventh date, and they get married on their eighth.
The Hyuuga clan still calls on her, but she can return home to Kiba afterwards. Her seal still aches but it does not burn.
She is 20 and she finds that she is happy and begins to have new dreams.