A/N: Another drabble. Because I am a drabble whore. Also Hinata-centric, because Hinata is my favorite and I refuse to write anything not involving Hinata. I'm stupid, stubborn, and dreadfully repetitive that way. I have a thing for repeating myself in my poems, OK? I'm sorry! I suck, we know. This starts out as NaruHina, then goes into SakuHina, ends in HinaTema. I needed a happy ending, I'm sorry.
Hyuuga Hinata had the rather unfortunate tendency to fall for people who could never love her back.
It was a real problem, Hanabi (ever-observant Hanabi) had told her. She should learn to love Neji—their marriage was already arranged, and it would make the whole ordeal much easier if they came to love each other.
Yes, Neji was nice enough, but she thought of him more as a brother, and it didn't feel right to her to be in love with your brother. And, well, Hinata had always liked the feisty ones better, anyway.
The ones like Naruto, who never gave up even if they should. Who were confident and strong and prideful when they hadn't any right to be. Perhaps if Neji were like that, things would have been better.
But, as it was, things weren't good.
Because Naruto, who was so much more than Hinata could ever hope to be, was married to Sakura, was in love with Sakura.
Sakura had known that Hinata liked (loved) Naruto. But she had taken her chances with the blonde anyway, and was successful, judging from the ring on her finger and the child in her arms.
Hinata should have hated her.
Sakura had changed, grown from a little girl to a woman, and Hinata had not. She was still a shy, weak, stuttering mess of a girl, crammed into a woman's body and forced into an adult's world where she felt she didn't belong.
Sakura had gotten a husband, produced offspring (a beautiful little boy with blonde hair and green eyes), and the fact of the matter was, Hinata had not. She could, easily, ask her father to set the date of the wedding a bit ahead so that she too, could have a husband and eventually, children. But she wanted the husband that Sakura possessed, a blonde child with pupilless Hyuuga eyes.
And yet.
She couldn't hate her.
Could barely even bring herself to envy her, not when her mind was occupied with far more troubling thoughts than simple jealousy.
Why have I never noticed how beautiful Sakura is? I can understand what Naruto-kun sees in her.
She never told anyone.
But Hanabi knew. Hanabi knew.
Hinata could tell by the way Hanabi's words would drip with venom each time she would speak to her, the way her expression would sour and she would shift away whenever they passed one another in the corridors of the compound.
Disgust.
Complete and utter horror that her elder sister would fall in love with a woman, much less one that was married with children.
And yet.
She couldn't stop herself from loving Sakura. She liked people like her, people who were brash and rough around the edges, just as she herself wasn't and would never be.
And it hurt, more than she ever thought it would, to see the two of them together, her love for Naruto a dull ache (adding insult to injury at this point, really) and her love for Sakura a roaring flame.
Despair.
Fear.
Self-loathing.
Why? Why could she not love someone, anyone, who might return her feelings?
Then;
A girl, no, woman, from Suna. Four pigtails the color of straw, sister to the Kazekage. Her body is dusted with sand (Hinata absently wonders if her lips are, too). She looks like the desert. She is the desert.
Hinata is suddenly desperate to know her name.
A wolfish grin, playful but predatory. Possessive.
A hand, tanned and calloused, enveloping her own.
"Hey, there. I'm Temari."
Hope.
