1Summary: A mother's inconsistency in her truths leads to a sister's redemption, a clan's salvation, and one lie can poison a mind faster than an antidote could befall deaf ears, which no longer listens to them. (The room is alive, but she is not.
Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto, nor do I own this story title.
AN: I think the beginning is a little better than the end, but that's just because the beginning was my winning/ownage streak. It's not like it matters-, I fucking love this. :D -hugs self- You love it, too! XP
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Standing on the dark canal
By the
gasworks
Celebrate the ghost gone by
When the love hurts
Herculean, The Good, The Bad, and The Queen
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The room is young and fresh with her heart beat, hopeful with the smile on her face and the pounding deserted to one side of her chest, and Hinata believes momentarily that if she were to speak to it, the house would speak back.
But now, with age and bitterness and a heart that is unfulfilled but not hollow, she can't not understand that there is nothing magical in how the walls moan with her movements or gasp with her caress. She has small, gentle hands that guide it to where it needs to be, so that when she moves, it will not follow her.
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Hiashi is tentative in his praise of her cousin, because twisting him around by the back of his collar (or by the strain, the floorboards that spin around in a complicated daze to follow their life movements that no one else but them should match, and Hinata knows this with more certainty than the breathlessness in her smile) and telling him that the position of his left foot is off to the right would be improving him more than he needs to be improved.
Hiashi, above all, understands that some things are meant to be imperfect, sitting on the shelves of a hard life that had no winnings in their uselessness, believing that perhaps one day, they will be used-, they all need that belief, whether it is soured or shallow like the emotions in their eyes, because any sort of believing in the Hyuuga clan is treasured more than perfection.
Neji doesn't understand, and he moves his hands and their shadows cast bird beaks on the fences, hungry and hesitant and reflecting what each of them feel watching him.
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Hanabi excels like a replica of her cousin, and at times while she is discarded in place of her sister (who was born perfect but with flaws, not wanting to change but willing in her obligations, and she knows respect and that is why Hiashi loves her) with too much time alone and too much time left in the dried, crusted remains of her thought's lying tongue (which is more truthful than she will ever be-, in the deep recesses of her mind, Hinata knows that her one sided feelings are all she can hope to have, but the other parts of her are more hopeful than the simple reach of misery floating beside her), she wonders who should have been siblings in their house hold.
But she doesn't say this aloud-, knowing that they need her, in the ways she is always there, like a wraith pinned yet separate from their skins but three times as pale, is all Hinata needs.
Hinata's hopeful, glazed smiles that keep their houses from sprouting limbs and running away from them, are all the Hyuuga clan needs (she speaks but does not listen to her words-, neither does she believe her lies nor does she reject them, but the steady acceptance over the years sometimes makes her think that they are true).
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In the gardens, sometimes Hinata can whisper to her sister that the flowers will speak to them and have Hanabi believe her. Perhaps this is because, after she is old and matured and has grown her hair out long, she looks like their mother, and Hanabi is and always has been utterly, hopelessly motherless-, she never knew her, and it is not in the understandable ways that they as sisters do not know each other, because they are each smart enough to know that there is a difference.
At times, when the benches do not move away from them or the flowers don't wince at their touches, they will walk through the rows of plants throughout the night, whispering and giggling and partially believing that they could, perhaps someday, love each other like they were meant to.
Hanabi's hand feels hot and wet with her perspiration, or perhaps it is Hinata's own, because for a few moments, they can not tell where the other begins. In the moonlight, Hinata doesn't think that it is right that her sister should look as if she is meant to be kissed, to be held tighter than family will hold one another, and they are not even that close to being related.
Not internally, where it truly matters-, or perhaps it never mattered at all, because in the morning neither will admit that they felt as though they might have been loved.
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Hinata thinks that she likes Naruto because he is the exact opposite of who her father wants her to like. It's in the brightness of his smile that fills the empty corners of her stomach where she extracts her fickle fantasies of romance between them, even if perhaps it never would have worked out-, she is, after all, built solely in her foundations like any Hyuuga, any person who's eyes are as blank as their color, and Hiashi's praise and sore disipline is like the epitome of any man they wish to wed, any woman aligned with her sex so straight it is impossible to ignore, in that it is impossible to love them.
Hyuugas will not often think for themselves, not unless they are the prime of their reasons, plucked infinitely and obsessively like moths with detachable wings, and Hiashi will prune them until they are perfect.
Some he will leave alone. Perhaps that is why she likes Naruto, but all that is clear in the hollowness of their spirits, not because she was killed but because of the place she was born, is that his smile blinds her and creatures so finely tuned and lacking flaws (and her flawlessness is a mistake-, no one can love her unless they too are perfect, or they will deny her the essence of perfection like children smudging clean walls with dirty thumbprints, rooms that wallow in their cleansing and are what Hinata believes to be the first of the childhood monster tales so many mothers spoke of-, they will suck you in between their creases like a hunger for human flesh that is gravitational, and sinners with hungers like that can never be sated as much as they are enticed) can never be loved by people like him.
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At night, when the stars watch them but Hinata can convince Hanabi that they are not their mother, that she is more so than them because of the blood that runs through her veins, Hinata thinks that neither of them are sane.
The moon can laugh with them, perhaps not together in a stream of their own morbid humor, but on it's own terms-, something more separate from Hiashi's stern faces and firm fists than anything they have ever known, so they do not mind it as much as someone else who knew and lived by freedom, by wanting some sort of rulership, some sort of anarchy or hell, or whichever came first, would.
