Characters: Hinata, Hanabi
Summary: Any girl can protect her sister. Companion to Funeral Songs.
Pairings: None
Author's Note: Consider this a sort of companion to Funeral Songs—Hinata's take on Hanabi. All hands up for those who think it's ironic that Hanabi and Hinata both want to protect each other.
Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.
Hinata's own convictions tell her that, at some level, all older siblings are possessed of a desire to protect their younger siblings, until such acts and experiences occur as to erode that instinct, to make it devour itself. It's a natural-born instinct, that even her own personality and life within the prison walls of the Hyuuga clan can't erase.
Long falls the shadow over her and her own sister. Hinata knows Hanabi can sense it as well as she can. When it crashes down on them they can't know, and if they're still standing in it they will be destroyed. Hinata knows she has a conscience that can't live with the thought of Hanabi, the little girl she's always known as her sister, even when she pulls away in moments of pride and insists on standing on her own, before crashing and coming back to her, being devoured by that utter blackness.
If Hinata could pick a place for them to be, forever, it would be a sunflower field. The flowers grow tall there and it would hide them. But she knows she can't. So she stands and makes resolutions that she is determined to keep.
To look at Hinata, there is not a single person in the world who would guess her to be the protective sort. They see her rather, and rightly, as timid and retiring and wilting at even the slightest thought of familial disapproval, though she is accosted with it every day of her life.
Hinata is a lioness beneath her clothes of wary timidity. Few ever see it, and few have ever provoked it, but she knows she can become such, if she has to be. She knows how; she knows she can.
Of course, Hanabi doesn't see this. How can she? Hinata's protection of her has always come in the dark, where no one, let alone Hanabi, can see. There's little praise to be garnered from taking every storm of disapproval and danger for her sister and then never admitting to it. But Hinata knows that Hanabi's wounded pride wouldn't let the girl continue to allow her sister to protect her, if she knew.
Hanabi can see the shadow but she can't sense the danger she's in. Not the true danger, anyway. She looks at a pool of dark water and only sees the surface—Hinata looks further and sees the sea monsters waiting for someone to stick their toe in and then pounce.
Hinata wants nothing more than for her sister to survive. Hanabi doesn't know how to bend when the wind blows; she will only snap and shatter when the wind screams around her. Something bent can be repaired; something shattered can't.
And Hinata doesn't want to see Hanabi break.
So she stands as tall as she can so Hanabi can walk in her shadow, even though there will come a time when Hanabi is taller than Hinata herself. Hanabi doesn't know, Hanabi is too proud to see.
So Hinata will see for her. She'll keep unwanted attention off of Hanabi.
After all, any girl can protect her sister.
Even the one who has to sacrifice herself to do it.