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"Haruno-san, a word?"
Hinata's classmate seems surprised in the least. Hinata doesn't blame her. She doesn't exactly make a habit of talking to any of her year-mates. Her social anxiety comes off as aloof-rich-girl-disdain, and her Hyuuga family name only convinces people their first assumptions about her are correct. Even a spurned Hyuuga like Hinata was still a Hyuuga. Just look at Neji; he was a year ahead of her at K.O. and already at the top of his class. He had just about as many friends as Hinata had, too.
"Uh, sure, Hyuuga-san," Haruno says, obliging, and rising to her feet. Uzumaki Naruto keeps his eyes on Haruno's face, while Uchiha Sasuke's gaze doesn't leave Hinata's. She nods at him, more for Hanabi's sake than her own. She was the one that had the pleasure of working with the Uchiha now that Hinata had been passed over.
"Intimidation tactics?" Uchiha asks, lifting one fine black eyebrow. Hinata thinks he looks rather cat-like, puffing up in clear defense of someone. She wonders what it would be like to be defended. "Low brow for a school sports festival."
Hinata levels him with an imperial sort of look she learned from her mother, then flicks her eyes back to Haruno without engaging with the Uchiha boy at all. Sasuke narrows his eyes, and Hinata can tell she's scored a point.
"Quit it, you two," Haruno grumbles, flicking the Uzumaki boy's cheek with one hand and the Uchiha's ear with the other. She looks up at Hinata however, with a sunny smile. "Where to?"
Hinata leads her towards the north-eastern entrance to the stadium. The festival has been going on long enough that the latest of the late-comers have already arrived. There'll be a measure of privacy.
"I understand that we do not know each other very well," she begins, keeping her eyes cast just to the left of Haruno's temple, so she can see the other girl's bright green eyes without having to look in them. That was something her Hizashi-jii had taught to her, for when she was nervous. "But I have a request of you."
With this soft focus, Hinata can see Haruno's brows dive together in confusion.
"I have every intention of losing this match," Hinata continues, "and I understand that you and Yamanaka-san intend to meet each other in the final round. I am happy to help you get there, if you will help me — ,"
"Why would you want to throw the match?"
The easy sunniness of Haruno's earlier disposition is gone, and now she is serious in a way that Hinata had not anticipated.
"Excuse me, but I have my reasons —,"
"I want to face Ino-pig in a fair fight," Haruno presses, folding her arms across her chest. "Because I earned it on my own. If you don't want to compete, you can forfeit."
Hinata grinds her front teeth together.
"I cannot —,"
"But it's less cowardly to tell me you're going to take a dive?"
Hinata thinks of her father. Of the White Spider. How he isn't even here right now, or how he probably isn't even watching at home. Of the grueling training she's undergone from the moment she was old enough to stand on two feet, to put two fingers together and find a pressure point.
She thinks of her mother, far off in some estate house being tended to by nurses and maids, not remembering who Hinata is after the liquor and the beatings drained everything lively and warm and kind out of Hyuuga Hakaze.
When she was a little girl, Hinata dreamt of being a hero so that she could save her mother and herself. When Hizashi-jii died, she dreamt she'd save Neji, too. They'd all pack their bags, and Hinata would bundle up Hanabi in her sleep, and whisk them away somewhere the White Spider couldn't find them.
Now? Now, all Hinata wants to do is quietly disappear into civilian life, and never feel the burden of the Hyuuga name ever again.
"You still have your pride, Hyuuga-san."
Hinata blinks, and entirely by accident, she meets Haruno's bright green gaze.
"I — ,"
But Hinata doesn't know what to say. Haruno is right. Hinata does still have her pride. She wants to go down fighting since she's going down in the first place.
"Why did you come this far just to give up now?"
Why had she? Getting into K.O. had meant nothing to her father. Staying close to the top of her class carried the same weight. Some days in the cafeteria, she could catch Neji's weighted gaze on her, and Hinata couldn't tell if he was wondering why she was there, too, or if he was wondering when she would get the hint and leave.
Why had she put herself somewhere she didn't need to be? Hanabi was her father's heir. Hinata could've quit months ago, before high school entrance exams even started. So why did she — ?