They don't mind that the flowers frighten them in their innocence, nor that the wind chills them to the bone or that in the small moments Hiashi does not tower over them everything else is a lie.
Some lies can be accepted, like the one Hinata whispers against her sister's lips that all mother's kiss their children there.
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Hinata does not feel the need to compromise, even with the jutting bones of Hanabi's back pressed into her palms and the mattress pad, sticky and wet with the pent up feelings that, in a way, do not even exist-, to pretend she loves her sister, even if it amounts to the heavy, tangible smell of sex on the air, is something that she cannot reprimand.
Something incestual has no meaning, not when Hanabi is soft and warm and voluntary, perhaps not as fully willing but by obligation (and that is why everyone loves her, why Hanabi is the most important priority-, she doesn't understand the meaning of the fact that obligations can be rebelled against, are expected to be rebelled against, especially when she has sunk so deep into suffering that it has come to this-, back end love affairs washed up over the bed sheets like swift, unforgiving tides, and what else is there left but rebellion?), by the implications Hinata brings with her like Naruto brings sunshine or Neji brings misery, and any one suffering that is large enough to define a person in itself is substantial to surrender, no matter if it is a sibling or an aunt or a stranger who holds no real meaning.
And perhaps it would have been better if Hanabi were a stranger, because then, maybe Hinata would not feel so much guilt.
She doesn't see a true wrongness in what she has done-, Hanabi, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps fully like the unabashed depth of the scratches on Hinata's back (long, red lines that look like rose petal garden hoses, something useful built on beauty, on elegance, it's delicacy endless and eternal and marking the pattern of forever-love with the beginning of a manipulation that borders on pedophilia-, Hinata is not unaware of the boundaries, but like most, she cannot resist temptation when it croons beneath her touch, more appreciative of her softness than people who are natural to love but still less so than the walls of their houses, forever-love drawn and united brick by brick and row by rose petal in each of their foundations until they are lost in one another), wants it. It's a sin, a rebellion, and Hinata thinks that the reason bad things feel so right to people is because they are right-, who would anyone be without a background, without something to build themselves off of that solely belongs to them to say aloud, to keep secret; everybody needs a sin in the way humans are meant to breathe, because there is nothing else but dullness without hatred, misery, pain.
She thinks that even the brightness in Naruto's smile will fade a little, with time, and perhaps she can learn to love him appropriately then, instead of the empty yet sated feelings of contentment at being able to rebel, and at the same time do what is considered natural, to love, to admire, to obsess deeper than the whispers of a daisy stem at midnight.
She cannot live forever in her flowers, because she has seen it in her mother and her grandmother and all the Hyuuga women who believed they could have peace and fairness and just, and they are as dead as her eyes.
She has wilted in the sun, hopelessly dry and brittle and thin, and moves throughout the garden as if the deaths of plants are any easier than the deaths of a person. To her, they are not, not when they have been the salvation of so many before her and the connection, whether severed with sins and lies and her poisoned tongue (and she swears that at times, she can hear herself hiss or watch herself slither across the court yard-, but snakes do not care for their families, even if her own feelings for them are little), to her sister.
Hinata thinks that if she can become a mother to Hanabi, it would make everything float away. But she doesn't think she loves her like that anymore.
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The room is alive, but she is not. Hinata knows that the hands on her are not enough to shield them from the eyes that watch them, observe the fingers closely knitted or the secrets that bring their lips closer to each other's ears-, a closeness which is unessential, perhaps fascinatingly morbid.
Hanabi is too young to understand that happiness has it's morbidity, in the way lying in the sun for too long will cast stripes of sunburn over their faces, pale yet darkened, by the reprimand of men who disapprove of their joy. It is not fair, but neither is the fact that they can still laugh without being bitter or holding a hand over their mouths.
And perhaps they have grown together too much, too fast, and what is left is a seal that lies more than Hinata's tongue.
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They don't think it right that a child should have to protect her mother, not now, with the shame and the disappointment they all see clearly, not then, when they each strived to bury the remains of their dead mother.
In flesh, perhaps none of them are real, but the truth pulses beneath their skins and will not come out of their mouths. Hinata thinks, frightened as if the apron strings, the kisses, the hands and cycle of fairy-tale romance she knew from the start would not last but expected it to the same, are detaching themselves, and perhaps white lies do not hurt, except for later or when the guilt floods in because good lies are still lies, less brutal than the truth but more wrong.
Sins are as bitter as a promised heaven, because even if view, they hardly ever will reach their full effect. The lie is as white as her eyes, and she never comes through.
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The house is restless on it's foundations, and Hinata can feel the storm coming like a blind man craning his neck to see what he cannot, to wallow in his uselessness, and she doesn't think that predicting bad weather is a talent. She is old in her bones, crumpled and miserable and sour with sins, but she is still aware of the rain.
At times, things washed away are not always cleansing-, as the thunder and lightning rattle her windows, she thinks that it is hardly raining, despite the noise, and quietly wonders if Neji is ruffled with a broken wing, the bird who saw his escape but couldn't.
Neji is a weak man, underneath his hardness and his power, and weak men believe they can accomplish anything. Neji has found himself with nothing, and Hinata can hardly give him pity.
For Hanabi, she does not know-, but the darkness of the outside suggests something. Subtle as the irony, Hinata strokes the walls with a gentle touch and prays they'll all get shot out of the sky.
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Reviews, flames, constructive criticism, and random comments would be lovely and mucho appreciated-, How could I have ever made it this far without you little munchkins?