As she lay on the field broken, with blood and dirt smeared across her face and rain beating down, Hanabi hated to admit it but she knew that she had fallen.

At one time she had been among the best, ranked in the top three genin in her age group and then in the top five chunin in the city when she was fourteen, but now her peers had surpassed her—and she hated herself for it.

She could see the bone of her wrist jutting out of her skin from the corner of her eye and knew that she would be out of commission for a week and probably unable to use her wrist at all for a month. Worse, she saw Taiga Inuzuka take a hit without being able to do anything about it and watched as Akira Natsume delivered the finishing blow to the final opponent. At one time, she would have been the one to do it.

Hanabi tried to move, to drag herself off the field at least, but she knew she would have to be carried. She realized with equal distaste that she would have to be treated by her sister when she got home and that Hinata would worry, Neji would fix her with a steely critical gaze and her father wouldn't even look at her.

It was painfully clear to her what her rank was and she didn't have to be reminded. She had fallen four rank places, all the way to 18th strongest in the city—and that was not acceptable to her family. A dark look crossed her face just thinking about it and she wondered for a moment why she had condemned herself to such a miserable existence, but then she remembered, and she understood perfectly well.

Hanabi remembered her sister's tear streaked face when Hinata asked why she'd done it.

"I did it for you of course," and they both knew it perfectly well. It had always been a matter of time before one of them was to be marked. The day before Hinata was to undergo the sealing ceremony, Hanabi volunteered herself instead, putting down objections by vigorously defending the historical right of the first born. She took her sister's place on the platform and asked Hinata to do the sealing for her. Hanabi sat calmly and watched as Hinata laid the ink and powdered design of the seal on the floor and performed the hand seals that would carve her fate onto her forehead.

Throughout the searing pain all she ever did was narrow her eyes and wince until it was over. She didn't understand why Hinata was the one who screamed watching her and fainted when the ceremony was done. Just as she would not understand until later that her sister had switched the powders for the ceremony so the seal on her forehead was a powerless scar. Hinata knew that Hanabi had prepared her heart for a life of sacrifice and servitude but she wanted to leave her sister a way out if it all became impossible to bare.

Unbeknownst to Hinata, the day Hanabi decided to give her the position of heir, Hanabi also accepted a much greater burden than the mark of the seal: the burden of living only to serve the clan, without the luxury of a purpose for herself. When she abandoned her position of power, Hanabi became a pawn to be mobilized as the Hyuuga saw fit. In order to serve the needs of the family she would have to give up her entire being. Her future did not belong to her anymore and her talent existed to serve the clan.

Being second in the line of succession meant she was now a political bargaining chip, and with that new status the pressure to do well actually increased. Her family expected her to excel in order to attract a strong match, one that would strengthen the clan and whose blood would ensure that succeeding generations of Hyuuga would be even stronger. From now on, the elders would treat her as part of the on-going eugenics project to make the advanced bloodline of the clan even stronger.

XXX

Author note: written on a whim, ask for more if you want more.

In case your confused about why Hinata took the seal and gave Hanabi the mark instead of just faking the whole thing without giving anyone the seal: in my mind once the ceremony is in place one of them has to get the seal no matter what. If you screw with the process to much the power intended to go into the seal will get displaced somewhere else and hurt some innocent bystander.