"My father won the battle tournament his first year at K.O.," she begins, trying to find a story that makes sense, "And I don't want to be anything like him. From before I was born, my life was dictated for me, and when I didn't perform, I was thrown away."
The truth comes in fits and starts, poking out between the artifice she tried to maintain earlier.
"I want to embarrass him," she continues, spitting the word because it's true. She wants to embarrass him on her own terms, not because he decided that she was worthless, but because she can get this far and throw it away because she's different from him. "I never want him to be able to forget the fact that I'm his daughter."
Haruno tilts her head to the side, and over the blare of their names being called for their match, she asks, "Then why not be better than him?"
She leaves. And Hinata stands there, stomach roiling, because beating him at his own game isn't a move she thought that she was allowed to play.
Hinata moves through the first motions of the fight like she's underwater. Haruno's Quirk is some kind of strength augmentation, that much is clear, but she has nowhere near the control over it that Hinata has over the White Eye. Hinata can literally see into Haruno's body, and she's well aware that her classmate is doing more damage to herself than she is to Hinata.
Still. Still, it's fun to have a spar, isn't it? It'll be a nice memory when she's a civilian, or when she's a mother. She'll be able to look back on it and say, "Look how far I came".
'Why stop?'
The voice in her head nearly bowls her over, and it almost makes Hinata fall into a massive crack in the earth that Haruno punched into it.
'Why quit? Because some dumb old boy told you that you couldn't?'
The memory reaches through her, grabs Hinata by the back of her neck. Her mother had said that to her when she was little, hadn't she? Before Hakaze had started drinking. When her Hero career was still fresh in her own mind after having Hinata. Hakaze had been the White Bee, once.
Hinata remembers, now. It had been Hiroha, a mean cousin following her father's lead, keeping her out of the games with the other children. He had said she couldn't do it. She was too dumb, and her White Eyes were defective, and she wasn't allowed to play with them.
'Why not be better than him?'
"Hyuuga-san!" she bellows.
Haruno's voice startles Hinata, and she lifts a hand to her cheek to find that a tear has fallen down her cheek.
From the other side of the arena, the stark black lines of Haruno's Quirk only serving to highlight her mangled left fist, and the sheer power she's bottling into her right one. "I won't pretend to understand your situation. I don't. But you wouldn't have come this far if you didn't want to be a Hero for yourself."
Hinata balks, her mouth going dry, Haruno's voice fluttering through the noise in the arena to pierce her right in the ear.
"If you want to give up now, that's fine." There's kindness there in her voice, and Hinata knows that the offer is real. Sincere. "But don't do it to spite the person that threw you away."
Hinata sucks in a breath.
And all of the nights staying awake, killing herself over her under developed White Eye, praying for her secondary Quirk to kick in before she hit puberty; the weeks, weeks under the White Spider's brutal lessons in the Jūken, watching Neji go from a dear friend to a stranger, the morning she woke up and found out from the news that her seven year old little sister had been chosen over her to take the White Spider's mantle when their father stepped down; Hinata lives through her mother's indecision and her uncle's death and her father's indifference and something in her just sort of —
comes alive.
Lightning, white and hot and fierce, rips away from her blinking eyes, lifting off her fingers still pointed in her family's style. It erupts from her back, shredding the remains of her jacket and the armor in it.
Electricity pours off of her in spades, and almost makes a pair of white wings, fluttering behind her.
From across the arena, Haruno smiles. It makes Hinata stall — it's a real smile, like the kinds she hasn't seen since her Hizashi-jii was alive and young and still on active duty, the kind of smile that says, "I'm proud of you! You did it!".
It brings a tear to her eye that crackles away when it makes contact with her skin.
"Hyuuga-san!" she shouts, that proud smile of hers turning, morphing into something that makes the hair on the back of Hinata's neck lift; the determined grin of a challenger, of another girl too stubborn to give up on this fight. "Don't hold back! I'd be insulted if you did."
Hinata can feel the corners of her mouth twitching up despite herself, and instead of settling into an Eight Trigrams stance, she flexes her hands as hard as she can, and feels the lightning start to collect between her fingers.
"Haruno-san," she replies, "I'll give you all I've got."
The other girl laughs a little breathlessly before she gives a battle cry and heaves herself forward. Haruno puts one foot down to belt towards her, and Hinata's lightning sings.