A childhood lost

At the price of Perfection, what is the cost?

Hanabi is perfect, and Hinata is a failure.

Both were raised by the same family, faced the same obstacles; learned the same things.

Hanabi came out stronger, Hinata came out broken.

Hanabi is cold, guarded, calculating. She is everything that a ninja aspires to be and more. She's fast and quick, keen and strategic. She's perfect.

Hinata is warm and open, emotional. She is nothing. She's slow and vulnerable, gentle and unwilling. She is not perfect. She is a mistake. She is a failure.

Every day, the two girls train. Every day Hanabi will hear praises in her ear. Every day Hinata will hear nothing else but mutters of disappointment from her family.

So Hinata is tossed to the side, disowned, rejected; forgotten. Nothing must be in the way for the new Hyuga prodigy: Hanabi Hyuga.

Every day, Hanabi trains. Her face is bruised and her body is drenched in her own sweat and blood. Every night, as she goes through the Hyuga manor, all she meets is nods of approval. "Prodigy," everyone murmurs.

Every day, Hinata meets her friends. On her face is a smile, and her friends are all around her, telling jokes. Every night, as she leaves for home, her friends will call out to her, with big grins on their faces "See you, Hinata!" "Come again, Hinata!"

"Friend," everyone thinks as they watch Hinata disappear into the road.

Every night, Hanabi and Hinata will meet before entering their own rooms. Hinata will be laughing softly to herself, and Hanabi will be silent.

"I'm stronger than her," Hanabi will say to herself. "I'm the prodigy."

"But what is a prodigy?" she will ask of herself.

She will contemplate this thought for many hours, for many nights, until she reaches her conclusion.

Then the time will come when Hanabi will go on missions.

Every day, all she will see is blood and gore and killing. And every night she will return, silent and deadly. Then she will sit on her bed and stare into the empty darkness and replay all of the killing in her head. In her head, she will see all of the stabbings and screaming and all the blood that she made. But that won't scare her. What will scare her is the nothingness she feels.

In the next room, right beside hers, she will hear Hinata come through the window, along with Naruto.

"Good night," Hinata will whisper to Naruto.

"I love you," Naruto will say, and then he will kiss her on the cheek.

Hanabi will sit on her bed and drink it all in.

Loneliness fills the empty air around her.

Hanabi knows that she is human. She walks and speaks and thinks and feels. But she is not a person.

That had already been deprived of her at birth.

"It's okay," she will tell herself. "I am still the strong one. I am the prodigy."

Then she will sleep a sleep of nightmares.

Hanabi was always the perfect one.

Perfection comes with a price.

------

so.

I am thinking of writing an actual story to go along with this, one with more detail and exploration of Hanabi's feelings...

but I don't know.. do you like the idea of this 'rough draft'?

please review and thank you so much for reading this!